Final Essay

The introduction of new technology into our society can bring positive changes and enhance economic growth, but it can also become disruptive (Mathew, Prabha Susy, 2013). When we think about disruptive technologies, the main examples that surface are linked to the digitalization within the music industry. For decades, record labels have been able to create huge revenue within music sales, music concerts and merchandising. These label’s largest revenues came from physical sales, in which started to decline when the possibility of online downloading became available. Among the industries deeply affected by this disrupt of new technology are the producers of creative content, such as music, TV, film and publishing. All of these areas have foundationally

Becoming completely transformed in the way that artists can reach out to audiences worldwide. It is a toolkit for artists to promote their music without the need of a record label or corporation online. The artist can now tailor their own careers and promote their music with their own personal conventions, as the labels aren’t tailoring and tweaking the music to suit the eye of the mass consumer. This means that the artist has more availability for their audiences, for example, the artist can use social media to broadcast anything they want to project, building a close relationship between artist and consumer, which means the artist can focus on their primary audience, the main element in any commercial profession. The same principals can be used when discussing other platforms such as video sharing sites such as YouTube. YouTube has allowed amateur individual producers such as artists to once again shift the power away from television networks, the music industry etc. The artists/producer can create anything that will satisfy their own target audience through the audience subscribing to their content. Jenkins (2006) explains that audience participation happens at three different levels, those of participation, selection and distribution. These levels run from casual participation to compulsive, functional

As media is now free flowing across numerous platforms, mostly beneficial for producer and consumer as it is now very accessible, there are some concerns over the growth of piracy within these industries. Due to the growth of music downloading within the music industry, music has become vastly more accessible. This has caused illegal downloading of musical content reach a high of 95% of all music downloaded. Whilst 28% of all internet users (globally) use illegal downloading websites. Even though digital sales have reached a record breaking growth from sites such as ITunes, music is still mostly downloaded illegally (IFPI, 2008), cutting down potential revenues for artist and record labels alike. So as digitalization grows and more media mediums and platforms continue to interlink within our convergence culture, it is only assumed that music piracy will grow with it unless the law and regulations keep up with the technological advancements produced by digitalization, in which there is no evidence to support that the law can contend with such advancements (Keller,