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June 21, 2007

3:30 p.m.

Steve Tepper is up to talk about how young people use technology to discover art that is important to them. Is the technology we're using today just a fad, here for good, or will there be a hybrid form that evolves out of it?

Tepper walks us through a history of technology and the arts since the phonograph. Whew, what timeline.

Today technology means we face unlimited choice. 20 million available tracks, 7 million blogs (blogs talking about those 20 million tracks?). This allows an amazing range of grazing. Tepper's research focuses on how college students are using technology. His stats: most listen to 15 different artists a week, almost half actively looking for new things to try. Social networks and MSM still mean a lot more (80% vs 40%) than technology--radio station listening and friends vs P2P. But there are fewer mavens--i.e. the people we look to to recommend music in our communities--active in the "classical" genre" as compared with other genres. Mavens are more important than the technology. Technology is a tool, not a driving behavior.

How can orchestras position themselves in this social networking world? This is the path to getting into young people's communities. Search through playlists on services like Rhapsody to find them.

When we discover something new, we like to share. People are looking for new things, but they want it to have social currency they can share with each other. The challenge is figuring out how we can do that.

Tepper had lots of great slides and talked very fast. I know I missed a lot of great content. Sorry. Please check out his chapter in the book if it catches your interest.

Posted by msheridan at June 21, 2007 1:33 PM

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