The Music Industry and Technology: Changing the Way the World listens and Shares Music

Industry opportunities. I will cover the use of online portals to find opportunities in the music industry, using teaching opportunities, competitions, collaborative opportunities and touring/performing opportunities as examples. In this section I will draw on Brown (2011) and Madden (2004) and use the example of indaba.com. I will include musician’s online forum discussions as a source of

The Australian music industry needs to have a dynamic digital presence that showcases the innovative projects of local musicians to a national and international market.

“Back when I was a teenager, we would have to buy an entire album just to have one song,” Brittni’s father explained, to her utter disbelief. Brittni shook her head, thinking of the thousands of songs in her iTunes library, and she wondered how people could afford to buy dozens of albums just for a handful of favorite singles. Buying music over the internet may seem commonplace today, but in the 1990’s, audio on the internet was merely experimental. In 2000, computer programmer Shawn Fanning introduced an internet site called Napster that irrevocably changed the internet, the music industry, and the complex relationship between the two.

Technology in this digital age has led to drastic changes in many sectors of life, especially needs to technology such as Internet as an information and connection resource. In fact, music has continually evolved at a rapid rate, and the music industry is struggling to keep up the pace. Issues ranging from illegally downloading and sharing of music, piracy to inevitable disputes over sites offering music streaming services and the share of royalties for the artist prompt the big question whether the Internet raises more problems than advantages. The dispute has served as a massive blow

The Internet has transformed the music industry immensely over the years. Some will argue that it has helped in a positive manner, while others would say it has destroyed the music industry. With the use of the Internet, independent artist have broke down many barriers, which seemed impossible in the past. Independent artist, have been given the opportunity to find success without the need of a major deal from a music label. Artists have gained access to a number of new ways to reach out to their audience and have been forced to adapt to the change by acquiring a bundle of new skills. With the direction that the music industry has been headed, a lot of music professionals have became very little to no value to industry with results in loss of jobs. “According to 2014’s year-end Nielsen Music statistics, the added attention has resulted in indie artists increasing their market share from 34.6% in 2013 to 35.1% in 2014, once again, gaining more sales than any other major label group (Westergreen)”. The tables have turned to where the music labels are in more need of the artist, rather than the other way around. Although this is the truth, major record labels want to do business with artists who have already PROVEN themselves in the music industry. They not only want your music, but they also want your fan base as well. There now have been artists who were invisible in the music business who now get exposed to an audience that is big enough to support them. There’s an

Musical artists across the globe have used a multitude of methods to earn money including CDs, vinyls, and cassette sales. Overtime, new forms of profit and exposure have come into the mix. Artists have lost money due to the changes in the music business. New forms of music distribution includes streaming, downloading, merchandise, and touring. Yet, financial needs also play a role within the music business. Financial methods include endorsement deals, sponsorships, and advertising. Each of these methods may benefit the corporations and the artists. Yet, they do not have a positive impact upon the amount artists earn. Therefore, advertisements, endorsement deals, and corporate sponsorships can bring forth inimical results.

Over the last fifteen years, the music industry has been revolutionized by technological improvements. It all began with the creation of the mp3 file format; music suddenly became easy to distribute. Napster took advantage of the new file format by creating a peer to peer network, which composed of the first on-demand streaming company. While their company was riddled with lawsuits, they became the initial leaders for digital music. With iTunes’ release, providing users a digital marketplace, the market began its initial shift. The desire to buy and listen to albums’ in entirety diminished; the industry changed to a singles market. In 2008, Spotify noticed the à la carte downloads that made iTunes quite valuable. Using Napster’s peer to peer model as an initial framework, they created a peer to peer system where they actually paid royalties to the copyright holders. With a freemium service, people could listen to whatever song they wanted as long as they could tolerate intermittent advertisements. Yet what Spotify has managed to do, which no other music streaming company has done, is that they have been able to amass a 40% premium user rate, an astonishing number especially when compared to Pandora’s 5.6% paid user rate. Despite streaming services, particularly Spotify, negative reputation, their entrance into the music industry has not only increased exposure for indie artists, but is also revolutionizing the industry.

