Yesterday I chatted with an entrepreneur who is working on a music oriented start-up that combines social networking with the ability to play, share and recommend music. When I saw this post about Goombah over at PSFK and the Wired round-up they linked to about these sites, I asked Chet, Ypulse's contributing editor and big time music fan, if he thought teens were using them.

Chet wrote:

"My feeling is that teens are generally not using them, but I'd like to find out somehow. They seem a bit more positioned towards the 20-30 crowd. Last.fm might get some teens. I just started using iLike, and it's a great service that might break through to teens. I don't think many people are using these though, period.

I've been pushing pretty hard via MySpace to get my friends to use iLike, and only convinced 3 people, and they have pretty much dropped off from using it. I don't really understand this. Maybe these need to be more integrated into something. I think if MySpace came out with something it could really work. They should be expanding the music capabilities.

Personally, I make 70% of music discoveries from blogs, myspace and pitchfork. And 30% from friends and general word of mouth. If I want to listen to something I read about, I search on MySpace."

My sense is that teens are mostly learning about music the same way they always have (and learn about other stuff, too) from their friends - meaning their offline friends who they also communicate with online. They might learn about a new band on MTV2 or in a teen magazine or music magazine as well. But it's really from their friends. And where are their friends? Mostly on MySpace (where almost every band is, too). I think these sites may eventually find success, as Chet said, with the older 20s and up music listening crowd, who also may be more comfortable with purchasing music and the limitations these applications are putting on music to appease the record labels. While teens are downloading illegal music less, I wouldn't say they are all paying for music either.

The other point I wanted to make is that no matter how cool the technology is, it has to serve teens' core needs/values/behaviors. They are not into tech for tech's sake. They are not engineers, they could care less how cool the code is or appreciate your amazing product design (unless its combined with a kick-ass branding campaign like the iPod). It just has to be easy, to work and ideally be something they can integrate into their profiles (on whatever site they're on with all of their friends). It should also be customizable and serve either the function of sharing something or showing something - i.e. identity building). But it doesn't have to elegant.

Update: Ypulse reader Deborah wrote:

"Kids are using YouTube and other video-primary sites to discover new music (and movies, and TV shows) and MySpace provides a contact. People, not just youth, want the "big picture" - how do you look and sound? Records and magazines and radio only give a part of the story. Video sites provide something more accessible, and often times, more personal (home video from an artists, as well as the music video) and that is the grabber.

Then you go to MySpace and ask for an Add.

Music industry folks like to pay attention to critics still - what does Pitchfork or Blender say about an artist? - but media will always be one step behind the market now, with the availability and immediacy of YouTUbe and MySpace.

And the industry, I think and hope, will try to be more proactive in supporting artists that already have an audience rather than spending gazillions of dollars creating (read: forcing) an audience.

Hopefully some day, the likes of Britney Spears will be resigned to pantiless photos on gossip sites, leaving the real music to the real musicians."

Posted by anastasia