I am a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, and his words have always resonated with what I try to with music and social media. Well, he recently posted a video blog with the title “Hey Mr DJ”, describing the way that DJs aggregate all the music that is out there and deliver it to you for one particular time of day or mood or party. He then uses the term “DJ” in a broad sense to describe the way that people are always looking for interesting content (not just music, but videos, wine facts, triathlon information, etc), but with the incredible amount that is floating around in 2009, people also need a recommendation system to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Many online streaming sites have various genomes / genius bar devices, but I believe that music fans connect better with real people, hence the rise of the DJ over the last 40 years. I have been a DJ myself for sometime, and believe that I have a knack for choosing records from the millions that are out there from around the world, and playing them to the right people at the right time. As an extension of that, I recommend albums and artists to friends and strangers via my online social networking profiles (such as Twitter or Facebook). Vaynerchuk takes this one step further, and suggests that there is great scope for those who can disseminate any kind of niche information from the web, and provide a place that people with a common interest can easily discover and connect.

This kind of tastemaking is, in essence, what we are doing here at music jobs. We offer not only direct job opportunities, but also select pieces of music industry news, single reviews, festival reports, UK music events, advice on your music career, being an independent artist, band promotion, the future of music, copyright issues, music marketing tips and much more!

The purpose of this post is not only to point out how we are here to help you with your search for that perfect music job, but to also point out that maybe you can do something of similar nature. Maybe you know everything there is to know about 18th Century string music, and so maybe you could make yourself the go-to source, not only creating your own content, but feeding out to other sources and narrating on similar articles across the web. Think about it – find your niche, and run with it! You can even start off by posting some interesting topics in our forums and see how many views they gather!

Here is Gary, with his video…

Gary’s original blog post is here, and if you are into social media and general web inspired banter, then I suggest you watch as many of them as possible!

Aside from our music industry forum and music industry blog, we share a lot more in our Twitter Feed or Facebook Fan Page, so feel free to follow and connect with us on there, for all your music career resources.

Lee Jarvis.

Ok, I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this one, but ride it out with me… Over the last couple of days I have received emails and feeds reminding me to vote in the US Election from people such as MTV, OM Records, and many, many more. In fact, MTV news headlines are dominated by election predictions and results.

What has all this got to do with the changing face of the music industry? Directly… nothing. Indirectly, the thing that has struck me, and that you should really think about too, is that the way that both the political parties and neutral organisations are using the internet and new media to encourage people to vote in incredible numbers. National Geographic have reported that voter turnout could be the highest since 1908!

Yes, the high voting numbers can often be born from times of despair, but I also think that this has something to do with the way that the world communicates today, and how it differs from 8 years ago. A new media marketing success can reach an unbelievable number of consumers, and it often hits a high percentage of young, affluent, responsible US citizens. These are the people who should really be concerned with their vote, and have been missing from previous elections altogether.

Viral videos have been a huge contribution to this, as they can use humour to make their point hit home with great effect.

Wassup 2008

Is viral marketing something that you can tap into for your band promotion / record label / concert venue? I think you should seriously consider the way the world communicates, and how it is evolving. While I do plan to share lot more about the changing music industry over at my personal blog, one guy who really knows what he’s talking about is Bob Baker. Head over to his blog and read a few of his wise words.

Lee.