Also in this modern digital age there are no other routes available via the Internet whereby the whole Record Company bit can be bypassed; smaller acts are building up a following by doing live gigs and home studio recordings and then building up their fan base on websites such as FaceBook, MySpace, 2ndLife, BroadJam and releasing their music as pay for downloads freeing them up from the costly recording and distribution process. These acts are also looking after their own Music Publishing as well, keeping a bigger share of any eventual royalties (these are discussed in depth later in this essay). Huge bands such as RadioHead are also jumping on to the Internet bandwagon, releasing their latest album as ‘pay what you think it is worth '; this is discussed in more detail under the Marketing area of the Industry.

No one can deny that technology is actively changing the music industry. Production, distribution and sales of music have been affected dramatically within the last 10 years along with artists, composers, and technicians. Most of the changes have been great for consumers, but vastly negative for professionals in the music industry, however a few artists have found ways to adapt to the changing atmosphere of digitally downloaded music and use it to their advantage. We’ve seen music change form from physical, tangible products like records and CD’s to electronic single tracks stored in an invisible cloud. Two major factors in this sudden revolution are online music stores (specifically iTunes) and file sharing websites that allow music to be downloaded illegally.

It’s intriguing how the music industry has significantly changed throughout the years due to the constant increase of technology. There are many different reasons to show how technology has made a huge impact whether positive or negative on this phenomenal industry. Music cultivates so much meaning to the world, and speaks volumes on the behalf of individuals when they don’t know what to physically say. That being said, whether it’s listening to music, creating it, or marketing it, technology has opened many new opportunities and ways for people to express themselves through music.

Creating music has likewise turned out to be more open and more moderate with a few specialists recording work in their home, or enlisting out a recording studio for a day. Luke Henderson of Fluke Productions, a recording studio in London perceives that contrasted and a quarter century, it is much simpler for craftsmen to kick begin their profession. When a track is transferred to the web it can be gotten to by individuals over the world on the off chance that they know where to look. The music business has made much progress since those horrible days of the mono recordings. In those days, craftsmen, makers, and specialists didn 't have any options on what gear that would use to complete their recordings. With the headway in innovation and new developments always being made in the music business, the open doors are interminable. On the off-chance that you turn up the meaning of innovation you will see the words business and trade, which to me just means development and improvement. Innovation has and will keep on influencing development and improvement in the music business.

Over the past decade, the use of CDs has been replaced with online streaming and retailing. This has eliminated much of the record companies revenues as they were used to making most of their profit off of distribution and promotion of physical copies of artists albums (Niemen). This has caused for a major shift and remodeling of major players in the music industries business models. Companies such Sony, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group have started to completely rethink the way they conduct business (Forbes). In the past record labels were not only responsible for production, distribution and promotion of an artist and his/her music, but they also acted as a bank (Forbes), funding the artists tours and recording sessions. Recently, these music giants have been moving towards becoming more of a modular network organization. What this means is that they are less occupied with the nitty gritty, and more focused on what they do best which is distribution and promotion. This also allows for more freedom of creativity for the artist as well as fairer split of profits (Forbes). This adaption of new business models clearly shows the versatility of the music industry in adapting to new times and technologies.

Introduction: Setting the trend for the future, the distribution and consumption of recorded music transformed dramatically with the launching of Apple’s iTunes in 2001. The proliferation of online music subscription services and other music sharing services exerted a great pressure on the conventional music distribution business model. Combined with this transformation, piracy of digital music had a profound impact on the whole industry. These worsening conditions in the market place for recorded music forced both established and upcoming new artists to experiment with new ways of selling their music.

When speaking economically, the digital music sector of the international music industry is undoubtably the most important sector in the industry. Within the last decade, music has seen cardinal changes in the way both major and independent labels distribute their products. An industry that once relied on Payola 's and mass distribution of physical records and CD 's now relies heavily on the power of the internet. The first instance of mass distribution of music through the internet was by the service Ritmoteca.com in 1998 [1]. Ritmoteca had a library of over 300,000 songs, offering individual songs for 99 cents each and albums for $9.99. After signing distribution deals with many major music labels such as Warner

The creation of musical works has always been culminated by several different processes and usually involves many people. The process takes a lot of time delaying the release of music. Advancement in technology has played a significant role in the music production by lowering the length of time it takes to produce recorded material. Artists usually sign a contract with a recording company that markets their music products. The internet and low-cost recording technologies have created a “do-it-yourself” music movement. New artists have gained worldwide recognition without landing a recording contract with a major record label.