Why is the Visual Arts community so close, and the musical community so far?

[Level3rd 128]

I was browsing the corners of the internet this afternoon, and something occurred to me.  My buddy pointed out to me on Skype this thing called Equine Style Meme.  In case you haven't heard of it, it's basically a challenge to make a character in 25 different styles of your choice,  A lot of people have been passing it around, going off each others styles, etc etc.

Now, I could be out of the loop, so feel free to correct me, but I see the arts community is always doing some neat little challenge or meme.  
But things like that never happen in the music community.  Why not?  How come we don't have challenge memes that go around to showcase our work, juxtaposed against the work of others?

Like I said, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I see, the majority of the music community doesn't really do anything like that.

TL;DR

     The arts community seems really social and close-nit, compared to the music community, which seems more independant and anti-social.

Edited July 7, 2013 by Level3rd

[Gay Bird 421]

There actually are a few little music challenges here and there, but there is barely any compared to the art community. I don't see any reason for this. I do think that with EQReverb and Pony.fm that we'll be seeing more colabs and community challenges stuff like that. I'd personally like to see more of this stuff.

[Lisa 5,553]

music community, which seems more independant and anti-social.

 

Heard of the edmDistrict? Sure, it's classified for EDM artists, but it is quite a big music community, and still growing at a large rate. And also, if you want to meet more music artists, just search for some kind of music related forum.

[John 793]

I know what you mean.  The art community is able to relay information in a more productive manor while we just kind of sit on our asses.  

[SkyBound 829]

I know we have already discussed this, but I wanted to post my thoughts anyway.  I am sure there are challenges and/or memes that are indeed floating around the music community but they do not seem to be as prominent as those in the at community.  Which does beg the question as to why this is.

 

I honestly believe it comes down to varying personal preferences in music and what a large undertaking changing a song from its original style to other various styles.  Not that it cannot be done, as many musicians have done so with a plethora of songs, but I have not seen any that have changed a single song and adapted it to several styles.    

 

Using the Equine Style Meme as an example, it does not take much time to look over the entire completed meme and see the varying styles all together.  One can clearly see the diversity and differences within each section as the style changes.  A similar meme in music, however, would not have such an easy reception.  First, the issue of time would be a factor, as it would take quite a chunk of time to listen to several songs one after another.  There is also the issue of personal music preference.  Personally, if I come across a song that I enjoy but someone has altered it a style that I am not particularly fond of, I will either simply skip by it or listen to a small piece of it before I move on to something else.  I can see that being a problem with a style meme for music as there is a chance that many listeners will merely pick and choose styles that they enjoy and ignore the rest.  In the visual art side, even if a style is not particularly appealing, it can still be acknowledged and one can move along easily.  

 

I am not sure I made any sense at all, but I am still interested in what others may think of this topic.  In the arts, experimenting with different styles is a great exercise and one that I think every artist should attempt from time to time.

Edited July 9, 2013 by SkyBound