First I’d like to thank Becky Claw­son for invit­ing me to speak on the Music 2.0 pan­el this past Sat­ur­day. I hope it was as eye-open­ing an expe­ri­ence for my fel­low pan­elists as it was for me. See, I find many “Web 2.0” appli­ca­tions an inte­gral part of my dai­ly life, but I under­stand that this isn’t the case for most peo­ple. For me, the biggest prob­lem with how we talk about the Inter­net is how it’s treat­ed as some­thing every­one feels com­fort­able using. I think yes­ter­day’s pan­el showed us how it isn’t, and served as a refresh­ing reminder for why peo­ple in and around the music indus­try need to keep think­ing crit­i­cal­ly about how the Inter­net might best serve artists and indus­try pro­fes­sion­als alike.

I’d hoped to offer a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism yes­ter­day. I want­ed to talk about how for many web­sites, music is more of a lia­bil­i­ty than an asset. I want­ed to spar with fel­low pan­elist and friend Mark Schon­eveld. I want­ed to talk about pira­cy. I want­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk about Face­book and why it’s inter­est­ing to me that it makes no direct music play, or how count­less “Music 2.0” start-ups are exploit­ing music con­tent with­out any inter­est — much less abil­i­ty — to con­vert that excite­ment into rev­enue streams for the artists whose work sup­ports them. Unfor­tu­nate­ly this oppor­tu­ni­ty did­n’t present itself, and instead we pan­elists found our­selves try­ing to offer advice to an audi­ence eager to use the Inter­net to pro­mote them­selves and their work.

I feel that I was­n’t able to suf­fi­cient­ly express my qualms with “Music 2.0,” some­thing that was brought to my atten­tion by tweet­ed com­ments from anoth­er pan­elist, Maria Scia­r­ri­no. Ear­ly in the pan­el I stressed that artists should­n’t con­cen­trate on a web strat­e­gy at the expense of doing the things they’ve always done to pro­mote them­selves; that the Inter­net isn’t so much of a rad­i­cal break with his­to­ry as pun­dits and entre­pre­neurs might like you to believe; that peo­ple still learn about music in much the same way as they always have and the Inter­net is just an exten­sion of that. Do indie artists need to take the Inter­net seri­ous­ly? Sure, but it should’t replace tra­di­tion­al modes of promotion.

With that in mind, I’ve been read­ing Idol­a­tor’s Web 2.no posts very close­ly and tak­ing them to heart. Those posts high­light some of the more ill-con­ceived pro­mo­tion­al ideas in the music indus­try. They make you won­der. In the ten years since Nap­ster rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way we think about music as a prod­uct, we have yet to see a strat­e­gy that can con­vince peo­ple that record­ed music is some­thing worth buy­ing. Where’s that mon­ey going? It’s going to the peo­ple who cre­ate sites like Hype Machine, Last.fm, Stereogum.com, and oth­ers like them. The volatil­i­ty sur­round­ing the music indus­try must be very attrac­tive to entre­pre­neurs, the sort of thinkers who see risk and antic­i­pate reward. But where is it?

My real advice for any­one inter­est­ed in being a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful musi­cian to the extent that’s pos­si­ble in 2008? Don’t wor­ry about sign­ing a deal and spend that mon­ey on a great pub­li­cist who is savvy about the web. Then make them promise to nev­er ever stream your album for free; it’s like wav­ing a red cape in front of folks who’re bored and look­ing for some­thing that leaked. (I’m look­ing direct­ly at Pitch­fork pari­ahs the Black Kids.)

I took some time yes­ter­day to read reviews of Beck­’s Mod­ern Guilt yes­ter­day and was dis­pleased with what I saw. Do I think it’s his great­est album? Nope. Do I think it holds up pret­ty well against his most recent mate­r­i­al? Absolute­ly. In fact, I think it’s the most under­rat­ed album of the year. Could it be 2008’s Sky Blue Sky, which no one admit­ted they liked until the year-end polls were announced? Maybe.

You can read my thoughts over at Blind­ed by the Hype. As you read it, ask your­self who’s tried to do what Beck­’s done at that lev­el for more than a decade. Here’s a hint: Chris Cor­nell isn’t an accept­able answer.

I’m going to be on a Music 2.0 pan­el on Sat­ur­day at Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty. You can get the details here. You may wit­ness some unin­ten­tion­al hilar­i­ty as I talk about the Web 2.0 worm­hole and how it’s not rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the music indus­try, just frag­ment­ing it some more. Can you believe it’s been ten years since Nap­ster hit the scene? I think some of my col­lege class­mates still mourn the loss of Audiogalaxy.

As an added bonus, my smart Web 2.0 bud­dy Mark will be sit­ting on the pan­el with me as well. He’ll be talk­ing about his YVYNYL project, which is pret­ty neat.

I know you’re prob­a­bly com­plete­ly under­whelmed by Twit­ter and its tech­ni­cal glitch­es, so maybe it’s time to con­sid­er using Friend­Feed. At first it’s prob­a­bly a lit­tle too much Web 2.0 to process, but if you give it a chance you’ll find your­self spend­ing way less time pok­ing around the web to see what your friends are up to, whether they’re post­ing pho­tos to Flickr, updat­ing their blog, or tweet­ing. It’s one of the most con­ve­nient ways to stay con­nect­ed with friends on the web and with a few tweaks could be an out­stand­ing social media plat­form. It’s a great way to con­dense all the social media you keep get­ting invit­ed to join into one help­ful location.

If you’re afraid you won’t know any­one on Friend­Feed, you should sign up and add me!

How can Net­flix pos­si­bly squan­der its rich oppor­tu­ni­ties to exploit its inher­ent­ly social fea­tures? When I got notice that user pro­files would be abol­ished effec­tive Sep­tem­ber 1st, I was aghast. Why would any site elim­i­nate such a use­ful tool for its users as they try to avail them­selves of the vast con­tent offer­ing in an orga­nized man­ner? As some­one who was on the front­lines of the video rental bat­tle, this news came as noth­ing but a shock.

So while I’m still scratch­ing my head over this asi­nine deci­sion, so you can only imag­ine how delight­ed I was to read yes­ter­day that even not­ed tech colum­nist David Pogue could­n’t squeeze an answer out of them. I hold out hope that Net­flix will see the error of its ways and seek to cor­rect their decision.