The audio track (about 1 1/4 hours) from the Chicago Music Commission‘s Musicians at Work forum in which I recently participated as a panelist was released a couple of weeks ago. Podcasters Jim Goodrich and Fred Wells, along with Gaper’s Block writer Graham Sanford and yours truly all participated an a Q&A about podcasting, blogging, and how to get started doing both with some sort of business-oriented motivation in mind. Hope you find it interesting!

I’ve done several blog/podcast/musical entrepreneurship events like this over the past few years, most recently for the Chicago Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) down at Roosevelt University. Though my blog and podcast tend to be more geared toward the classical side of things, I’ve done a lot of more general chatter about how this kind of stuff I do can benefit all musicians. It’s funny–I never set out to have a successful blog, but I now find myself with a popular music blog, a podcast (which feels like the most constructive thing I do online!), and a guy who manages a few other projects like these for different groups. In fact, I was sort of embarrassed that I had this site for a long time, but I continue to realize that life’s twists and turns can take you down the paths that you’d least expect.

We’ll also get into some of the specifics on software and hardware systems that I have used over the life of my blog (as well as why I discarded certain options in favor of others), how I record my audio and video podcasts, the benefits and drawbacks of various content management systems, and other technical nitty gritty. I’ll make sure that we also talk about broader concepts such as finding your niche, how to write for the web, linkers versus thinkers, balancing the preferences of readers, watchers, and listeners, and how to make a vibrant and compelling multimedia site for the long haul.

Since I am a musician, after all, I’ll definitely be addressing what my multimedia site has done for my own career and how it has affected my day-to-day life as a musician, and offer advice on how musicians (and other creative spirits) can harness new technologies to further their art, craft, and business.

Details are available at www.chicagoacm.org, and this video covers a little more about my presentation:

I’ve also done a fair amount of writing for other blogs and publications during this same time period, and while most of these have been positive experiences, I still love being able to implement ideas and projects on my own timetable without having to answer to any higher editorial authority.

I fervently believe that there is great power in having the final word on your own content. Anyone who has spent time on committees knows how inspired ideas can be ground down to a group think pulp as everyone tries to add their own spin or personal agenda to a project. Having to vet your ideas in group settings can kill innovation and make for bland, boring, “safe” projects that engage no one.

I often realize, as I post a particular video, feature a particular guest, or tell a story about some excruciating event, that the kind of material that appears on this blog really couldn’t be published by an institution or organization. Think about the various parties that would have to sign off on every YouTube video (think about the duets with yourself video I put up recently, for example), every story I write (what about the ‘feelings’ of the group I wrote about in my A Week in the Life series), or every guest, resource, or event I profile (might I be seen as currying favor by featuring some particular person, organization, or product?).

With my current setup (and this is why blogging is so powerful), I decide to write about something and I simply write about it, consequences be damned. Now, I have a certain editorial and journalistic standard to which I hold myself (not that I have had any formal training as either an editor or a journalist), and I write within the confines of my own personal standards. You, as readers, decide for yourselves what level of trust and authority you attach to my writing–just as you should for any news source, be it the NBC Nightly News or some angry anonymous guy on a forum board.

As a blogger, I stake my reputation on the topics I write. If I start to publish lies, inflammatory posts, or other putzy material, I will quickly lose credibility and therefore authority. Authority is elevated above the din of the blogosphere by actively engaged readers, and one’s credibility (or lack thereof) is determined by these very same readers.

In a nutshell, what I’m implying is that I really do have an editorial authority–you! Isn’t that a better situation than some shadowy anonymous figure in the background deciding what you should or should not be able to read?

____________

As an independent publisher theoretically capable or reaching the exact same number of people as any online publishing service, you are limited only by your imagination and time. Do you want to create an interactive live streaming online call-in show? Tech guru Chris Pirillo is doing it all the time, and I have the tools do it as well (more on that later). How about your own daily radio show? Video show? Daily news feed? Piece of cake–the only limiting factor is your willingness to invest your time (or find people to help you if you lack some necessary skills).

