How Is The Internet And Online Downloads Effecting Record Sales And The Music Industry In General ?
I’ve heard a lot about musicians not being able to produce any more cds/records because of the online music market.
That’s devestating news.. Is there much truth behind that?
If you could give me an explanation on how online sales affect the music industry, and how it would stop artsits producing albums .. would be great.
November 7th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
The convenience of listening to music online came from Napster where people could get the songs for free. The person who created the site was sued so that people now had to pay .99 cents for a song.
At that point, in 2001, iPods were popular. What was also promoted with the iPods was the iTunes store, which allows people to buy songs off the Internet without having to go into stores and buy the album…so even if you don’t get the songs for free, people didn’t have to put up with the hassle of getting out of their house or carrying a Walkman around with just one artist’s CD in it. You also have YouTube becoming popular for a place to listen to music to, because people who use the Internet often wouldn’t need to buy music, but instead listen to whatever is available on YouTube.
There are torrent sites, such as Limewire, that allow people to share files and get music for free. It’s controversial on whether or not it’s illegal or not, because people who has used it hasn’t been arrested (not to say that there weren’t any fines in the past). The basic thing that the music’s free, and people wouldn’t pay music where they could get it for free. Simple as that.
Although the online music market affects record sales, it’s not the sole reason why the music industry is declining. Factors like album prices and the attraction to music come to play. Not a lot of people would want to pay around fifteen dollars for two songs they know, and the rest that they find out later they wouldn’t like. Some songs that you hear on the radio would sometimes be “Ringtone of the Week” status – something you’d think is catchy but not enough to buy the album, therefore you’d probably buy the single off the Internet, but not buy the whole album.