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Author: Brandyn Buchanan
Between MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, ReverbNation, Soundclick, and Last.fm, it seems unfathomable that music fans would have any more time to think about, let alone discuss, music on the internet, but Twitter has been taking the internet by storm the last few months, following users away from the computer and bringing notes and updates directly to their cellphones.
While it's fairly understandable that you could pick up short updates from your friends (eating chinese, LOL!), chances are you associate music with something deep that makes a permanent impact on you, and microblogging about delicious cake doesn't seem to compute with those ideas. But even famous musicians are people too, and Twitter's brief format allows for normally busy people to shoot off a couple of sentences from their phones from an airport without going through the trouble of logging onto their computers and waiting for a page to load and telling the world what they've been doing for the last few weeks - it's an ideal format if you're on the go and, you know, doing stuff.
So, who are some of the biggest (and most interesting) musicians using this service? We took some time browsing online, and we were pleasantly surprised at what we found: even for musicians whose material we didn't love, we found compelling and readable material.
Well, Dave Matthews is an afficiando of the service. He updates relatively frequently, but it seems like he uses the service something like an email inbox - popping up, responding to a handful of interesting comments, posting up a thought of his own, and then moving on.
John Mayer is also on the site, and for the most part, he doesn't bother telling us what he ate for lunch this afternoon. He uses the service more like a blog - he posts in various one sentence thoughts and nonsequitors. And most of it is legitimately funny : "Just signed a deal to sell ad space inside my Tweets. Now it's time to celebrate with one of the many low sodium soups from Campbells!"
If you're looking for musicians who fulfill the Twitter stereotype of constant updates for the ADD crowd, look no further than New York MC Talib Kweli.Random hollas at followers are, on one hand, a little bit annoying, but on the other hand, watching him interact with other rappers (mostly people like Jean Grae, on his own Blacksmith label) is fun to watch.
Not to say every musician Twitter page is as interesting and authentic. The Britney Spears and Pearl Jam accounts seem more of an arm of their PR departments : plenty of links to whatever album or show is being shilled at the moment, with at least the occassional missive in Britney's case. It seems kind of a strange way to use the service - if a fan is hardcore enough to seek you up and sign up to track you, what are the odds they need to be reminded to buy your record?
There are plenty of interesting people on Twitter : Matisyahu and The Veronicas post rather often, and we're rather partial to Muse frontman Matt Bellamy's account here.. And you can read an exhaustive list of artists and promoters to pick out ones you're into personally.
Twitter isn't really a perfect solution for musicians or fans - you can't post up songs or images or music videos or any of that other stuff you need for a "sticky" website. But it's a great way to quickly ("blink of an eye" quick) catch up on what your favorite people are up to. And if you don't use Twitter, there's a handy RSS output on every page. Plug it into your RSS reader if you'd like to be... Twitted... without having to... Tweet? Then kick back and enjoy!
A music community hoping to make music a little less disposable. Stereozeitgeist is the place where you can share the views in regard to the music and you can upload music videos
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