Call it F8; Music & Facebook
I would like to thank the 'Hoodied One' for calling attention to what I've felt to the core for a long time. Music is an absolutely vital, indispensable part of most folks' lives. That Mr. Zuckerberg and company would spend that much time on how music is inherently social at their developers conference certainly validates that.
I think this is big on two levels. One, it brings "radio" from the background to the foreground. Radio has always been comfortable in the background from both a terrestrial and online context. It's your favorite thing to do while you're doing something else. While you drive, radio plays. While you're banging away on the keyboard, (online) radio plays. It's a faithful companion, if not a "look-at-me" star. That's why they make chocolate and vanilla.
Now it's right there front and center in your "timeline." It's in-sight and in-mind, rather than its historic opposite. Love it.
The second big win is it will significantly advance the conversation on what "radio" actually is today. I think that debate is very much on the table. Online music services are about choice, control and customization and offline radio stations are about real time, here and now. Let the debate ensue. Does radio have to be consumed communally, simultaneously, and without listener input? Can it be time-shifted, two-way, and free of "personalities"? Is it exclusively audio or is it more galactic with pictures, movies, games, lyrics…orbiting around an audio sun?
Maybe it's just whatever each individual determines it is or whatever the need state dictates.
I think there is something very cool and rare about campfire moments where friends and friends of friends huddle around a piece of great content at the same time. Equally, I think it's oh-so-cool when a track gets passed around the globe sequentially like worldwide dominoes where you're listening and then passing it along through your social graph to the uninitiated. Being the curator and distributor of 'cool' will always be an exalted, aspired-to position in society. I like how radio enables both.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati