Victor Keegan provides an astute-as-ever analysis of Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur in the Guardian Technology pages today. Keen’s book has been causing a fair bit of heated debate in the blogosphere as it attempts to assert that the huge overload of user-gen content that’s flooded the web over the past two years has led to “less culture, less reliable news and a chaos of useless information”.

Certainly, in terms of music, there’s a case to be made that the ease of distribution on the web has allowed anyone with a mic and a copy of Garageband to make a track, post it up on Myspace, and add to the deafening noise of amateur music-makers all clamouring for your attention. Indiestore adds something like 1000 new artists a week, and you can be sure that 90% of them aren�t worth your time.

The web 2.0 revolution benefits music fans the most, much more than music makers. As Keegan points out:

“[Keen’s] central thesis - that “the knowledge of the expert, in fact, does trump the collective wisdom of amateurs” - is self-evidently true of specialist areas but is not the case universally. In the field of music there is no reason why peer review - by potential consumers exchanging views about downloads - should not be more effective than the decisions of corporate talent scouts who often miss trends amid the mass of offerings.”

Underground and independent musicians undoubtedly have their work cut out for them when it comes to gaining any kind of attention on the web. You could say this is putting musicians in worse situation than they were before. But the new social network sites, music filter platforms and MP3 blogs are undoubtedly empowering fans in a wholly positive way.

I’m reminded of a quote from the NME�s Krissi Murison last year, commenting sniffily about amateur music blogs and sites like Pitchfork, and their perceived lack of authority compared to that of her own publication (a publication I used to write for, I hasten to add):

“They can be really confusing, and there’s no quality control. If you’re trying to work out what’s good, the NME’s already done the job for you. We’re a filter for everyone.”

It did seem a rather presumptuous comment at the time, and now seems positively anachronistic considering that Pitchfork ranks almost as high as NME.COM in Alexa’s charts, MP3 blogs are more popular than ever thanks to sites like HypeMachine, and Last.fm, Finetune, Pandora and others are all providing innovative ways to find new music suited to your taste.

Colours Run - Tethers (Doghouse Demo)

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