The networked digital space offers multiple access points and sharing opportunities. The proliferation of media, affordable mobile technology, and interlinking of internet and mobile, has changed the way we consume news, entertainment, views, literature, music... Almost all media are replaceable, or at least interchangeable and the good thing is most content creators have risen to the opportunity and have made their products available.
No doubt this has changed and shaped the way we think, the way we live. One might find this experience extremely overwhelming. Imagine the utter confusion of a person who went in a coma in the early 90s and woke up in this day and age!!
We read news on mobile over newspaper, sample opinions on Twitter over editorials, watch the latest soap online. This consumer shift has happened in the first decade of this century... Any guesses whats to come!?
The most noticeable change that i see on a daily basis (by the virtue of being in the music playing industry), is the way we consume music. Radio is a audio visual medium. We play popular music. Listeners sing along. We play familiar music. People Hum... whistle. Whatever music we play - listeners visualise.
Yes, you got that right. We WATCH music.
Be it the serene vales of Europe or dames in sarees - music in the last decade has moved from an aural medium to a more audio-VISUAL media. The purists might argue otherwise, but i am convinced that when music is packaged visually, it has a wider recall. The powers-be of Hindi movies have understood this really well - and now the visuals are packaged so properly and bombarded so much, that one cannot escape the perfect world created to put that song in your mind...
You listen to any song for the first time - and you make an image of it in your head. You visualise what the singer so soulfully is trying to put across. You see the video of that song, and then listen to the song on radio - and all you will remember is the visuals 'they' want you to see.
Next time, when you are tuned to the radio, block the images and focus only on the song - the singers voice, the words, the composition, the instrumentation. Let me know if you feel the difference.
No doubt this has changed and shaped the way we think, the way we live. One might find this experience extremely overwhelming. Imagine the utter confusion of a person who went in a coma in the early 90s and woke up in this day and age!!
We read news on mobile over newspaper, sample opinions on Twitter over editorials, watch the latest soap online. This consumer shift has happened in the first decade of this century... Any guesses whats to come!?
The most noticeable change that i see on a daily basis (by the virtue of being in the music playing industry), is the way we consume music. Radio is a audio visual medium. We play popular music. Listeners sing along. We play familiar music. People Hum... whistle. Whatever music we play - listeners visualise.
Yes, you got that right. We WATCH music.
Be it the serene vales of Europe or dames in sarees - music in the last decade has moved from an aural medium to a more audio-VISUAL media. The purists might argue otherwise, but i am convinced that when music is packaged visually, it has a wider recall. The powers-be of Hindi movies have understood this really well - and now the visuals are packaged so properly and bombarded so much, that one cannot escape the perfect world created to put that song in your mind...
You listen to any song for the first time - and you make an image of it in your head. You visualise what the singer so soulfully is trying to put across. You see the video of that song, and then listen to the song on radio - and all you will remember is the visuals 'they' want you to see.
Next time, when you are tuned to the radio, block the images and focus only on the song - the singers voice, the words, the composition, the instrumentation. Let me know if you feel the difference.
Agree Nino, abt the visual aspects of songs, can't hum "Dil ka bhanwar kare pukaar without thinking of endless stpes of Qutubminar", similar for many other melodious songs of yesteryears, and I am not talking abt Naino me sapna kinds 80's songs here!
ReplyDelete