Technological Advancements In The Music Industry

Technological Advancements Have Changed The Way The Music Business Operates in Recent Decades

Since the 70’s there has been constant new technological advancements that are not directly associated with music which have required the music industry to keep developing and adapting to what the consumers want. As well as this, there are specific developments made just for music which creates competition between labels during the late 20th and 21st century.

In 1979 the Sony Walkman came on the market. There was a significant improvement in the quality of cassette tapes and thanks to the Walkman they became more popular than vinyl by 1982. Once cassettes over took vinyl the sales dropped by half a billion because of pirating music. People were now

It was released by Apple Computers in 2003 and is now the most successful music store online. In its first year of business it made just under $70 million. This decade also acquainted us with the iPod in 2001. The first model cost $400 and had a 5GB memory. The iPod has had many model changes and upgrades through the years. Because of new music streaming websites such as Youtube, Spotify and Google Play, labels are making more than the average 15-20% that they would from the sale of physical copies of the music because they don’t have the expense of hardcopy production. Although this benefited the labels it did not benefit the artists. For every one million plays a song gets played on Youtube the artist receives $1,750, on Spotify they receive $5,210 which contrast with Google Play who gives the artists $45,750. One of the biggest struggles that began in this decade was with piracy which was made easy by services such as ‘uTorrent’, 2005. By the end of the 00’s the music industry could no longer stop everyone from illegally downloading music because people did not want to spend money on music they could so easily have for free. This changed the way in which the music industry made the majority of their money, now some of their main sources of income were from touring, endorsements and merchandising. Advancements and inventions such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook have created more gateways for the music industry. For many successful artists, having someone run their social media accounts is a full time job. 21st century fans are deeply immersed in the lives of their favourite artists and want to know their every move and see their glamorous lifestyle. This is a huge benefit for the music industry because it is free advertisement and the fans are happy. Youtube created some problems for the music industry because of copyright infringement but in 2006 ‘Warner Music Group’ signed a deal with Youtube about developing software