Today is the end of February, and for songwriters participating in February Album Writing Month, the day when they are challenged to wrap up an album’s worth of songs written during the month. Much of this songwriting is happening out in public, with songs available for listening almost as soon as they have been written.
By the time the month is over, “FAWMers” will have written around 10,000 songs. In practical terms, that is about 15 times as many new songs as the casual music listener can listen to over the course of a year.
One lesson from this, a point mentioned many times before, is that if you merely want to listen to a wide variety of interesting recorded music, there is no need to ever pay for it. Music, of course, is part of a broader trend. It costs less than before to be an observer or spectator. It is not that interesting things are happening everywhere you turn, but with the Internet, when they do happen, they are not so hard to find.
Much of what goes on in the economy, notably including most advertising, is based on variations of the idea of collecting money at the door. As this becomes harder to do, adjustments will be needed almost everywhere.
