Download Music Industry and the Audience

Music Industry and the Audience
Changes in the last 15 years
One thing to remember
• For an A grade you will need a clear and
developed argument which is supported by
detailed case study material.
• This PowerPoint is the first of three where we
look at the music industry from three different
point of views (Audience/Band or
Artist/Institution) which will begin to provide
you with the relevant case studies to give you
this clear and developed argument
Introduction – Physical/digital Industry
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In the first decade of the 21st century, the
rise of computers as the primary means to
record, distribute, store, and play music
caused widespread economic changes in the
music industry, fundamentally changing the
relationships between artists, record
companies, promoters, retail music stores,
the technology industry, and consumers.
The rise of digital music consumption options
contributed to a few fundamental changes in
consumption. First the decline of album
sales, consumers no longer download entire
albums but rather choose single songs.
For us the consumer this meant that the
music industry shifted from the ownership of
music in the form of physical albums to the
digital acquisition of files either legally or
illegally
How Napster changed everything
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Napster is an example of peer to peer file sharing
and in 1999 the site made it relatively easy for
audiences to download copies of songs that were
otherwise difficult to obtain, like older songs,
unreleased recordings, and songs from concert
bootleg recordings. These were uploaded to the site
and downloaded by other members in the form of a
digital exchange.
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Some users felt justified in downloading digital
copies of recordings they had already purchased in
other formats, like LP and cassette tape, before the
compact disc emerged as the dominant format for
music recordings.
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Many other users simply enjoyed trading and
downloading music for free. They created a
username and password and were able to make
their own compilation albums on recordable CDs,
without paying any royalties to the record label.
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The ease of downloading individual songs facilitated
by Napster and later services is often credited for
ushering in the end of the Album Era in popular
music
The Importance of iTunes/iPod
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By 2001, the cost of hard drive space had
dropped to a level that allowed pocketsized computers to store large libraries of
music.
The iPod and iTunes system for music
storage and playback became immensely
popular, and many consumers began to
transfer their physical recording media
(such as CDs) onto computer hard drives.
The iTunes Music Store offered legal
downloads beginning in 2003, and
competitors soon followed, offering a
variety of online music services, such as
internet radio.
Digital music distribution was aided by
the widespread acceptance of broadband
in the middle of the decade.
Cheap/New Technology
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Inexpensive recording hardware and
software made it possible to create high
quality music in a bedroom and distribute
it over the internet to a worldwide
audience.
This, in turn, caused problems for
recording studios, record producers and
audio engineers: the Los Angeles Times
reported that, by 2009, as many as half of
the recording facilities in that city had
failed.
Consumers benefited enormously from
the ease with which music can be shared
from computer to computer.
This has given consumers unparalleled
choice in music consumption and has
opened up performers to niche markets to
which they previously had little access.
The New Music Stars – Tyler Ward
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Tyler Ward has become a well known
artist in part through his use of social
media, posting a mix of his covers and
originals on YouTube.
Ward has successfully completed three
worldwide headlining tours and has
played shows with many mainstream
artists including The Jonas Brothers and
The Fray.
Through his music video career, Ward has
performed and recorded most of his early
songs and many of the current ones in his
parents' basement, which he later turned
into a proper recording space.
Nowadays, Ward records his songs in a
bedroom studio that he created in his Los
Angeles apartment
Other examples of stars who used new technology
(YouTube) to help them in their career
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The Gregory Brothers
Brett Domino
It is important to note that with both Brett
Domino and The Gregory Brothers both of
these ‘bands’ are at the forefront of rejecting
accepting songs given to them by institutions
and instead sharing, chopping, and remixing
offering new and deeper forms of
engagement. They are examples of
prosumers and not consumers (difference
being prosumers do something with music
and do not just listen to it.
Both these two bands show the creativity of
electronic music producers to find and
rearrange existing music/news. This is called
variability (mash ups, remixes)
Alongside this it is also important to stress
the importance of the music video today
because of the ability for fans to share this
kind of promotion (Psy is a good example of
what can happen when something goes viral)
Piracy
• 95% of all the music downloaded
in the world is downloaded
illegally throughout the world.
This has had the greatest impact
on the music industry in the last
fifteen years (ever since Napster)
and has transformed the industry
for both bands/artists and the
record companies. We will see
how they fought back in
upcoming lessons
Streaming Music – Spotify/Soundcloud
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Spotify is a commercial music streaming service
providing content from record labels including
Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group and Universal.
Music can be browsed or searched by artist,
album, genre, playlist, or record label.
Paid "Premium" subscriptions remove
advertisements and allow users to download
music to listen offline.
As of December 2012, the catalogue provided
access to approximately 20 million songs via
searching for artists, albums, titles, labels and
genres, and gave users access to tracks from
many major and independent labels.
Users can create and share playlists, or edit
them together with other users
SoundCloud is an online audio distribution
platform based in Berlin, Germany that enables
its users to upload, record, promote and share
their originally-created sounds. In July 2013, it
had 40 million registered users and 200 million
listeners.
The role of the consumer and social
networking
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For an up to date case study on how
we the consumer can affect the
music industry, look at the
importance of how social networking
was in the marketing of Beyonce’s
last album at the end of 2013.
Her news about the album
announced on her Instagram page
spread rapidly through social
networking sites and this was only
possible through the dual impact of
technological convergence in the
form of smartphones and the
proliferation of these smartphones in
modern society