Support Music Freedom!
by Christopher Naoum
From folk to funk, Washington, D.C. is brimming with local music talent, and venues eager to promote it. Listen Local First (LLF) is a local music initiative born in our nation’s capital that is devoted to building awareness and raising the profile of D.C.’s local music scene. We seek to partner with local musicians, arts organizations, venues, and locally owned businesses to create alternate performance opportunities and new avenues for local music exploration. We consider LLF an incubator, educational tool, and a vehicle for district-wide cultural policy reform.
To build their fan base, independent artists rely on substantial local support from their communities and the exposure that many digital distribution services provide to them to actively promote their music. The two go hand in hand: by building a strong local following, artists can empower their proprietary fan base to talk up their music to their friends and family through their social networks. Creating social network buzz relies on the ability of new listeners to share the tracks and easily access an artist’s music, which is what happens over digital music platforms like Spotify, Pandora, Google, Rhapsody, and Amazon, to name just a few.
But while the 21st century world of music marches forward, the 20th century is still trying to claw us back. One need look no further than the recent huge EMI deals that would give Universal Music Group over 40% of the recorded music market and would make Sony the largest music publisher in the world. Further consolidation of music labels and libraries will threaten this thriving ecosystem and cripple the vitality of the innovative digital music marketplace.
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