Obviously one thing that recorded music is not lacking is scarcity—fire up Spotify, head to Google and append ‘+ mediafire’ to your query, and you’ll find what you’re looking for and a lot of things that you probably weren’t. But the illusion of scarcity remains crucial to those sorts of people who think about ‘coolness’ in a high-school way.
What to do in the era where buying Japanese import CDs or seven-inches on microlabels from the UK doesn’t have the same crate-digging cachet that it once did? Enter the ‘secret show,’ a type of pseudo-event set up by PR agencies and sponsored by brands looking to flavor their public profile with some subcultural edge. There are at least three or four of these sorts of events every night in New York City, which serves as the home to so many (too many?) self-styled tastemakers who are more than willing to hold each night of their life up as content, or at least fill a blog-posting quota with news of new artists on the horizon. Invite these people to an event (preferably where the free alcohol flows) and voila, you’ve manufactured a scarce resource—namely, being there. Those people who weren’t invited are therefore being forced to think that the person performing is interesting for some reason, because why would there be so much coverage? Isn’t this ‘the news’?
Well, sure, although my use of the term ‘pseudo-event’ up top was pretty deliberate: It’s a term used to describe an event designed not to be enjoyed but to be disseminated, whether through news stories or publicity photos or, now, breathless blog posts and tweets.
Maura. (via marathonpacks)
amazing. and so very true.
(via cantwaittogethome)(via cantwaittogethome)
