The Internet and the ability to reach anyone was supposed to democratize everything, but instead drowned us all with infinite choices. Back in the day, before the Internet, good bands (that weren't pushed down from major labels) got started by building local followings, and that's what I think bands need to get back to. Local fans can come to shows and provide a viable revenue stream for small bands. Problem is there's not a lot of online services that support this model…I think there's real opportunity here.

Just signed up for Tweekly.fm, I was using http://lastfmlovetweet.com/ for a while, and another service (don't remember the name) that sends Weekly Top 5 from Last.fm to Tumblr. Will give it a shot.

Twitter for sharing to me is useful in two ways:

1) When songs can be compared, it is particularly useful. As with my Tweekly.fm, the top 3 artists are usually shared. Many times I've found that I've listened to 2 of the 3 artists someone shared, but not the third, which has me going to last.fm to listen.

2) People are sometimes more interested in just sharing instead of discovering. They want to say, “hey look. I'm listening to this band.” It's more a way of showcasing and defining yourself. You might get a tweet or two saying, “nice taste in music!”, which reinforces that desire.

I've read your blogpost on music discovery. Very interesting and things I've pondered too. As music is becoming ubiquitous and the record labels start losing, artists are moving away from relying on record sales. They'd rather want their songs free and have people come to their shows. In that case, although music is global, it is still inherently local. Most artists can't afford to fly everywhere and share their local music. There is still a gap for that somewhere.