Idiomag.com

To be completely honest, I have had some trouble using this new tool idiomag.com. For whatever reason, my "personal magazine" has not been working properly and I have not been able to view any of the articles that have supposedly been selected for me. So, I have decided to give it a few more days and I will see what happens. In the mean time, the website provides a help-email-line so I have contacted them. Hopefully everything will be worked out soon!

Assuming that idiomag.com actually works (I do believe it does and that this is a legitimate site), this tool has the potential to be incredibly useful to its users. My favorite aspect of this tool is that it brings together articles from all genres of music. I like that they have split classical music into several categories including classical, opera, and avant garde. This says to me that they realize classical music is an important genre, as well as that they are taking the time to pay attention to all genres of music, not just pop and rock. This is also useful to us because we can narrow down our interests if so desired. For my interests, I marked all three of these sections as my most favorite genres, so the magazine will include articles pertaining to all of these styles of art. For other users though, they have the option of only selecting one genre.

I think this web 2.0 application is important for anyone in the classical music field because it allows us to see what is going on in the music scene as a whole. Marketers are constantly coming up with new ideas to get their music to their target audiences. Sometimes these ideas can be used for more than just their personal genre. Also, it is always possible to expand on their ideas and to make the marketing plan your own. Classical musicians are well aware they are in an up-hill battle at the moment. To succeed, I think they need to pay close attention to the rest of the industry.

Just to clarify, I am not suggesting that classical musicians attempt to become main-stream musicians. However, I do think there is something to be said for classical musicians to earn back some of society's attention and awareness.

Idiomag.com allows users to share articles, movies, and mp3's with their friends. Communication is everything in this industry. To have the option of sharing news with your friends is important because it keeps more and more people aware of what is going on in your genre of interest. In classical music, I feel as though we spend too much time practicing and not enough time communicating to the audience or to fellow musicians. The news articles on this website provide the reader with insight into new artists, concert series, and everything in between. If we share this new found knowledge with our colleagues, we have the opportunity to support new artists in the genre and to make classical music more well-known to the newer, as well the older, generations.

Hopefully idiomag.com will start cooperating with my computer soon, because I do believe this could be a great tool for any musician. I will keep looking for other web 2.0 applications that might be of use to all of you classical musicians, as well as those of you who are non-musicians, but interested in the genre.