Can Social Media Work for a Commodity?

I spoke again with Craig from Resonant Vibes this Saturday, and he gave me a solid run down on where the company has been and where it is going. It’s exciting stuff, and I’m hoping that I will be able to help them in some way.

To start down that path, I cranked up the old internets this afternoon to do some hunting and pecking around what’s going on with electronic dance music on-line these days. The result: Electronic Dance Music, once a rarity found only in record stores sprinkled around the country, is now a commodity.

if I’m a fan I can stream songs on demand on imeem, I can stream random songs around a particular artist on Pandora, or I can find one of any number of on-line mix shows and stream there.

if I’m a dj I can buy exclusive and back catalog tracks from Beatport, I can buy a surprisingly large variety of tracks from iTunes, and I can even buy tracks from the message board community where I belong which totally threw me off.

Music Has Been Commoditized

I guess it really isn’t all that crazy to think that the music I struggled to find and paid exorbitant prices for, growing up, is now ubiquitous and almost free. We’ve come a long way since the late 90s, huh?

So where does social media come into play? Back in June, Kyle Lacy wrote about information being the most valuable commodity of all. I tend to agree with him. So let’s apply that premise to the music business.

I really don’t know if I need to own music as a fan, anymore. There is so much of it that I couldn’t possibly listen to it all and I have access to devices that feed it to me no matter where I am. However, as a fan I do want to know what’s good so that I don’t spend all my time trying to figure it out. Or maybe I don’t really care… there’s probably a range of desire to find good new music, as defined by the individual. The electronic dance music fan may or may not be of interest to a budding on-line music retailer.

I do happen to know that Djs definitely still need to own music, though. It’s kind of an occupational necessity, if you will, because they need to have access to it when they play it in front of people. And they also need to be able to manipulate it to mix songs together. I think that for the most part Djs buy music because they want to support the artists that make the music they play. I understand that is a broad statement, but I’m making it nonetheless. With regard to information and its value, Djs want to know what tracks get people moving.

This could be an interesting problem to solve.

Can Social Media Work For A Commodity?

That’s the question of the day. I would like to believe that it could and would also obviously like to find the way that it does. There has got to be some combination of what they like, what they buy, and what other people like that hits the sweet spot for a Dj’s purchasing decision on a particular track. If that information could be quantified and then used as a filter for trusted relationships, within the network, to utilize… that would be awesome.

Now to try and put it all together, right?