What 2 Listen 2: Reinventing the Presence of Tastemaker Influences in Music Discovery Through User Interaction and Aggregate Data

Historically, the process of music discovery has been fostered through the personal connection(s) listeners develop with music and artists via broadcast media formats. Streaming technology has made music more accessible to the listener than ever before, but it has also failed the listener, inhibiting the process of music discovery by eliminating the tastemaker. By referencing the theory of Public and Counter-publics by Robert Warner, the paper outlines importance of audience recognition, response, and personal connection to music discovery. In 1942 Joseph Schumpeter wrote about “incessant product and process innovation”, coined the phrase “creative destruction” (a process through which something new brings about the demise of whatever existed before it) and proclaimed it to be “the essential fact about capitalism”. Despite this, Schumpeter also outlined the concept of “creative response” (innovative acts by entrepreneurs) and its importance to society. What 2 Listen 2 embraces the ideology of Schumpeter and creates a multi-level solution to expand the role of the tastemaker, and restore the concept of personal connection to the process of music discovery via storytelling. This solution has been articulated as a market ready broadcast property as well as an app/web solution in a beta form.