Globalization, Music & Me

As a musician and music lover, globalization has deeply affected the way I discover new music and find new fans for my own projects.

Americans have always consumed music from other parts of the world. Classical music has its roots in western Europe and later eastern and northern Europe. Tchaikovsky, a romantic era composer from Russia has had much success with American audiences. Most Americans are familiar with the Nutcracker suite and many 4th of July celebrations include fireworks set to the 1812 Overture (despite the fact that the piece is about Russia's defeat of the French, not the American war of 1812). Unfortunately, it took many years for Tchaikovsky's music to reach stateside and so, he was never able to truly appreciate his overseas success.

Now however, due to social media such as myspace and Facebook, new artists and bands can reach new fans in a matter of seconds. Taking a quick glance at my ipod, I find as many bands from Europe as I do from the states. The reason for this is because I find out about a lot new music via blogs, both the heavily funded and advertised kind as well as the more underground variety. The bloggers who run these sites are not concerned with nationality, ethnicity or race; they just want to find the best possible music the world has to offer. Consecutive blog posts might cover bands from Norway, The United States, The United Kingdom, Singapore and Brazil.

For my own musical endeavors, I can see that the trend of globalization has done wonders for speading my bands' music. For one of my bands, about a quarter of the fans we have made through facebook have been from Eastern Europe. for my other band, many of our fans are from Central and South America. Neither of these projects has been signed by a proper record label, but thanks to the world wide web we don't need one to reach international fandom.