Digital technologies have significantly changed the way musicians record music, the way record companies distribute music, and the way consumers consume music. From Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technologies to Mesh Networks, technology has also dramatically changed the way consumers consume music. The advent of the Internet and such technologies as those above has enabled music consumers to download MP3 music files. However, many P2P networks enabled consumers do download music files, both old and recently released music, for free. Websites like Napster offered access to thousands of computer users to swap music files for free. Such files included the latest music available, including many selections available even before being released for sale by the artist or record company.
Such developments have significantly impacted the way consumers consume music. By downloading music files for free, consumers forced the record industry and angry artists to completely retool the way music is priced, marketed, and offered for sale. The motivation for such retooling was decreased sales of CDs in record stores.
Over the years the music industry has had to cleverly adapt and change to keep up with advancing technology. Initially artists made money from record sales, album sales, and touring. Before ‘the digital age’ fans would have to walk into a music store, and buy the vinyl record or album to listen to the great quality sound in the comfort of their homes, as they lacks the ability of easy transportation. However micro-music developed throughout the 90’s and music became almost completely digital. This opened the doors for sits and software like LimeWire and Napster to enable people to stream and download music for free directly to their computers. With little to no barriers this meant the masses had incredibly quick easy access to music they wanted. Eventually many of these sites got shut down for copyright infringements and IP lawsuits and the industry was left wondering how to continue charging for goods still available for free online.
Music on the move has been available to us since the early 90’s, and artists were able to utilize CDs and smaller vehicles of music playback such as Walkman or CD Players. However Apple and its ‘i’ products took the music industry by storm with a world renowned status and arguable saved the music business by provided a legal music downloading system iTunes. This provided a new platform, keeping up with the industry advancements, for record labels and artists to sell their music completely digital.
Illegal downloading still happens and combined with streaming sites like YouTube, Vevo and SoundCloud and legal download site iTunes in-store record sales are suffering. Now, youngsters especially, are growing up in a world where you aren’t proud of your CD collection and owning that album, being able to flick through the album leaflet isn’t enough to want to OWN the physical copy.
Research in recent years has shown;
Only 53% of young people have purchased music or video in-store over the last 12 months. This is partly attributed to the popularity of downloading and streaming via the internet (Mintel, ‘Youth technology-UK-2010’).
The number of people buying CDs year on year fell for the third time in 2011, despite approximately half of consumers in Mintel’s exclusive consumer research preferring to own a physical copy of their content (Mintel, ‘Media Consumption-UK-July 2012’).
The BPI (British Phonographic Industry) estimates that online copyright infringement cost the UK music industry around £200 million in 2009. New legislation has now been passed (the Digital Economy Act) to discourage illegal file sharing, but it is not clear how successful this will be and the likelihood is that new tools for piracy will emerge (Mintel, Paid-For vs. Free – Consumer Attitudes to Pricing in Media and Music- UK – April 2010).
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