As week one progressed, it became clear how the different way one apprehends music online is likely to change the nature of music making. If the long-playing record brought about a culture in which musicians aspire to the full-length album as their ultimate creative expression, then the Internet promises to return us to a world in which the song stands alone. As a result, the process of promoting music will change.
I also discovered new music through the simplest way of listening to music online: streaming radio, which involved simply heading to a site like www.shoutcast.com or the home page of a favorite radio station and listening to the live broadcast.
At www.billboard.com, I checked in on the hits by listening to a top-40 countdown; at www.drugmusic.com, I drifted off to sleep to a program of droning psychedelic rock; at phusion.fromdj.com, I received my hip-hop fix with DJ mix tapes; and at www.radioparadise.com, a personal favorite, I spent hours listening to the type of music that regularly makes critics' top-10 lists (from artists like Radiohead, Nick Drake, Bjork, Randy Newman and Lucinda Williams).
More importantly, listening to these music streams was a way to nationalize local radio and catch up with some favorite college stations, like WFMU-FM in East Orange, New Jersey, for independent, hard-to-find new music; WNUR-FM in Evanston, Illinois, a station I grew up with; and CKUT-FM in Montreal, one of the best places to hear experimental radio plays and sound art. And, in a nice change from most home radio reception, all these small-wattage stations were received with a clear signal.
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