Parallels can be found in the music industry and in how more and more artists (think Radiohead and Madonna, or pioneering podcast artists Jonathan Coulton and Brother Love) are eschewing traditional record labels (which rarely result in actual profits for artists) and exploring nontraditional arrangements with independent labels, embracing rather than running from file sharing, and attempting to actively speak to a niche audience of highly engaged people rather than painting broad musical strokes for a large audience with only moderate interest. Contrary to RIAA opinion, fans really do want to see their favorite artists succeed and will gladly plunk down their hard-earned cash for live events, merchandise, and physical copies of the tracks that they could easily download for free. It is not uncommon for a fan of an independent artist to not only pay for a ticket but also come home with $50 worth of T-shirts, albums, and other merchandise, knowing that this money is going to the artist rather than some major label bureaucracy.

____________

The ideal arrangement for an independent publisher, and one that I envision becoming much more common in the future, is to form a loose association of like-minded content creators that work together to build an audience and market themselves. This is what we’re doing with Inside the Arts, and it really is a great model. By keeping one’s own editorial authority but becoming part of a community of like-minded content creators, one ends up creating a new type of organization quite different from traditional television, radio, or print media models. This new media (I’ve been trying to avoid that phrase in this post, having used it so frequently in recent weeks that one could make a drinking game out of it) model allows for a destination site that aggregates these independent voices together.

Using RSS to mix your own news channel with Google Reader, radio station with iTunes, or social melting pot with Twitter.com or Facebook.com is one of the most powerful tools that users have available to them now. Instead of picking up the Chicago Tribune (or any local paper) and digesting their precooked menu of content creators, people now have the option to pull all their favorite content creators together and mix them up into their own personal interactive newspaper. Heck, there are even services out here that lay out these RSS feeds like newspaper columns. Why go to CNN.com when you can subscribe to just the topics that interest you, plus roll it up with some newyorktimes.com content, onion.com content, doublebassblog.org content (of course!), insidethearts.com content, plus some videos from YouTube and topical audio content from podshow.com?

This news dissemination paradigm allows readers to select topical content that highly interests them, and it rewards independent voices by making the as easily incorporated into a reader’s daily news digest as any major media outlet. Though the financial support for independent voices is still a work in progress (though many bloggers are making a living solely from their online writing these days), it will be interesting to see how things shake out 5, 10, or 20 years down the road. I see real power and huge potential in the RSS model, and judging from ever-increasing layoffs from print media outlets, so do the print media outlets. Will organizations like the Tribune Company (owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and many other U.S. newspapers) be able to remain competitive over the coming decades? Will the advertising dollars continue to fund these titans, or will they trickle across the Internet, instead investing in search, blogs, podcasts, and targeted niche content?

This feature contains several references to bloggers that I work with and have been influenced by, like Drew McManus (Adaptistration) and Patty Mitchell (oboeinsight).

International Musician staff writer David Allen writes:

Jason Heath of Locals 8 (Milwaukee, WI) and 10-208 (Chicago, IL) has been a fixture of the online classical community since launching his website, doublebassblog.org, in 2003. In November 2007, he added another online writing venture with the site Arts Addict, hosted by the popular blogging network Inside the Arts (www.insidethearts.com). As readership has grown, so has his playing career.

” I loved writing in college, so I started writing and it started getting popular with other bassists and my classmates,” he says.

” It’s less about me, and more of a community site. For nonmusicians it’s fascinating to get a glimpse of what’s going on behind the scenes.”

Heath launched Arts Addict through Inside the Arts, also home to the popular orchestra management site Adaptistration by Drew McManus. Arts Addict’s subtitle, ” on life as a classical music bottom feeder” comes from, as Heath puts it, ” playing all the low notes and not being the number one player in town—running around, working all the gigs that other people don’t want to do or are too busy to do.” He transmits stories, links, videos, and the occasional bit of breaking news—people starting new jobs and winning auditions.

American Federation of Musicians members can log in to the AFM website below to access the rest of the feature–the online version of International Musician is only available to AFM members:

afm.org/im/2008/february/upbeat/heath-built-a-fan-base-from-the-bottom-up

The complete article is also posted at Inside the Arts through this link:

 insidethearts.com/International_Musician.htm

Though I am of course thrilled to be featured in such a prominent publication, I also think it’s great that the emerging cultural blogging scene is getting this kind of press. I sincerely believe that what people like Patty Mitchell, Drew McManus, Bob Shingleton, Charles Noble, John Grillo, Elaine Fine, Josh Nemith, and many other fine arts bloggers are doing is revolutionary, and I will be very interested to see what changes these new technologies will bring in the near future. These days, individuals can create their own daily digital newspaper, radio show, or video program (I do all three) and reach people across the globe for virtually no cost. Talent, ambition, dedication, and a sincere interest in a niche topic propel motivated individuals into the public eye, the only limiting factors being one’s energy and imagination.

Every few days, I open the Chicago Tribune (my local paper) and read despondently about impending layoffs for reporters and staff. I then flip a few pages and read more bleak news that the Sun Times (the other Chicago daily) is likely to disappear in the very near future. As traditional media publications continue to flounder, young voices of new media are rising to take their place, and I am pleased to be grouped in with this new generation of content creators and disseminators.

I’ve written extensively about these topic here in the past. Some good places to start reading more about traditional versus new media include:

• Top 7 ways that blogs are different from regular websites
• Dynamic Growth Possibilities of Blogging, Podcasting, Social Media, and User-Generated Content
• Differences between old and new media
• Viewing American class divisions through MySpace and Facebook

I firmly believe that new media (blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networking, etc.) is challenging and will continue to challenge all of our assumptions about communication, information dissemination, education, entertainment, and community. These new forms of media tap into the knowledge of the masses and empower individuals to collectively build information architecture that helps everybody. Check out what’s happening at Contrabass Conversations, and just wait until we get another few years of content in our archives. Check out all the current resources at doublebassblog.org, and think about what this project will look like 10 years from now. With new media, one can have a daily double bass online newspaper, double bass radio station, and double bass television channel–things that could simply never happen without these new forms of communication, and with full editorial control to boot! If this can be done for a niche content area like the bass, imagine what can be done for broader topics.

Drew McManus also recently started an excellent new series titled How to Connect With New Media. Drew outlines the new media clearly and concisely, and I highly recommend checking this post out for a primer on the topics I’ve been discussing in the above paragraphs.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“It’s just………..not…..good enough yet!”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past couple of years of blogging, it’s that new media (like blogs and podcasts) requires new attitudes toward content creation and publication. Quickly fading are the days when getting your voice heard meant either slogging it through the ranks of traditional media outfits, fetching coffee and filing papers for years, or else toiling endlessly on your own, churning out print zines, trying to get a slot on a college radio station, or worming your way into the public access television station programming.

Grim as these options were (how many people can even have access to your content under these older systems), they were all that existed for most people prior to the advent of blogging, podcasting, and other forms of social media. Online, the individual now has just as much theoretical access to the public as does the largest news outlet. Even a URL from CNN.com is just that–a single URL, no more or less accessible to anyone with an Internet connection than any URL from www.doublebassblog.org or www.contrabassconversations.com. Under this new system, the quality of one’s content rather than the financial influence of one’s network determines one’s success. While major networks still have an advantage (bigger budgets, more varied distribution channels like newspaper and television), individuals have never had a better opportunity to publish their content to a wide audience.

I generally follow the “good enough–tweak it later” philosophy in my online activities. Put it out, then tweak it to your heart’s content. For so many people, just putting it out there and getting some momentum going is the hardest step of all. Most find (and I have experienced this firsthand) that new media projects take on a life of their own, and the content creator becomes steward, librarian, principal editor, and captain of their own little new media ship.

People will read your blog, and they will get in touch with you. It may take time, but you soon begin to develop a community of like-minded readers, and the knowledge of this community and their expectation of new content can motivate a person to put out more and better content, which leads to more readers….

Plus, just getting started and putting your stuff out there gives you time to practice your craft. Most people are not writers by trade. I know I’m not. But blogging daily gives you regular practice, giving you a chance to hone your craft and find your voice. I know that my writing has improved a lot since I started this blog–not that I was a total doofus writer when I started blogging, but anyone who clicks on the late 2005 or early 2006 archives can find some pretty ham-fisted prose on those past pages.

The same is true of podcasting, video blogging, or any other creative endeavor in which you are content creator and publisher.

Online projects are not created in a vacuum and dumped upon the world. They grow, slowly and organically, piece by piece, gradually creating a deep and powerful body of work. Pretty soon, you’ll find yourself wearing a lot of different hats. I spend my days alternating between creative writer, pseudo-journalist, talk show host, disc jockey, video editor, audio editor, ad pitchman, web developer, and system administrator.

Am I good at all of these jobs? No. But, much like the original writing on the blog, I am getting better and better every day. It’s all about practicing your craft, just like performing music!

