Thursday, 12 February 2009
Week 4 Topic 3- Online Music
By the audience having the ability to file share, download and network music, the availability of music is increased. The users of the internet are able to easily find the song they want, whether it’s on ITunes, MySpace. YouTube etc, songs are much more accessible, than what they were when they could only be sold in a CD or tape format. For example, artists such as Kate Nash have been discovered because of their music being posted on MySpace. The ability to promote your songs and create fans has changed. It is now much more in the artists own hands; they do not need any guidance or help from industry experts to post their music online. However, because music is widely consumed, and many artists do have their own MySpace account with self promotion, the audience are constantly flooded with invitations to listen to people’s music. This consequently has an affect on how many people do actually listen to these individual sites, because there is so many, people may loose interest. Media companies power may be decreasing because of artist’s ability to self promote, but I think their guidance and knowledge of the industry will still be needed. Artists can easily set up their own account, but this does not necessarily mean that they will be signed; they still need to be discovered by someone who is able to give them a record contract. Does anyone disagree?
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You have said about how people can file share music, but do you think this is affecting the music industry and artists themselves? Do you think that, in time, there will be no CDs and music will only be available to buy online?
ReplyDeleteIts affected high street stores, like Woolworths, nobody needed to go to the stores because they can download songs cheaper and easier of websites such as Itunes of Limewire. The internet has made things quicker and simpler and has encouraged people to do things through the internet rather than IRL. Illegally download music has probably affected the music industy, if people can get their music for free they will do and this results in the artist and record label not being paid. But with Itunes letting you buy singles for 69p it has probably encouraged more people to buy tracks than what it did when a CD single was £2.99!
ReplyDeleteI think music sales must have been really affected by illegal downloading. So many people do it! However I agree Claire with your point about the Media companies, they will still be needed. Even if people are posting their music etc online, that doesnt mean they are going the correct way about it, they will still need an agenct or PR to help them get noticed. As you said, there are too many people posting videos on Myspace and Youtube that we cant possibly listen to them all!!
ReplyDeleteSome sterling work here Claire - you have blogged and blogged and responded most fully to others' posts as well - good work! Keep on bringing in lecture ideas and ideas from other readings for comparison as this shows me that you are getting to grips with the unit ideas. I'm very pleased with this whole group (the TWOHANNAHS) for the amount you are interacting! Well done!
ReplyDelete...as to the music issue you have made some astute points here, esp. in relation to the "awash with music" issue. If there are so many bands online, after all how do you choose? More accessible doesn't equal good and as we know from Perpectives there are issues of things being scarcer making them somehow more valauble in many people's eyes.
ReplyDeleteSo what do you think, Claire (et al)? If so much more music is (at least in theory)available, how do we (and who is we anyway?) choose the best over the average? Who decides? Is the music industry going to fragment into smaller and smaller niche audiences to the point where there is no possibility of a "chart"? Do we care?
There still needs to be some authority deciding on who is going to be successful and who is not because every band on myspace isn't good enough to make it. This idea of authority is shown on Week 5 work, like even though you have the 'freedom' on the net, the audience still need to be guided in some direction and i think the music industry will still need to do this.
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