Social Media and Learning

It has really never been easier to teach yourself to play an instrument, or learn how to make your own hip hop beats, or become really good at mastering your own music. That's really scary for a lot of musicians, and in a lot of ways it is making the industry more oversaturated than ever. I think it's also making music more diverse and interesting, even if it comes at the cost of the demise of music as we've known it for the past 70 years.

Any question you might have about music (or anything, really) has probably been answered on a blog or video tutorial. This means that people like me can become knowledgable about music at our own pace, and fueled by our own interest, which is really the best way to learn something. Youtube has become the go to place to get instructional videos on how to play songs, and in my personal experience, it's a great place to learn production tricks. Some vloggers exclusively make videos explaining how to produce music that took professionals years of practice to achieve, all while these techniques become obsolete aesthetically because of overuse. Even so, producers are constantly pushing the envelope when it comes technique, and this has resulted in one of the most vibrant musical cultures that the world has ever seen.

So many perspectives and few opportunities for success mean that musicians are fighting tooth and nail to be the best. While I don't think this is necessarily good for the status quo, I am interested (and terrified) to see how this influx of music will play out.