There has been talk recently about whether the internet is making the “hit” irrelevant. The manufacturing of the “hit” is associated with the times where major Record Labels had an impressive control over consumer behaviour. It was that elusive formula which guaranteed blockbusters, that formula which enabled their marketing departments to create and predict demand for music to an almost scientific certainty.

However, now the ideology of the hit seems to have lost it power. As the story goes, by the year 2000, a new autonomous realm largely outside the record industries control was beginning to take a toll on the hits effectiveness. This new realm was not based around the “cult of the mainstream”, could not be cracked by mass marketing strategies; this new realm was the internet. The internet is the “hits” worst nightmare. The internet has produced far more choice in what music is available. Consumers became less susceptive to the neatly packaged mass marketed mega bands, now able to exercise more freedom in what music they put on their play list. WIthin the internet developed a whole new culture, one of file sharing, ipods, bloggers, myspace, home recording, user recommendations, net hypes, podcasts…No longer satisfied with the limited music available through the tradition channels, music taste, and the identifying process involved, has become far more diversified. What was once the cult of the mainstream has now fragmented to a dazzling array of subgenres each with their own “micro-hits”. These days, the “top 40” has become irrelevant to the new generation of internet savy music fans, who actively engage with music in diverse ways; the cult of the mainstream has become the cult of the “niche”.

So does this signal the end of the “hit”? Yes, well, kind of…its hard to say. The internet music community is growing steadily, as is the digital download market, which is growing exponentially. For many, the authority of the traditional “hit” seems superfluous compared to the massive amount of choice the internet offers listeners. The “hit” will remain in some sense, but it seems likely that the mechanics helping to produce it will have changed to become more in line with the online environment.

Part of the vision of the brave new music industry is a belief in the power of social networks and communities to spread the word and hype new music, as opposed to the traditional channels favoured by the music industry of old (such as radio and TV). These new channels are far more open and inclusive mediums, available to all artists who put the relevant time into networking with similar minded users, and generally don´t cost a penny. An interesting contrast is that whereas the traditional channels rely on key opinion formers at the top spreading the word and guiding opinion, online channels are often driven from the bottom up by the collective wisdom of people who are part of them. Commercial Radio may pride itself on keeping its ear to the ground and feeling the pulse of the present musical zeitgeist, but this doesn’t really compare to the dynamic opinion forming of dedicated music fans on social networks. Besides, on many radio stations one actually has to pay to get airplay – this is not the case on the internet, even with influential music bloggers and podcasts.

The internet is designed for exploring, and there are many great environments for exploring new music which are available to all artists, not just those with a large marketing budget and a major label behind them. Services like Last.Fm, iLike, MySpace, Imeem, Twitter, You Tube (and many more) provide an invaluable resource to all artists serious about developing a solid fan base, both local and global. Beyond this, there are also a huge number of networks and services driven by music lovers on a local level, organising and promoting concerts and blogging to the world about their local music scene for the sheer joy of it. What is also exciting is that the new generation of listeners will be completely adept at navigating this new autonomous user generated environment, so it looks like the potential of the online music environment is just coming to fruition. The same is new for the new generation of musicians.

The tendency towards cooperation is what separates the cultural animal from the wild one, but it is only in the last decades of technical development that new digital forms of cooperation have begun to erode the boundaries between producer and consumer” writes Magnus Larsson in an article for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

Suddenly there are lots of “prosumers” (a concept discussed in the groundbreaking book wikinomics). The activity of “prosumption” can be seen in the new forms of collaborative and “dynamic” internet enterprises that have begun to overtake their “static” counterparts. Wikipedia has outsourced the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Bloggers outsource CNN and Google maps Mapquest. User generated and essentially cooperative ventures are outclassing centralised domains created not by mass collaboration, but by the cooperation of the comparatively few. Those who consume information are the also the active producers of this very same knowledge, and this essentially collective knowledge is now showing its true potential.

The consequences for social collaborations like the production and enjoyment of music could not be more emancipating. The same developments in information technology which have initiated the above trends are changing the way we can create and enjoy new music. Within music, the distance between those who produce and those who “consume” has also fallen; digital music formats combined with the internet allow us to share our music more easily, and increases in technology allow us to create a good quality recordings from our bedroom.

This is an event which brings music closer to the authentic cultural expression it has always been, and within this new environment music is truly flourishing. With the new forms of collaboration and mass participation we see a window where the “static” gatekeepers of music production and distribution are outclassed by a vibrant and non exclusory celebration of music. This celebration is conducted within a sphere where everyone has the right to an audience, and this audience can exercise a new found power as the determiners of value. With global distribution of music readily available, and effective channels through which it can be promoted more accessible than ever before, music can at last be freed from the structural constraints which has for the last decades been its antithesis. It is nothing less than the digital music revolution.