Since the summer of 2006 many events occurring in the field of popular music have influenced my view on the             music business and culture. Amongst others, a young British singer called Lily Allen had climbed up to the top of         the charts, apparently only because of her efforts on the Web 2.0 community MySpace. Not even a year later it was announced that Madonna had left her record company Warner to sign an all-encompassing contract, also known as a 360-degree deal, with the concert agency Live Nation. Then in October of 2007 the British band Radiohead left their label EMI and published their music online only in return for a donation by their fans.

These three occurrences seemed revolutionary. The word about a paradigm shift in the music business started to spread. This shift was supposed to imply that money cannot be made through music sales alone anymore, due to the competition of music distributed through the Internet at no cost. The artists and the music industry in general would have to earn from other activities such as concerts, and the web was supposed to be the new medium for music advertisement. Especially the Web 2.0 – the second generation of the Internet, characterized by being structured through user-generated content, in the form of social networks, blogs and wikis – was seen as important for the music business as well as for the consumers and artist. For me, this led to the question of how the Internet can be the source of all evil for the music business and its remedy at the same time. 

Being a musician myself and also a media and marketing student with a special interest in digital media, I became convinced that this needed further investigation. In the beginning my idea was to find out in how far the above mentioned events could imply advantages in terms of the marketing of artists but also for the music industry as such. However, through my investigations my view on the music business changed substantially. Music business and music culture are not only about the industry or the musicians. They are also much about the music consumers and the power relations between the three groups. The Internet has broken down the old patterns and power is about to be redistributed from a dominant industry towards an active and participating audience.

Fast Forward magazine, being the outcome of my investigations, is hence taking a critical perspective on the current changes in music business and music culture due to the digitalization of music and the Web 2.0 and their advantages and disadvantages for labels, artists and consumers. Being an analysis conducted within the area of popular music studies this magazine does not only draw on marketing and media theories, but is rather interdisciplinary and looks at the problems presented from very different academic angles. The articles and interviews will fastforward you through issues that concern everyone involved and interested in music and in the influence of the Internet.

I hope you will enjoy browsing through this magazine just as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Have fun reading!