What will life be like for classical music after the internet?
Is it a coincidence that Sinfini Music and On An Overgrown Path are falling silent within days of each other? Cotermination may just be an ironic coincidence, because the two websites have little in common other than shared roots in classical music. But it can be argued that they are both in part, if not wholly, victims, of a technology driven change in the way we consume information. In 2014 conductor sans frontières and longstanding online writer Kenneth Woods wrote how 'Facebook ate my blog'. His post lamented how many of the best and most influential blogs are falling silent, including Gavin Plumley's erudite and informative Entartete Musik which had ceased updating a few months previously. The thrust of Ken's perceptive piece was that, to quote him: "Blogging these days is NOTHING without Facebook and Twitter. Nothing". That is a view I share,, and it is one of the reasons why I am now bowing to the inevitable.
Readers will know I have little empathy for social media, and many will simply say good riddance. But before the simultaneous exit of On An Overgrown Path and Sinfini Music is dismissed as mere coincidence, I would draw attention to an article in the Guardian by Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan which discusses the cost of social media's inexorable rise far more eloquently that I can. Central to Hossein Derakhshan vitally important analysis of the demise of blogging is that the hyperlink - which was the raison d'être of the world wide web - has become almost obsolete in online writing; which means that social media platforms now control the all-important traffic generating linkages. The stream is now the way we consume information, and the content of information streams is controlled by insidious algorithms. Hossein Derakhshan goes on to liken streamed content on platforms such as Facebook to personal television, and given the dismal content of established television channels that is a chilling analogy. The conclusion is quite clear: Facebook and other social media platforms control linkages and therefore audience for online content. And just like television, 95% of Facebook and other social media is crap; so you had better join them by churning out crap, or quit. Which means the Internet now practises a Darwinian form of selection whereby only the crappiest survive.
Hossein Derakhshan accepts the viewpoint that the rise of social media is a function of technological change; but still, quite rightly, he laments the resulting loss of intellectual power and diversity. This loss is not confined to blogs, and an earlier post here described the catastrophic damage that the internet has inflicted on the music industry. Classical music still has its head buried in the sand of the Internet desert, whereas, by contrast, rock musicians have been far more vocal in outlining the dangers of the music industry's digital fixation. Just as Hossein Derakhshan delivers an important message about music journalism, so rock musician and visionary David Byrne delivers an important message about classical music in an article that opens with the words: "What will life be like after the internet? ... I mean, nothing lasts forever, right?"
Also on Facebook and Twitter. Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).
Comments
Perhaps those who favor Facebook were never your target audience at all. Perhaps, in the earlier days of the web before the rise of social media, they read blogs and commented on them for lack of another outlet, then, when Facebook arrived, they settled comfortably into their preferred outlet after all.
But just because that pre-Facebook time may have presented an illusion of a vast readership doesn't mean a meaningful readership doesn't exist—because that readership does exist. I read your blog, as others do.
You may of course decide that you can no longer justify the investment you make in your site because the size of your readership is too small, or because the level of engagement within your readership has disappointed, but ascribing these failings to social media's insidious influence or to a broader demise of the web's potential misses the mark, I think.
The truth is that yours is a wonderfully erudite blog unlikely to draw the attention of large crowds, and technology however amplifying will not change that. In vast fields of clover yours is a four-leaf clover, only noticed when purposefully sought.
Please know that those who seek out what you generously lay out for them are most grateful, and that your words do make a difference, though the nature of the difference might not be readily apparent.
Also, @Elaine, I'm pretty sure that people over 50 are one of the largest user groups for Facebook today, and that number is only growing on Twitter.
"Minority views are radicalised when they can’t be heard or engaged with. That’s how Isis is recruiting and growing. The stream suppresses other types of unconventional ideas too, with its reliance on our habits. []The prominence of the stream today doesn’t just make vast chunks of the internet biased against quality – it also means a deep betrayal to the diversity that the world wide web had originally envisioned".
The ego-ridden vacuity of the online world is epitomised by you publicly throwing your toys out of your pram and declaring that you are 'unsubscribing'? Do you really think anyone actually cares about that?
ACD
What a pity that some of the energy of the social media apologists could not be expended on infinitely more important issues, such as the continuing neglect of musicians of colour. The readership for this post criticising the role of social media now stands at almost three times that for my post about the underrepresentation of musicians of colour on the concert platform.
That disparity in readership says it all.
Your voice and thoughtful contributions will be missed. I take comfort in the fact that my musical medicine cabinet contains the sulpha drugs composed by Magnard and encapsulated by Sanderling in Malmo.
Thank you for your web legacy of countless hours of meaningful content.
When you select your recessional music I encourage you to reject anything in a minor key. If I may be so bold, I suggest "La rejouissance" from Handel's Feuerweksmusik.
Best wishes for music filled days ahead.