Arts: Music: There are new tastemakers around, and Big Music corporations don't yet know how to cope

.
New York Times music reporter Jeff Leeds analyzes the techniques being used nowadays to thwart the system of of the Biggies in determining musical taste to suit their own ease in making profits. It's been notorious how the manufacturers of musical recordings of pop music in all genres have controlled, despite their own "competition" among themselves, what music-lovers may here.

At pandora.com visitors are invited to enter the name of their favorite artist or song and to get in return a stream of music with similar “DNA,” in effect a private Internet radio station microtailored to each user’s tastes. Since the service made its debut last November, more than three million people have signed up.

Besides Pandora, there's Last.fm, Launchcast and Rhapsody. These links are to the frontpages of the websites; you'll have to navigate to the online personalized radio service of each.

But they are tuning in to more than a musicologist’s online toy: [these] services ... have become the latest example of how technology is shaking up the hierarchy of tastemakers across popular culture. In music the shift began when unauthorized file-sharing networks like the original Napster allowed fans to snatch up the songs they wanted, instantly and free.

Pop Music Scene, by Owlie Scowlie

But the field is also full of new guideposts: music blogs and review sites like the hipster darling Pitchfork have gained influence without major corporate backing. And customizable Internet radio services ... are pointing users to music far beyond the playlists that confine most FM radio broadcasts.

All told, music consumers are increasingly turning away from the traditional gatekeepers and looking instead to one another — to fellow fans, even those they’ve never met — to guide their choices. Before long, wireless Internet connections will let them chatter not only on desktops, but in cars and coffee shops, too. And radio conglomerates and MTV, used to being the most influential voices around, are beginning to wonder how to keep themselves heard.