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The rise of digital music and its effect on the music industry
The effect of digital music on the music industry
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Spotify is one of the most popular streaming services. And since its breakthrough, access to music have never been easier – just type in the name of an artist or a song and press play. The advantage of it is that listeners gets to listen to their wanted music instantly and for free and artist gets paid royalties. But since spotify’s big breakthrough there has been big debates if free music streaming is going to kill the music industry or if it’s going to help it.
From my, as a listeners point of view, Spotify is a great way of listening to music instantly – without downloading and having my computer’s memory loaded with thousands of mp3s also it can be easily accessible anywhere – on your computer, tablet, phone or even without internet. Also
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Many well-known artists including Taylor Swift are against Spotify and have her music catalogue removed from Spotify, because by letting people listen to your music for free you undermine the value of art. But Taylor Swift is one of not so many artists that could pull such thing off and still remain popular. After all, her removing her catalogue from Spotify was a huge scandal and one of the most important happenings during the last year in the music industry. This move of hers affects Spotify in a bad way, as she was one of the most popular artists on spotify and her songs were on 19 million playlists. It is also thought that taking her music catalogue from Spotify could be related with her own record label, Big Machine’s sale. As instant income from digital music download could be financially more beneficial, and increase value for her record label more than, “steady streaming” income. But for such popular artists like Taylor Swift, such streaming model earns millions. According to Spotify real life artist who wasn’t named was earning $425,000, per month for a hit album that was on top charts. And that category surely …show more content…
First of all it’s successfully fighting against piracy, and turns former pirates into music consumers. Because there’s no reason why one would steal music when it can be easily “taken” for free in an absolutely legal way that benefits not only music consumers but artists too. And even though you can use Spotify for free more and more people are getting premium membership and paying the $9.99 monthly fee in return to get add free music streaming and the availability to listen to music offline. But some major labels are pushing Spotify towards limiting freemium membership, to convince more people to pay monthly fee, Ek refuses to do it, for obvious reasons – people will always find ways to get music for free, so if they won’t get it on Spotify they will find other places to do it and most likely in an illegal way. But still quite a few well known artist like Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Taylor Swift, Johnny Marr and many others who are against Spotify, stating that it’s paying pennys for artist and that they are giving up their music for free, and staying with iTunes rather than Spotify. iTunes, in my opinion, is good for short term income, as when people buy a song they can listen to it as many times as they want and artist don’t get any more income from that song after someone have bought it, where as if an artist have their songs on Spotify even after 20 years
Most people, like I originally thought, would tend to believe that Napster would reduce record sales. However, as evidenced in my statistics earlier, record sales have been booming since Napster has become available to the public. But what is the reasoning behind this phenomenon? The digital music provider acts almost as a free advertising site for all musical talents, popular or otherwise. Bands can put their music out into the World Wide Web for all people to enjoy. This free music allows people to test out music and see what they like. Many people, if they enjoy something they hear, will venture out to the record store and buy a copy of the group's album. The final aspect that I will endorse Napster on is that it sponsors tours and features different bands on its website. This is a final form of marketing that helps get groups known in the general public and help to boost record sales.
Since 2007, SoundCloud has grown from a tiny German startup to a massive music sharing based website. By integrating music sharing with a social-network type platform they have outshined their competitors and continue to grow each day. The company is continually expanding the SoundCloud brand through their own mobile application, as well as integrating with many other websites and mobile applications.. SoundCloud depicts a company that very successfully took advantage of an unmet need and created a worldwide brand. Only time will tell if they will be able to continually expand and fulfill the demands of music enthusiasts everywhere.
In the past, singers made money through CDs and cassettes. These forms of media have been replaced with digital copies of albums and songs. Even this method of accessing music has begun to fade away with the replacement of streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, or Soundcloud. Artists’ music has also been used in advertisements. This can negatively affect the artist’s career. Music artists shouldn’t have their songs in advertising.
Spotify is an on-demand music streaming service that provides a two tiered service to its users. The free service allows users to listen to any song on demand within the application’s music catalogue, but with the presence of ads. The premium service, however, is completely ad free. Launched in 2008 in Sweden, Spotify has grown and currently has over 24 million active users. (Sisario, B) As a result of several deals struck with EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner Music Group, Spotify currently holds a music catalogue of roughly 20 million songs.
To begin with, it is known that musicians had to be signed to record labels to gain any traction with their careers, otherwise, their careers would be known to flop. However, this has changed with the shell-shock of upcoming technology. “As file sharing eroded the power of the majors and wiped out these music retailers, new distribution channels, firms, and power relations began to emerge” (Hracs 449). The music industry and technological advancement went hand-in-hand, with the compact disc used as one of few sources of playing music. Since the introduction to the MP3, the sharing of music across the internet is a major contributor to the downfall of production labels, and it has been this way since 2001. “Recent developments in online music distribution suggest that it is not so much the availability of music on the Internet that concerns the music industry majors but rather the fact that it is free” (Gündüz 205). This included the pirating of songs from online file sharing networks, which hit the industry with full force. ” According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), CD sales have been falling continuously (except for a status quo in 2004) from 2.5 billion units in 2000 t...
