Those who enjoy country and western music tend to hail from rural areas, be they in the U.S.A or Australia for example. Fans of the blues & blues/rock tend to hail from more middle-class suburban areas. Disco, electronic & club music seem to be centralised in densely populated and more financially affluent areas. These are all generalisations & like everything else on earth, there are always exceptions.
Now that people have the easiest, fastest and most comprehensive access to global music they can be more selective to not only what style but to what artists they wish to listen to. With Google recently announcing that it is making every artist readily searchable from their toolbar and are touting this as a wonderful breakthrough, which is to a large degree, I suspect that it is going to make music a less 'sociable' medium than it already is, thank you very much to the 'interweb.'
Living in a small town in Tasmania, the sounds that I hear outside are birds twittering and the lapping waves of the nearby seashore. When I walk around the streets people say hello and smile. Further west in the city of Burnie nobody makes a sound, so engrossed are they in what they're listening to on their iPod and what the footpath looks like.
Even less sociable is the fact that people can go to the MySpace and have a myriad of talented musicians of all genres, ranging from Caribbean to Honky-Tonk and everything in between. The only problem that I have found with this site is that there seems to be a high percentage of musicians whos' supporters are fellow musicians. Hardly conducive to helping album sales.
Surprisingly, iLike, which is in partnership with Google in its' new music accessibility venture seems very under-utilised by listeners, considering songs from there can be shared on Facebook which holds 25% of internet sharing popularity. Artists can also set up their own music pages which allows artists to interact with their supporters
One site that is definitely 'on the up' is ReverbNation. This was the site that I first began uploading my music to as it offers great stats and promotional widgets. More importantly it allows artists to easily communicate with followers and make song available as 'fan exclusive' free downloads, which are not visible unless you become on of your favourite artists fans.
As interactive as many of the aforementioned websites are, they are not interactive in a group or social setting.
I recall many years ago being at a nightclub where an incredibly talented folk-rock band were playing. I was standing at the bar dancing away by myself whilst most of the other people were on the dance floor. I made eye contact with a younger chap who was also dancing away quite happily by himself at the bar. I approached him to make a comment about how good the band was. It turned out that this chap was Sudanese and didn't speak a word of English. We still had a great time.
The point that this shows is that irrespective of skin colour, background or dialect, music is the ultimate communicator. Now that the internet has made musical appreciation, availability and diversity more available than once unimaginable, the mental stimulation and bonding with others that this provides is extremely heartening to this writer.
