New Post on LMB – Live Music 2.0: Concerts and the Social Web

Just last week, I finally posted a column over at Live Music Blog that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. It’s really just an introduction to a topic/concept, but I am really excited about where this one is going:

Live Music 2.0: Concerts and the Social Web

Here’s a brief intro:

Over the past few years, as this whole web 2.0 thing has really grown and progressed, we’ve seen a number of new sites launch that are specifically geared towards live music fans on the web. In a sense, all of them exist to help fans track and follow their favorite touring bands/artists in a variety of ways, but with a focus on their live shows rather than their studio output (which is amply covered by a slew of Music 2.0 sites and services).

While a lot of these sites have not yet emerged into the larger music business landscape, there’s no doubt in my mind that web technologies in general will continue to affect and disrupt the live music space, as they’ve already been doing quite drastically with the recording industry. Back when I was able to dedicate more of my free time to Live Music Blog, I was really interested in exploring this space in depth. Although we have occasionally posted about some of these sites — mentioning iLike.com and ShowClix or talking up the latest feature from JamBase — we’ve never really focused on them directly as a key topic. We’d like to change that. Since we are a site dedicated to live music, it only makes sense to look at the related web services and sites that serve all of US as a community of fans. I’d like to finally re-visit my original idea and dig a bit deeper into all the sites and services that form what we call “Live Music 2.0.”

More (and much more to follow) over at Live Music Blog.

New Live Music Blog Podcast: Best of Phish Summer ‘09 Improv

Phish @ Comcast in Hartford, CT 8/14/09 - 8

I finally made my triumphant return to Live Music Blog, after a fairly long hiatus due to all our moving chaos earlier this summer. Since I was lucky enough to catch a few Phish shows this summer, I decided to collect what I thought were the best improvisational segments from all of their summer shows. I mixed them all together DJ-style, and we just posted the mix as our latest podcast on LMB:

Podcast #065 | Best of Phish Summer ‘09 Improv

I’ve had various friends comment on my mixes, suggesting that they’re great workout and/or study music (since a lot of these are similar “improv-only” mixes of all instrumentals). So even if you’re not a Phish fan, you might like this for studying if you find music with vocals distracting. Of course, if you are a Phish fan, I think it goes without saying that you’ll dig the mix.

This is our 65th podcast, so there are obviously a bunch of others in the archives. Check ’em out here: Live Music Blog Podcasts.

Enjoy!