also known to produce concept albums. Nat King Cole and even Frank Sinatra were a
few of those artists.
This brings us to the iTune Age where you can buy a single for a song (pun intended).
If you like, you can buy the whole album, but the trend appears to be singles, most of
which are downloaded to an iPod or other device to create playlists. Personally, I’m not a
fan of playlists. I do confess to wearing my iPod headphones when I go to sleep and
putting it on “shuffle.” Okay ... so I’m not all that consistent. But I like the idea of full al-
bums and especially concept albums. I’m a big fan of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and I love
the tune, Comfortably Numb. But, I bought the album because it was important for me to
understand the entire context. Comfortably Numb makes much more sense when listened
to as a part of the whole.
Artists Doing It For Themselves
That’s the end of today’s history lesson. Now it’s on to artists doing it for themselves ...
sort of. There are many, many opportunities for today’s indie artists to do things for them-
selves in terms of recording, producing, distributing and promoting. But a couple of
things really stand out–artist and fan collaboration, as well as collaborations with other
artists. That may have happened to a degree in the past, but it was mostly through fan let-
ters and, perhaps, the occasional phone call to the right person, if they could be found and
reached.
With social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, ReverbNation and
such, all of which have been discussed, have turns the tides. Hip-hop group, the Bayliens
are something of pioneers of this idea. They allow fans to remix their music in a way they