October 2009: Media Shift Tipping Point?

Music has become one of the important indicators of cultural shift – In the last week I’ve come across several events which, whilst interesting separately, coincidentally suggests a fundamental shift is underway in media.

October 13^th Rihanna first tweet announces album release date

October 25^th 2009 U2 stream a live concert on Youtube

October 30^th Britney Spears announces new video via twitter

October 30^th The Foo Fighters stream a live performance on Facebook with chat and twitter

Much music activity is still of the traditional create and consume push model albeit mediated in various ways these days. The Foo fighters stream was particularly interesting as it presented an “intimate” and interactive studio based setting to millions of people who could interact via facebook and twitter with each other and to a limited extend with the band as well.

The next step as I see it is a more dynamic “mash” of media – performing out to a live audience and the Net with increasing opportunities to pull in from the audience and the Net.

I’m imagining how artists could use Augmented reality to overlay new dimensions to their performances – While performing in the studio The Foos could overlay a concert venue or other action scenes – indeed they could augment a performance anywhere. I’m imagining how artists could augment other performers and performances in their shows for example when doing a cover track.

With audience smart camera phones I’m imagining how you could view a performance from various points of view.

I’m wondering whether, like in original Shakespeare plays, members of the audience could say “I can do that part better”, get up on the “stage” and play the part. Consider Youtube performances and their video responses for example Steve Vai Tender Surrender and some of the amazing responses.

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