So where are the future jobs in mobile music content?
Here is a post from one our subscribers Mike Levine.
Mike Levine is an avid follower of music tech trends. From his background studying music technology at NYU, to his years working as Director of Mobile Production at a mobile media content company, his biggest fear has always been to wake up being the last to know about something. As such, he now feels compelled to write about everything in the music tech job market.
He currently works at the 92Y in social networking, editing and event promotions, and is planning on taking his Phd in music media from NYU starting next spring.
So where are the future jobs in mobile music content?
I'm seeing through my crystal ball... the next great wave of music delivery! Gone are the old days when we'd go to our favorite blog, or Piratebay, or Napster, or even download mp3's at all, in order to find out what's hot.
Maybe that was good enough for your grandma, but nowadays all you need is your iPhone to find something new. There's a new trend emerging of downloadable album applications, where an artist will release their music as an app ahead of its physical release, or substitute its app for a physical release altogether.
These album apps include both new and old media content bundled together; such as news feeds, virtual ticket kiosks and exclusive artist photos and video.
But the most exciting part about all this is fan interactivity. The age of twittering makes dead the 'passive listener'. So, with NIN's new album app for instance, you can interact with other fans, and post comments while checking out new songs, all for free. It will also geo-locate you so you can find out how close or far Trent Reznor is from you at that very moment. All this is being developed by the forward-looking Silicon Valley startup Sudjam.(http://www.sudjam.com/)
For more info, there's a great article here from the April issue of Wired:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/04/trent-reznor-wa/
Likewise, Snow Patrol plan on releasing an app that promotes their new record, with lots of interactivity and links to their profiles on both last.fm and Facebook.
Other early entrants to this field include P!nk and Fallout Boy. Even Death Cab for Cutie have their song, "The Sound of Settling', as a track featured on the popular free app version of Tap Tap Revenge.
Although the jury's still out on the success of this latest tech-music integration; with Snow Patrol moving 30,000 of their apps within the first week of its release, it's safe to say we're going to see more releases like this in the months to come.
It's exciting to think about how the record producer's role could potentially be married to the developer's role in putting together a quality album. I'm sure this will be translating to new opportunities in the tech job market in folds.
