Phony and Inept

There is a very funny story in the New York Times today about a Warner Records attempt to get a new single posted on tastemaker MP3 blogs. On the one site that did post the song, Warner employees wrote obviously fake positive comments (“This track is amazing!! Thanks for letting us listen to it!!”) in the blog and the whole thing backfired (link).

Blogs, and the internet more generally, dramatically narrow the gulfs between musicians, reviewers, and fans. With these more connected relationships, authenticity becomes much more important than it already is. And authenticity is very difficult for lumbering corporations to fake. So as the internet becomes more important as a way that people find out about new music, it’s going to be harder and harder for a top-down corporate music industry to manipulate fans.

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More good press about sp2torrent.com: Cnet, The Register, and the BBC.