The stadium exploded in a flash of light. The band went straight into a blistering version of “Highway Star”.
Deep Purple was back in Singapore and from the first note, the band showed they meant serious business when it came to playing a brand of music they’ve been true to for more than 40 years.
It takes a lot to survive this long in the music business, I reckon. Look at how it’s changed – from the way it’s made to the way it’s marketed, distributed, sold and priced.
You say you want a revolution, John Lennon? Well, you’ve got it.
Last week, Simon Fuller, the gazillionaire behind American Idol, said that he had sold 160 million songs on iTunes. They called it a “digital milestone”.
“I felt there was a real synergy with what I do, which is launching new artists and TV shows, and what iTunes does, which is to sell music in an immediate and interactive way,” he said.
The way people watch concerts have changed. Today, they watch, shoot, film and send. A part of them is listening but a part of them wants to record it and share.
As I looked around the Singapore Indoor Stadium, almost everyone had a smart phone and almost everyone was recording the performances, yours truly included.
It used to be they stopped people from bringing cameras into concert halls. Today, they’ve given up on the practice.
You can’t hold back the tide and as I watched Ian Gillan jumping around on stage and Steve Moss doing his magic on the guitar (below), I thought, here’s a band that’s seen the changes and has embraced them. There’s no copyright on their live music anymore because everyone’s making their own recordings.
The next morning, when I searched for “Deep Purple Singapore”, I saw several videos had already been uploaded on YouTube.
This week, I read an article saying, “As YouTube grows up, it gets more commercial”. With two billion views a day, Google’s video site now “features a smorgasboard of more professional video that is drawing ever larger and more engaged audiences”.
I think, in general, video is growing up and there are some who say that video is the new text on the Web and those who still cling onto words and static images as the main form of expression will be trampled upon by the video monster.
Thomson Reuters seems to think so. It’s launched Visit Insider.ThomsonReuters.com, a video platform that it says “will completely change the way you access, process and share financial information”.
The ad says, “Why video? Because the market changes faster than anyone can type.”
Travel websites will have to deal with this new phenomenon – if a picture says a thousand words, then a video tells a million.
In an industry that’s grown up with words and static images, we might have to look at training new talent in the art of video filming, editing and production. These are the skills that will be needed for the new, moving visual feast that the Web wants to be.
Journalists like me, who cut our teeth in print, will have to pick up even more new skills. Not only do we now have to write headlines that are picked up by computer-generated algorithms, we also have to fight our way through the social media morass and hope we don’t end up in the abyss of irrelevance.
Yes, we have a lot to learn from Deep Purple, and how they made smoke from water.
To get an idea, watch these videos.