Majority of people believe that any artist makes so much money because they are in the music industry. That is not the case, most artist make very little money off their own songs. The artist gets very little percentage because the company and their label need to take the cut of their share. That is why most artist go on tour because the money they make is theirs. (Knopper 1-7). The record labels such as Sony and companies like Spotify, Youtube and ITunes gets a huge percentage of the money made off the song. In reality the label and company come first while the artist still stays struggling to make a profit. The companies have to pay for all the marketing that goes on for the song to get sold and on top of that they need their profit. Knopper also states, “A decade ago, this disparity in payments was a huge point of contention between artists and the labels they worked for” (5). The last decade artist cared about making money from their songs, now it is all about the over the top tours which rack in billions of
Over time the Music industry has experienced a great deal of change. A technology revolution has changed almost every aspect of the music industry, from the artist right through to the listener/consumer. Not unlike other forms of media, the music industry has been forced to move with the times, adapt to change and this has resulted in a difference for both the industry and the consumer.
Consumers rely on their smartphones and laptops to listen to music on-demand. Although there are many music streaming companies, Spotify was one of the first to let consumers access millions of artist without buying individuals songs or albums. With Spotify, consumers pay for a premium subscription that allows access to every artist, album, and song within their library of
“Where other ad-supported, on-demand music services have failed or been driven under by lawsuits, free music thrives on YouTube in part because it can offset licensing costs with lucrative video advertisements — and simply because it’s YouTube, and record labels cannot afford not to be there. Rather than pulling their music from the site, most of the major labels embraced it by creating a joint venture with YouTube”- Van Buskirk, Eliot
Online music streaming can be a big help to musicians who are trying to get their music out there and be heard by a wider audience(Jacob Carter). Stacia Coates states, “Some bands have thoroughly embraced branding and see it more as an opportunity rather than a necessity.” The band The Black Eyed Peas learned that the more they marketed and got involved in branding the more successful they were with fans(Stacia Coates). “For artists serious about their careers, turning down any form of corporate sponsorship or licensing agreements could be a mistake. At times, it’s not only necessary, but a smart way to make it in today’s music business.” Says Stacia
For example Beyonce’s album Lemonade was “2016’s third biggest album” (Billboard) and it was only available on itunes. Artist are making it available only on certain places because, although they love making music it is not fair to them when they are not making the money they deserve to be making. Musician Joe Elliott gives more of an explanation of how he feels when someone is stealing his songs, “somebody taking our music for free is no different than walking out of someone's house with their tv set” (Ian) these artist are making music to entertain people all over the world but the listeners are not giving anything in return by stealing their music. As this continues to happen, people still steal, no seems to care this could hurt the artist career. Jans Ian explains, “that the industry (and its artists) are being harmed by free downloading” , this could and is hurting some artist because they are not making the money they are suppose to
In 2008 in Stockholm Sweden, Spotify was developed as a music streaming service by an entertainment company, Spotify AB. Spotify is used to stream music in general or with certain plans you can build your own personal playlist of music. No longer do you need to carry an iPod or listen to the random music on the radio. You can use Spotify for free but will have to listen to commercials. If you wish to upgrade your account you can do so by paying for the service and eliminating the commercials.
Listening to music for free is the best thing in the world, honestly, without paying for something is better than anything. Music to some-people is a way of life, why should they pay for music when they can download it for free. If you download a song off the internet, you’ll have your favorite song in the palm of your hand, charge free! You can save that money that you won’t spend on a few songs or albums and use it for something more important. “Free music downloads could be a solution to our attempts to scrimp and conserve in these rough financial situations” says Frank Castle from Article Alley.
Spotify is on-demand streaming music player. After registration and downloading the desktop application user gains access to more than 20 million songs that are currently available on Spotify [1]. The main characteristic of Spotify’s streaming service is that it does not sell music, but it gives access to it. Streaming digital music is based on agreements with content owners - record labels, digital distributors, aggregators and publisher collecting societies, to whom Spotify pays out royalties [2]. Without these agreements there would be no music to stream. Basically, Spotify has an intermediary role as it distributes music content from right holders to listeners.
Throughout many years of the computer age there has been much advancement in computer technology. It first began with the people getting the Internet, then people began to understand the Internet, and then lastly people learned to overpower the Internet. Within the past several years the downloading music factor strongly took effect. To the majority of the internet population they tend to believe there’s nothing wrong with getting free tunes, but there is the select few who believe it is morally wrong. Overall, I truly enjoy having the free access to music; it enables you to try new music without bother making purchases and having a poor after effect. This is an excellent way to save money, as well as making your music selection more diverse.