Yep, More Young People Are Getting Into Vinyl

Here's a fascinating article from the Huffington Post about how Millennials--Generation Y--are getting deeper into their parents' vinyl album collections.

Cleaning my basement the other day turned into a musical archaeological dig. I unearthed a Men at Work vinyl album from when I was 8, a bag of old-school rap cassettes ranging from Fresh Prince to N.W.A. and a flipbook of alt rock-era CDs from Alice in Chains and Beck to Smashing Pumpkins and Tool, each one of which I still know by heart from the first track to the hidden one. (Ask a Gen Xer, they’ll know what I’m talking about.)

Nowadays, most everyone, especially young folks, have ephemeral MP3s scattered across their hard drives and smartphones. Increasingly, they don’t even bother with downloads but simply stream songs via services like Rdio.

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Notice Anything New About Facebook? Probably Not Yet. But It's Coming.

Yesterday, Facebook announced that they were giving the service a facelift, something to (a) make it more uncluttered for users; and (b) make it more friendly to advertisers.

For music fans, one of the most interesting parts of the new design was a tab that gives music its own newsfeed.  This means that you'll soon be able to filter that unmanageable firehose of information in your newsfeed by topic and sender.  

In an oddly retro way, they've divided the newsfeed into sections, just like we've seen with printed newspapers for decades.  You'll soon see tabs for local news, sports, business--and music.

The music feed option will be fantastic for people wanting to keep track of their favourite artists and the music-related people/things they follow.  

Read more about what's coming soon to your Facebook page here.

A Music Teacher Observes How His Students Consume Music

This eye-opener for old people comes via Digital Music News:

I teach guitar to about 34 students. Age range: from 10-early twenties. So that is pretty much the people that you would like to sell (your) music too, right? Pretty much the kinda folks that (we) try to convince to use legal music subscription services.

So what I gotta tell you about them is this:

None of them have an iPod. They all have cell phones with unlimited internet. What do they do with it?  Text, use WhatsApp to text even more and they sure as hell don't use a music subscription service that is legal - even though it doesn't pay a fair rate to the artist - etc.

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Music Software That Opens Up Music to Everyone

Dan Daily used to visit his mother at her daycare centre for disabled children.  He never forgot the people he met.  Later, he started working on a digital music system playable by anyone, including those kids.

He calls is MidiWing.  Dan believes that music is for everyone and that creating it can be helpful for everyone.  This could open up a whole new area of music therapy.  Read more at Gizmag.

ShowScoop: Yelp for Concerts

Yelp is a way to find recommendations on where to eat.  What about an app that will crowdsource an artist's ability to give a good gig?  That's ShowScoop.  Read more here.  The app is free, too.