Related Posts:

• Dynamic growth possibilities of blogging and podcasting
• Top 7 ways that blogs are different from regular websites
• Lasting impact – double bass projects with John Grillo and Andy Anderson

subscribe to the blog – subscribe to the podcast

CBC podcast Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17621298264

You can find my profile here and add me, or you can find the Contrabass Conversations group here. If you don’t have a Facebook account, just head on over to Facebook.com and sign up. It is a great user experience and a lot of fun.

Related Posts:

• viewing class divisions through Facebook
• CBC 34: Colin Corner interview
• Corner Violin Shop – great example of small business blog
• Dynamic growth possibilities of blogging, podcasting, social media, and user generated content

subscribe to the blog – subscribe to the podcast

It is always surprising to me what benefits and opportunities present themselves from running a blog, and how online activities can morph into real-world activities (and vice versa). I am still amazed at how sitting at a laptop in your kitchen and typing furiously into the wee hours of the morning can give one more credibility than all the hours, days, weeks, months, and years spent practicing prior to that point.

My main goal as a musician has always been to be a valued member of the musical community, and it is continually surprising how opportunities that have always been elusive to me in the past all of a sudden present themselves. I may not have landed that “big job”, but through blogging and podcasting, I have had the opportunity to interact with major musical figures in a manner at least as satisfying as playing in a bass section with them.

I have a few other interesting behind-the-scenes blog developments, and I’ll let readers know more about them in the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, check out the following essays if you want to know more about my thoughts on how technologies such as blogging and podcasting can benefit organizations:

• Dynamic Growth Possibilities of Blogging, Podcasting, Social Media, and User Generated Content
• Top 7 ways that blogs are different from regular websites
• On including user-submitted content in your blog
• Interacting with your blog audience
• Ideas for developing and promoting blog content

To me it is a no-brainer—there are exponentially more possibilities available to the double bassist using the digital toolboxes provided with blogging and podcasting systems than there have ever been in traditional print and audio distribution. Here are some reasons why:

Ability to communicate globally—quickly!

Even the most prestigious double bass print journals (Double Bassist, Bass World) only come out a few times a year. There simply isn’t the market to sustain a more frequently distributed print journal/magazine…. in traditional media, that is. That is why I believe that blogging will eventually beat up and take the lunch money of print media in just about all niche markets. The economics don’t make sense for niche producers under old models of content production. Print costs cash, and the size of the publication and frequency of distribution are severely curtailed by this reality. High production costs require a lot of advertising supported revenue, which tends to make the content within bland and mass-market oriented. Like fast food, print content seeking to reach people on a daily or weekly basis must cater to the lowest common denominator to ensure enough advertising and purchase revenue to support production costs.

Niche content can never generate the requisite advertising base needed to enable widespread distribution on anything more than a monthly basis. Print content producers run into a ceiling on distribution frequency. There can’t be a 25 page newspaper about, for instance, skateboarding that is distributed to every household in the world every single day. The numbers don’t add up. It can’t happen in print. And if it can’t happen with skateboarding, do you think it could ever happen with double bass?

Nope.

But it can online….

Lower Barriers to User Participation

Think about it—Bass World comes out once every four months. I make four double bass posts a day on my blog. If you want to submit to Bass World, you must:

1. Compose and print up an article
2. Type up a cover letter
3. Mail these items to the ISB World Office (paying for postage, etc.)
4. At best, wait many months to even hear about the possibility of your item being published

Even if it is published, how many people read it? Let’s be honest. How many people actually read every article and submission in every Bass World? I don’t, and look at what kind of a bass geek I am!

Also, when (or even if) your submission is published, that’s it. It goes on the shelves or (gulp!) in the trash of bass players, with a low probability of being easily referenced.

Submit something to my blog, and it goes up the next day or two. You get credited, and any links to your website, e-mail, school, a biography, or any other such information is included. As of this writing, thousands of people read the blog each week, and that number keeps going up and up. Your content will be read by the bass blog community.

Submitting is quick and painless (an e-mail with a link, something you composed in Word, an audio track, etc.), and your work lives online forever. Due to good Google juice for my blog (and that is thanks to the great submissions I keep getting), when people search for the subject you wrote about (bows, fingerboards, bass strings, repertoire), your submission comes up.

The same is true for any popular website featuring a niche topic. This type of system allows the masses (and not a publisher) to determine the merit of submissions. Popular submissions get links from other websites, get e-mailed around, and float up even higher in the search rankings. We all collectively determine the merit of submissions.

