A few months ago, Jimmy Guterman at O'Reilly Radar was talking about how REM's open source approach to music release, and how it's going to be difficult, if not impossible for them to compete with today's much different popular sound:
Having emerged from the early-'80s Amerindie movement, an assemblage of rock'n'roll bands with a combination of optimism and hardheadedness that mirrored the very best of the open source movement, R.E.M. knows it can't compete with what's at the top of the charts. It's unlikely that fans of the current flavors -- Miley Cyrus, Flo Rida, or T-Pain -- will be moved by R.E.M.'s music.
The pop and hip-hop communities of artists are just as quickly wising up to modern social media trends as the aging rockers of old, though, and they are all ending up competing on similar playing fields.
Interestingly enough several of the very same public figures have since had very public forays into social media and Internet promotion. Of course Miley Cyrus has been marketing herself on social networks, though not exactly in the ways her handlers would have her do, but T-Pain has taken cues from the Radioheads and REMs and smartly used the broad and diverse platform of the Internet as a promotional vehicle for music distribution.
Today, the number one hit selling artist announced the creation of Nappy Boy Digital, and independent record label for distributing music primarily via the Web. They don't plan to discriminate, either, with relationships with every major online distributorship either in place or in the works at launch.
"My life and career so far has been about breaking barriers and this label allows me to continue that by delivering hit songs in real time, no red tape, just good music," said T-Pain. "You'll hear us in the clubs and on radio too, but you can discover our tracks where people spend most of their time, online. I'm very proud to be out front on an idea like this."