By David Chaitt - SoundCtrl board member
Historically speaking, a publication like Rolling Stone published editorial content by filtering through the solicited music that came their way via record labels. Consumers initially bought the magazine because they trusted Rolling Stone’s taste, tone, and ability to filter. Consumers continue to buy the magazine to make a point that they value physical magazines even as the Internet makes them debatably irrelevant.
There’s no denying that the Internet has presented a major curve ball to traditional media/publishing. It democratizes content creation to the point where people can be both a content creator and consumer. The Internet also brings to light certain styles of music and artists previously ignored by the Rolling Stones of the world. ANYONE can give their opinion and gain a following for free or cheap. You don’t need a printing press or a technical degree to tweet a link to a Spotify playlist you created or start a Tumblr blog focusing entirely on South American Metal music.
In order to stay relevant and maintain their revenue, a lot of the major media outlets began to pander to the masses and focus on site impressions as opposed to content substance. They’re not to blame though. This has been a necessary pivot for them in order to maintain mass relevance and to keep the lights on, which is their unfortunate reality.
What’s the next step in this evolution?
Flipboard 2.0 seamlessly blurs the lines even further between creator and consumer while adding in curation. Users can blend online editorial with social media to create visual appealing and easy to create and navigate social magazines.
This helps create an almost non-existent role of content curator in editorial and puts more power in the hands of the consumer. Yes, it’s correct that editors curate what goes in a magazine or on a website. They are the gatekeepers of their publication’s voice. However, Flipboard helps filter through public content and content within their network to create their own personal voice in a different way that Facebook, Twitter, and their blog could never accomplish.
In an ideal world, I can grab an album preview from NPR of The Flaming Lips, a news piece on The Black Crowes and Tedeschi Trucks Band tour, an Instagram photo of my roommate at Jamie Lidell, an amazing HD video of Pat Metheny from the 70′s, and a recent tweet from Questlove about his duo performance with Rahzel. They’ll make sense together because this is an example of content I actually consumed this week. My friends and whoever else would follow my social magazine would understand and appreciate my ability to uniquely curate from the infinite amount of content that is perpetually being created.
Flipboard is making that a reality!
Now it’s up to the consumers to take this power in their own hands and get to curation to help become a content extension of their personality and interests. Alternatively, this could be a resource for artists to collect interesting content they found online to be discovered or connect even more deeply with their fans.
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