99 Designs and Pop Culture…

Have you seen the website 99 Designs? My friend Jeff Civillico told me about this on line community the other day and I can’t decide if it is a really cool place to get design work done or another sign that all business models are falling apart. I’ll tell you more about that in  a second.

I’m typing away here while listening to Diana Ross and the Supremes sing an Old Motown standard on Pandora. Pandora, if you haven’t found it, is an amazing web service that allows you to design your own radio station which plays only music you like. You start with some of your favorite songs or artists and Pandora finds other music that you’ll probably like based on things like music theory and your era of music. If you don’t like a song selected for you (or an artist) you just hit the thumbs down button and you’ll never hear it again. If I wasn’t listening to Pandora, I’d be playing songs from my I Tune Library or, if driving, on my favorite satellite radio station. There are times I am sure I am the only person in the world listening to a certain song, I have my own little music cocoon thing going on.

As we have our own little concerts going on, as we podcast radio shows, DVR television programs and read individual blogs, I wonder what will happen to pop culture? Will anything reach the status of being a “popular” again? Every time I hear “Listen to the Music” by the Doobie Brothers I remember my High School graduation night when all of us went to Sasco Beach and every car’s AM radio was turned to Cousin Brucie and the Doobie Brothers tune. It’s hard to imagine a song catching a moment like that again, not with everybody wearing ear buds.

Every band has a My Space page and their own You Tube videos. Anyone with Garage Band can create songs to be sold on I Tunes. Every photographer has an online gallery, every writer a blog and every business a web page. We will all find our grass roots followers, our “Tribe” but will the cream still rise to the top? How will new artists get found amidst all the noise? With no barriers to entry, every writer, every musician, every artist is part of the zebra herd, sure every one of us has unique stripes, but herds are designed to help you hide.

Will the next great artist emerge from the herd? Is the infrastructure still there to help him get discovered and is anyone looking for him or are we destined to always listen to old Motown hits?

Which leads me back to my qualms about 99 Designs. Let’s say you need a new logo designed for your website. You begin a “contest” on 99 Designs with a cash prize (You say how much you are willing to pay). The contests usually last 7 days and you have the option to let everyone, including other designers, see the work as it is submitted. You can make suggested changes and say what you like and don’t like. The advantage to the logo buyer is obvious, you get a bunch of qualified people working together and competing against each other to design your piece.

Of course, only the “winning” designer gets paid, so I’m pretty sure the designers are not crazy about this “community” and I’m pretty sure you aren’t getting the “top” designers. That’s kind of my point, how will we identify the next generation of top designers when everything is so democratized? Same with comedians and singers and writers? Will we have stars anymore or just a bunch of people sitting in their living rooms bidding on jobs and listening to Pandora?