Here’s a roundup of future-trend stories that might be of interest to fans:
- Gizmodo wrote a feature on Distro.fm and suggested that it will change the music business by directly connecting fans with artists. The non-profit start-up focuses not on music sales or music discovery, but rather on creating fan lists for musicians. “You pay to subscribe to an artist, and for the next year, you receive whatever music they want to send you. Distro acts as a hub where bands can collect subscribers, upload songs, and automatically send it out to all their subscribers.” On the musician side, they must “send every song, remix, live recording, work in-progress, and other rarity to those fans. Nearly 100 percent of that money will filter through to the artists.”
- While a number of fan groups have bought advertising in the past, generally in support of television shows under threat of cancellation, some bronies decided to make a TV ad as PR for their own fandom. “New Hampshire brony James Turner wanted $2,000 to fund his commercial, The Brony Thank You Project. He hopes the ad, which would record thank-you messages from real bronies, to run on the Hub, the channel that airs Hasbro’s My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.” Part of the purpose is to challenge media depictions of bronies. “‘The intent is to choose representative bronies for the ad who run in the face of the brony stereotype,’ [Turner] wrote. ‘So, for example, we’d love to have an active-duty brony stationed overseas read one of the thank-yous, or a doctor, or a businesswoman behind a desk.'”
- Participating in fandom can often build new skills, so there may be more features like the “Mover and Shaker” article in Library Journal where “tech leader” Lisa Bunker listed fellow fans among her mentors. “[M]y fellow webmasters in Harry Potter fandom (most of whom were half my age) taught me about how to approach new tools and ideas with joy and not fear, and always with an eye to what it might do for our online conversations, whether it was podcasting, vidcasting, or online book clubs.”
- While there’s no guarantee that the Archive of Our Own will be a future trend, it did receive a nice review from Ziven at the blog D Saint Radio.
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