How much do you know about music? I mean, really know about music? People don’t seem to realize we are in the middle of an artistic renaissance spurred on by many factors.
For one thing, the music industry is collapsing around us. This is a good thing, a very good thing. iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody and other websites and companies have brought online distributions into the mainstream and scared the hell out of Universal, Virgin and all the other people that still produce those useless silver disks.
Can you imagine how crazy a band would have to be to try to sell its songs without letting you listen to them on Myspace first or without letting you listen to samples of them on iTunes?
Never before has it been so easy for a musical artist to self-distribute and get his or her name out to the public without having to sign his or her souls over to a huge corporation. On the topic of self-distributing, normally when someone wants to produce an album, they go to a music studio.
In the music studio, the artist is locked into a soundproof room and plays the same song, or parts of the same song, several times. Recording a full album in this way can take months. Then the recordings are taken apart by the sound engineer who often uses his judgment to turn the recordings into something the artist had never intended to produce but must market as their own regardless.
The shocking thing is that people willingly pay for this process in order to make an album.
Now, however, the software required for sound editing can often be found online for free, and even the versions that ask for payment are still far cheaper than multiple recording sessions in a studio. In the modern world, all anyone needs to produce his or herown music is a computer and a microphone. In fact, you don’t even really need the microphone. 
Also, it’s never been easier to educate yourself musically. With the Internet, the entire world of music is quite literally at your fingertips. Regional boundaries fall away when you can easily find musicians from every country under the sun.
Can you name any Japanese Jazz bands? How about Swedish folk singers?
Ever seen any Bollywood music videos? Go look it up — that stuff’s incredible.
Did you know that the French discovered rap?
Did you know that they’re actually pretty good at it?
List three Brazilian DJs. Too late — time’s up. Pass your papers to the front of the classroom and go home to do your research.
Not only can the Internet connect you to a world of music that you’ve never heard of, but it can connect people so that bands can form that have never even met.
One guy in Portland can record the guitar track, their bassist in Calgary writes the rest of the song and they send it to their drummer/singer in India who mixes it and releases it online. This is possible. This is happening.
I haven’t even touched on the ridiculous number of genres and sub-genres that are constantly popping up. Thanks to the Internet, an explosion of musical experimentation is happening as artists gain the opportunity to avoid record labels who like everything to fit into simple, predefined categories.
There is such an abundance of musical diversity in the world, and it is now so easy to find, that no one should still simply be listening to whatever they pick up from the CD rack at Walmart.
Explore the musical landscape a little bit, and it is guaranteed that you’ll find something you like.
Zack Bouis is a junior majoring in psychology. He can be contacted at [email protected].