There’s a new program called Mojo that’s currently bankrupting the music industry. Mojo allows a user to connect to the iTunes library of any other Mojo user close by in a wireless network and take music at will. (Regular network iTunes connections allow you to listen to others’ music, but you can’t put it into your own library.) Or, if you know someone else’s username, you can take their music from anywhere in the world, as long as they are connected to the Internet. You can sit in the library or a big lecture hall, open up Mojo, learn about the musical tastes of about 10-15 people, and steal the entire library of any of them. As you could imagine, a person could amass a huge collection of music this way, without ever paying for it.
What else is new? All sorts of new technologies allow you to acquire music without paying a cent. But are there any benefits, and how is Mojo different?
Most people I know who use Mojo end up finding favorite users to take music from (it lists users’ real names), and often these are people they have not met. If they do know these people, they will usually engage them in a discussion about their music. Hey, I saw your library on Mojo – good taste. Any more recommendations?
Most new technologies for music acquisition are contributing to the phenomenon of music as an increasingly solitary experience. Gone of the days of going to a record store, where the employees know you and your tastes and make recommendations, then ring you up and wish you a nice day when you leave. Humans are removed from most of the process of online music acquisition. Maybe somebody gives you the initial recommendation, but then you go on your computer, search for a torrent, download it, and achieve your goal with no more human interaction.
Mojo can facilitate an engagement with the musical tastes of others, and importantly, these others are either people you know or more commonly are people in your immediate vicinity. Mojo creates a micro-community of users sharing their musical tastes with each other, and the opportunity for real human interaction is there.
On another note, I initially wanted to write about how technology offers new methods of musical creation, but I see that that topic has already been covered. However, I still want to show you guys something. This guy is called That 1 Guy, and I saw him for the first time at a music festival in the middle of the Everglades; 10,000 people were freaking out to this goat-looking guy in a top hat manipulating a giant pipe with steam coming out of the top; every once in a while he would take off his shoe and play it. It was the best concert I’ve ever seen. He is a classically trained bassist who invented a machine that he calls the Magic Pipe; it is rigged with every type of technology possible. What’s more, the music that he makes with it is actually great! Watch these videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8DdKQCgUq4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCN7k3-PUss&feature=related
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