Communicating using interactive media — by Brook R. Corwin

Define “getting old” in terms of wrinkles or worldviews if you’d like. They’re poor indicators of the energy and optimism that embodies true youth.

For my money, it’s acceptance and openness to new creative content that illustrates who’s really staying young and who’s trapped in the so-called good ole days. New music might be the best litmus test. There are 20 somethings who have already shut the door on incoming bands and have their iPod’s stuck on a 90s loop, along with 60 somethings still checking out new groups influenced by the sounds of previous decades.

Interactive media is making it much simpler to fall into the latter group and not the former by exposing us to musical opportunities beyond our current libraries. A couple of the presentations I heard in class today reinforced this notion.

Take iConcertCal, a wonderfully useful plug-in for iTunes that scans your music library to alert you to upcoming concerts in your area and CD releases.. Getting out to more shows means discovering more bands during the opening acts. Even the old favorites often dabble in new musical styles shared only with the fans who keep up with current concert output.

Of course, new music as entertainment becomes more appealing when you’re using it for something other than background noise. Thankfully there are now places to find quality backing tracks for various multimedia projects that are free of licensing fees. Free Play Music is an outstanding example of this, allowing you to integrate new musical genres into your everyday projects without having to buy any material.

In the end, it all comes down to a willingness to try new bands. Sometimes that means taking a suggestion from a friend, which brings us to my all-time favorite music site Last.fm. It combines the musical suggestion features of Pandora with the social media aspect of Facebook, tracking what you listen  not only so it can recommend groups you’d like, but also to share your preferences with others. You can find my profile here.

The web is essentially replicating the musical exposure we got starting college for the first time, with peers sharing their tastes and new sounds plentiful. Too many stop there and forever keep listening the songs from those four-years and nothing else. Unleash the full potential of the Web and the encores keep on coming.