by Chance Clift

Created on: November 06, 2008

The democratic competition on Internet music sites is defeating the purpose of the Internet as a medium for discovering new music. First of all, these contests are oversaturating the market. People are so bombarded with spambot-powered music profiles, trying to up the band's friend count or daily plays, that listeners just get sick of being annoyed, and avoid internet music altogether. These people would rather discover music from word-of-mouth, the old fashioned way, then from self-serving bands on social networking sites.

Internet music "contests" are too easy to cheat on, and thus bring out the worst in humanity, especially among the already morally questionable musician demographic. Computer nerds are constantly trying to sell bands some generated code to cheat their way into higher play counts, increase fraudelent votes, or otherwise force feed the world wide web with their crappy music. Thus, a band that may have far superior music may lose a contest because they didn't, in essence, cheat. It's the worst case of voter fraud in internet history, and it happens every day, unquestioned.

In an ideal situation, a band uploads some songs, and a mass audience objectively votes on who is legitimately their favorite. This is generally what happens on shows like American Idol. But with relatively obscure internet music competitions, votes are usually just solicited by each individual band, and it becomes a contest, not of who has the best music, but who can solicit more hits to the contest host's website. Thus, capitalism and democracy team up once again to destroy art.

And so, the Internet music competition has become a popularity contest, not necessarily of who has the most friends, but of who appears to have the most friends. Sometimes a band that starts out with many friends will lose some in the process, as they get sick of being used for a mouseclick. These real-life friends are often replaces by fake friends in the form of computer applications, or the band members themselves just manually voting for themselves over and over.

I've always believed that art and competition don't mix very well anyway. Who's to say what's better? It can often be an apples vs. oranges scenario. Maybe it's just the American way to add competition to things that don't really need it. I mean, look what's become of reality TV! But I have heard the crap coming out of some of these internet music contests, and I can truly say, democracy does NOT work on the internet.

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