Freakonomics “Blegs”; tells the story of the mp3 generation of music listeners
The New York Times “Freakonomics” section has started to run a daily post they call “Our Daily Bleg.” It’s essentially a really messy open response survey that poses a very general question and lets the comments run rampant. While I consider the name “Blegs” a disaster, the idea actually makes for a decent social experiment and leverages the NYTimes traffic in a good way.
Yesterday (June 27, 2008) the Daily Bleg was “What are the greatest lyrics of the 21st Century.” In the time between 2:26pm and 5:33pm there were 473 moderated comments. That’s 2.6 comments a minute; I suspect the moderator got fed up and left for the day. While the volume of contributions is impressive, the most astouding aspect by far was the total lack of consensus on the “greatest” lyrics for the years 2000-2008.
The artists and lyrics are at all ends of the spectrum and range from: Eminem to The Hold Steady to Fallout Boy to Wilco to Dead Prez to Amy Winehouse. The variety of the submissions reveals that the only unifying characteristic of the core audience of the 2000-2008 era of music listeners is diversity. The innocent Freakonomics “Bleg” revealed that the decreased costs of producing new music coupled with the ease of finding and obtaining new music has had a very distinct impact on the way the MP3 generation listens to music. Being an audiophile in some regard, owning hundreds albums and thousands of songs is quickly becoming the rule, rather than the exception.
[I thought this video representation of Girl Talk's In Step from Feed The Animals would demonstrate James' idea that knowing musical history and imbibing music from all genres and eras is the rule rather than the exception. Also, Girl Talk highlights the importance of distribution and technology in our generation. Plus, it's really fun. -- Aaron]
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