RESEARCH: The State of The Music Industry

The music industry has changed over the years to adapt to the latest trends and customs in order to ensure their consumers get what they want through simpler and easier means. The formats in which music is distributed has progressed immensely due to the advancement of technology. Back in the early days record vinyls were the main format but were then replaced by cassette tapes which were then replaced by CDs in the late 1990s. However as technology advanced a major breakthrough in digital media resulted in the almost downfall of the whole industry as illegal downloading became the main source for consumers of music to get their favourite songs for free meaning sales and profit throughout the music industry plummeted. So now the industry has changed tactics in order stay afloat. 

Production: Artists in the early years had no choice but to book studio time in order to record their songs but seeing as studio is very expensive most artists and bands would have had to get signed by a record label such as Universal or Sony BMG in order to produce their music. However, as the years have gone by technology has enabled artists to produce their music without the need of a record label. Also a new kind of consumers has developed; PROSUMERS. Prosumers are consumers who use music that has already been created and released and make their own music e.g. sampling for freestlyes, mixtapes etc.

Distribution: In the early years, artists marketed their music through radio, live concerts, posters and guest appearances on talkshows. Now however artists have direct access to their fanbases via social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. This is actually a good thing as artists have easier access to a global audience which in turn means more publicity and hopefully an increase in sales and profits. 

Exchange: As I mentioned before media formats have changed in order to make the consumers experience  easier and simpler. Vinyls were very fragile and not very compact which led to them being replaced by cassette tapes. Tapes also had few problems of their own as they could be 'wiped' clean if put close to a magnet and also led to people copying tapes using a tape recorder, this was the equivalent of illegal downloading back then. So tapes were then replaced by CDs, the first digital formats for music. Just like the vinyls, CDs were very fragile and although they were compact just meant that people could get whole albums 'ripped' and distributed to their friends and online for free. So piracy started becoming an issue as Napster cost the music industry billions in sales due to illegal file sharing. Even after Napster was shut down the music industry never really recovered since. Until Apple founder Steve Jobs introduced the iPod and iTunes. This revolutionised how music and now music videos are distributed and exchanged as users of iTunes can download singles from as little as 79p and entire albums at almost half the price of their Retail price. in addition, with the introduction of iCloud downloading and storing your favourite content has never been easier.

Although illegal downloading hasn't been stopped and is actually increasing every year, the music industry better come up with something fast to bring up sales or face crashing into bankruptcy.

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