Also, there is no size limit or page limit that I need to worry about when putting up submissions. That is one of the cool things about blogging! The blogging engine neatly files away all old content but allows instant access to this content. This is not a luxury that print publications have! Bass World needs to limit itself to 100 pages every four months (with much of it taken up by advertising). I can put up 100 pages of content every day if I like, and the blogging engine handles it with ease.

I am not ripping on Bass World. I have been an International Society of Bassists member for 16 years. I have old journals stacked up on shelves all over my music studio (I do NOT throw them away!). When I was an undergraduate at Northwestern University I used to park myself for hours in the music library, poring over journals from the 1980s, checking out all of the old Different Strokes columns and taking notes on the various possibilities presented.

The same scenario is true for any magazine or journal, even mainstream publications like Time and Newsweek. As a long-time subscriber to Time Magazine, I have definitely noticed ever-greater references to Time.com within the print magazine. The print magazine almost serves as the tip of the iceberg to a whole world of online content through Time.com. The same is true for the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, CNN, NBC, and any other mainstream media publication or news service. It’s all moving online. Print—even daily newspapers – becomes more archaic with each passing day.

I happen to be a person who enjoys print media. I subscribe to newspapers and magazines, and I like reading novels. I read print media all the time, and in many ways I prefer sitting down with a crisp newspaper to clicking around in my web browser.

But that’s the way things are headed. And we niche-content aficionados can take a cue from our big-media brethren. The possibilities on the page are limited. Four corners stapled together, delivered by mail or bought on the newsstand, printed and mailed at a substantial cost to a select number of subscribers. Compare this model to the infinite connections across all cities, countries, and continents that the internet provides, information zipping back and forth at incomprehensible speed. A blog entry can include video, music, interviews, text, photos, and links to other information. Try doing that with a page of text in a magazine!

I love knowledge and I love information, and more than anything I love easy access to information. THAT is one of the things that propels me to maintain and grow this blog, and it is the reason why I started the Contrabass Conversations podcast. When we come together as a community, whether it be a bass convention, recital, or even us all over the world sitting down with the latest copy of Bass World, we all learn, grow and become better musicians in the process. But Bass World only comes out once every four months. Conventions only happen once every two years. Bass recitals happen in disparate locations all over the world. We need to bring this material together as a community, because we all learn from each other. The tools are out there to do just this, and that is what I am trying to do with this blog and with Contrabass Conversations.

Bringing performances, interviews, downloads, educational resources, and daily news into one place with access barriers is the wave of the future, and we bass players have all the tools at our disposal to create and grow just such a community. Future generations will witness the democratization of content. Rather than accepting one content producer’s information blindly (whether it be NBC, the New York Times, or any other news source), we help to create content and let the greater community of users decide its virtue. The social news site Digg.com is a prime example of such a community, and I am trying to do the same thing (albeit on a much humbler scale) with the bass community here on this blog.

Building a Body of Work

My goal with the Contrabass Conversations is both a lofty and multi-faceted one. I am trying to entertain and educate with this podcast (much like the blog), and I am trying to serve as a conduit for the exchange of information between bass players rather than the creator of said content (also like the blog). Actually, the podcast features much less of me than the blog does. I serve as producer (putting the shows together, interviewing guests, making musical selections) and host, but I am trying to feature the music and perspectives of others.

I am definitely trying to entertain with these shows, but I think that they serve a greater purpose. Interviewing such musical luminaries as Lawrence Hurst, Francois Rabbath, and all of the other talented and fascinating guests I have had on the show helps to create an online archive of double bassist interviews. See, these files live online forever. The show is thus both a weekly event and an archive for future research. As the weeks, months, and years progress for Contrabass Conversations, that archive will grow and become ever-richer. I wish that I could tell people all of the guests that I have either solidly or tentatively lined up for the show. I’ve got big plans for the show, and they will only get bigger. The show is still in its infancy, and look at the guests we’ve already had! Six months ago there WAS no Contrabass Conversation, and six months from now I guarantee that you will be amazed at what’s going on with the show.

Think about it—we’re on episode 20 right now. A year from now we’ll be on episode 72. Five years from now we’ll be at 380 episodes. And it will just keep growing from there. Think how many double bass performances will be in the archive at episode 380! Think about how many bassists from all walks of musical life will have been interviewed! In all likelihood, there will be more footage in the Contrabass Conversations archive than on all commercially released double bass albums combined.

