Karsten Moran for The New York Times The grassroots music business spills out onto the streets this week with the 31st annual CMJ Music Marathon. From Tuesday through the wee hours of Sunday morning, it brings some 1,300 acts - bands, rappers, songwriters, laptoppers and no doubt some ukulele players - in search of attention and its dividends.
There once were thoughts that the Internet, where nearly every CMJ band can be sampled at leisure (and in higher fidelity), would make a mass live showcase like CMJ obsolete. Instead, paradoxically, more and more musicians arrive, eagerly hoping that a 25-minute set in some firetrap basement might be witnessed by someone useful - or, now, recorded and uploaded to YouTube.
Oh, there is a convention going on. CMJ, the music magazine that grew out of a college-radio newsletter, does present panels for the practical-minded attendee on the nuts and bolts of branding, Web design, licensing, touring and other necessities of the digital-era music business.
But the festival's critical mass comes from all of those bands counting on the proximity of all those other bands and the people eager to discover, promote and/or exploit them. The marathon's epicenters are the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, where the sight of guitar-toting musicians pocketing business cards from new contacts will not be uncommon. The marathon also sprawls across town, onto radio and of course online. And anyone, not just convention-goers, can be a talent scout; musicians court more exposure, and perhaps earn enough gas money to get the van back home, at free parties outside the official CMJ showcases.
Of course, writers and photographers from The New York Times will be among the badge-wearing multitudes: listening, watching, blogging and Tweeting through the creativity and chaos. Follow us here.
No comments:
Post a Comment