Essay 3 - The future of music

The world has come to the digital technology and internet era where every house has a computer and accessibility to the internet. In ten years, with support of evolutionary technologies, the world will be even more connected and the high-speed internet will be accessible everywhere. The music industry, it has also come to the digital era where music is available in digital format and compatible with a variety of media platforms. New generation audiences have transformed the way of listening to music from typical media players, such as cassette and CD players, into a digital media platform as a computer. Nowadays, the internet has impacted the music industry in all stages. There is a big discussing issue on file sharing activity that has been a major threat to the industry especially to the record companies. The record sales have dropped in recent years, claimed by critics as an effect of the file sharing over the social media network. If it is true that the file sharing hurts record sales, then albums that are more heavily downloaded should experience lower sales than comparable albums that are less downloaded. However, Stephen J. D. and Felix O.( Freakonimics: The Hidden Side of Everything, The New York Times ) found that downloads had little effect on album sales. So what factors really influence the sales trend? One explanation can be the competition of recorded music against other entertainment products that consumers are spending on. Another factor to consider is the rise of paid digital downloads service such as iTunes. With traditional recorded package as CDs, audiences are forced to buy the whole album which they may not be willing to. Since everything is now moving to computer compatibility and resources can be accessed easier on the internet, people are moving to new ways of acquiring music.
When it comes to the future of musicians, there are many young individual artists presenting their talents, producing and selling their own records, without being supported by a record company. Many of these “indi” artists use the social media to advertise themselves and activities such as concerts that they are holding. This has lowered the important role of the record companies. So what the record companies might head for the future could be to support these talents, offer and help develop it whether with their image, production process, technology, or even money. Apart from this, the record companies will continue selling CDs because, even though the digital downloads are growing quite a lot ( at 35% ), they are not growing fast enough to compensate for the CDs and the P2P service. In the near future, the CDs will not be seen as a packaged good, from both consumer and producer point of view, but rather a link, memory, and relationship between the consumers and their experience with the artists and their music.