And you can be involved! Want a piece of yours played? Send it to me, and I’ll work it in to the show. Want to ask a question or make a comment? Call it in at 206-666-6509 or e-mail contrabassconversations@gmail.com and you’ll become a part of the show (and the archive). Want your recital broadcast on the show? Send it to me and it will go up. Bassists generations from now will be tuning it to hear you play.

This show will ultimately serve to help guide and educate future generations of double bassists and serve as a great tool for research. From any continent, country, city, or town in the world, double bassists will have instant, easy, free access to any of the content in the show archive. The thoughts, ideas, and performances of these great musicians are thereby preserved and always accessible.

And, unless I get run over by a bus, you can expect these shows to continue far into the future. Why? Easy—the barriers to production and the costs of production are so low. Also, by involving others in the creation and production, I ensure that this is not just the ‘Jason Heath Show’ and is something that others can continue even if that big bus DID come and run me over.

Knitting the Bass Community Closer Together

Blogging and podcasting bring us all together all of the time. You can get DAILY bass news as well as have a venue to easily publish any of your own bass news and content. You can hear recitals and interviews from bassists all over the world. You can submit your own recordings and share them with the entire community. You can comment and share on any post or recital, and these comments are instantly published and read by thousands of people each week.

And, best of all, it doesn’t matter whether you live in Siberia, Bangladesh, or North Dakota—as long as you can get on the internet (and that gets easier for more people each year), you can participate in the community.

Podcasting takes that interactivity and kicks it up a notch. My double bass podcast Contrabass Conversations is a show just like any traditional radio and television broadcast, only it is accessible at any time from any location in the world at no cost.

Podcasts have another advantage over traditional radio and television broadcasts: all old content is archived and accessible at any time for no charge. When a radio or television broadcast is off the air, that’s it. It is unlikely to be heard again unless it is rebroadcast at another time. Any podcast can be accessed at any time. That’s powerful.

And, like blogs, podcasts can be produced and published on a very modest budget. This low barrier to entry permits more risk-taking, more creativity, and more possibilities for content creators exploring a niche subject (like, ahem… double bass).

Getting a radio or television show produced about the double bass is virtually impossible using traditional media, and even if it were, insurmountable barriers would prevent one from getting this content syndicated worldwide.

But guess what? Contrabass Conversations is a show about the double bass, and it is created weekly and syndicated worldwide! Impossible with traditional media, but easily achievable with podcasting.

Finally, there is no producer hovering over me, shaping my content. I can do whatever I want. Don’t like it? Oh, well. I don’t have to modify it for anyone. I am in charge.

In reality, I am always listening to the audience and constantly modifying the show to make it better. I am totally receptive to ideas from the audience, and I seek their engagement every chance I get. But I’m making a point—when it’s your content, you have much more flexibility. I don’t need to “check with someone” to put out a show about topic x. I just do it. That is very powerful, and being able to create such a show that is also syndicated worldwide is a new and interesting development that new media brings to the table.

____________

By keeping production costs low, blogs and podcasts have the luxury of creating content that is not interesting to the masses, but it highly interesting to a select slice of the population. This is significant. The wider a net one tries to cast, the more content needs to be watered down for the widest possible appeal. When Tide detergent wants to run a commercial in traditional media, they’re looking for advertising opportunities that reach the most eyeballs possible. The dumbing down of content necessary to assure those big numbers inevitably produces content that is somewhat interesting to a lot of people. The more specific and niche a topic, the harder it is to attract advertisers. High production costs and lower advertising revenue make regular production of niche topic programming quite prohibitive in a traditional media environment.

Blogs and podcasts provide another path to audience engagement. Costs are low. Expenses can be recouped more easily. An audience of thousands that is highly engaged can ultimately be just as appealing for advertisers as is a larger but only modestly engaged audience.

Even producing a journal for a few thousand members costs a fair amount of cash, and this cash must be recouped through membership fees. This cost also limits the number of publications possible each year. The nature of digital distribution and the low cost of blogging and podcasting allow for daily content with no membership fees, subscription requirements, or any other such barriers to entry. The purchase of supplemental materials (sheet music, T-shirts, calendars, etc.) and advertising revenue can ensure a profit for the content creator, and the social nature of such distribution methods encourages more audience and reader participation and, ultimately, a more satisfying and engaging experience.

I would love to hear reader’s thoughts on the impact of technology in the world of the double bass as well as music in general. I think that we are entering an exciting era for music, and adaptability to new circumstances is paramount for us to move forward in this new media environment.