Music Research in the Infomation Age

Want to find out if your favorite musician or band is on tour, and see their touring schedule? Go to Pollstar and find out, search by "Artist Itinerary." You can also search by "City Schedule" to find all concerts and shows in a certain city, so it's useful when travelling.

Want to do research on your favorite musician, including viewing a complete list of all recordings, all songs written or recorded, and a complete biography? Go to All Music.

I use both of these websites all the time for "music research." It's reference websites like these that provide us with instant, free information that we now probably take for granted, but think of: a) how much time we save now with instant information on the Internet, b) how much more information we have access to today, and c) how instant access to free and unlimited information contibutes to a significantly higher standard of living that never gets captured or measured by official economic data like GDP.

Without the Internet, think of how much time, money and effort it would take to find the same information that is now available on Pollstar and AllMusic - a trip to the library, buying the AllMusic reference book (which would be outdated as soon as it was printed, given the new music that comes out daily), etc.

Compared to past generations, today we are really "information-rich" and "Information Billionaires."