Digital Technologies and Contemporary Patterns of Music - Essay Example

 Digital Technologies and Contemporary Patterns of Music Introduction Since the development of internet 2.0 and the subsequent increase in the number of illegal files being shared, original music record sales have been on an alarming decrease. Over time, there has been a slow process of de-intermediation that has taken place. Gatekeepers such as record companies, pluggers, music critics and radio / television stations used to play a pivotal role in determining exactly which music artists would be given an opportunity of going ‘main stream’. However, there are now a wide range of new channels that can effectively be used by music consumers to educate themselves on new releases and artists (Halsey and Wooley 2009). The rapid growth in the digital music market has received a major boost from the ever increasing popularity of various online music download stores such as various streaming services and iTunes. Modern music consumers are spoilt for options in the possible methods that are at their disposal through which they can be able to acquire new music. These sources range from a wide variety of several non-paid and paid legitimate sources to some other unlawful channels. The impact of the use of digital technology in music production and distribution and the subsequent impact on music consumption is a topic that has been seen to draw a wide variety of comments from several legal experts, pundits, scholars and the music industry (Halsey and Wooley 2009). The traditional economic and social arrangements that used to surround the production and distribution of music are breaking down at an ever accelerating rate and markets are becoming more consolidated. This paper seeks to establish just how the use of these digital technologies can be seen to be impacting the modern consumer’s consumption of music. Several decades before the advent and widespread use of the Internet, the music industry was seen to be relatively healthy and its worldwide sales were seen to peak considerably in 1998 (Baym, 2010). Since this peak the spread of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, such as Napster have greatly contributed towards the overall decline in the general sale of CDs. The monopoly that was being exercised by reproduction of high-quality reproductions was effectively eliminated with the digitization of music such that the illegal copies being reproduced were now being produced having equal quality standards to the original music (May, 2007). Concomitantly, the production of intangible digitized music has resulted in the emergence of new consumption practices. Various legal efforts aimed at trying to counter the piracy of digital music have been mainly focused on using various legal mechanisms to attempt to prosecute file sharers as well as dismantling the P2P networks. Recent measures have now started including the use of mechanisms such as awareness and educational campaigns. In the year 2010, the dismantling of Limeware was a key marker in the demise of P2P networks and the eventual emergence of various new sources of pirated music (BPI, 2010). The Shifting Landscape of Music Consumption Technology has caused a major shift in the distribution and retail of music, videos and books, the inventorying of these products has moved from the use of expensive physical shelf spaces in large national warehouses and local stores to the now virtual shelf spaces available in the online virtual world. In the physical distribution and retail of music, the average Walmart store can be seen to offer an average of around 4,000 CD titles while and average sized music super store is seen to offer an average of around 40,000 music titles (Anderson, 2006). In contrast to these numbers, online music retailers such as Amazon are capable of stocking music in upwards of around 150,000 different CD titles. Specialized digital music storefronts such as Rhapsody, iTunes, Music Match and Rhapsody are seen to offer an average of about one million music tracks which is roughly the equivalent of approximately more than 100,000 CDs. The Initial Music Industry Structure and Disruption of the Status Quo Until up to around the turn of this current century, the music industry was able to boast of having a rather stable structure. The high cost of music development, recording and distribution were absorbed by the music recording businesses. The difficulty of predicting consumer demand in the determination of whether the music that an artist had produced was going to be popular was often counteracted by the music recording companies producing a rather large number of different acts. This strategy allowed for the revenue generated from the hits to be used in making up for the losses incurred by the production of the many misses (Schulz, 2009). The music industry was mainly dominated by the so called big five music recording companies that included Sony, EMI, Bertelsmann BMG, Time Warner and Universal – Vivendi. Bertelsmann BMG and Sony were later to merge and reduce the big five to four major music recording companies. These companies used to account for approximately 80 percent of all the music produced in the global music market (Graham and Burnes, 2004). These music production companies used to record the music distributed on media such as LP’s, CD’s and cassettes. The prominence of these major music production and distribution companies has fast been on the decline with the emergence of the MP3 music file system. Digitization of the Mode of Delivery The rise of DCM’s (digital content markets) and the spread of the internet were accompanied by the successful growth of the use of pirated and illegal digital products. Programs that enabled digital file sharing where a part of the technology that eventually changed the way by which music lovers acquired and consumed their music. Broadband internet connectivity enabled rapid dispersion of video and audio clips over the internet and as a result of this there was widespread music copyrights infringement alongside the many legal on-line music distribution channels. More recent developments have seen the use of social networking sites increasingly being used as a platform where on-line music communities are able to easily sample, share, recommend and comment on music to one another. Sociological Research on Trends in Music Consumption A research conducted by Michael Useem and Paul Dimaggio to determine the composition of arts audiences found that the consumption of the high arts of music, a category which normally includes symphony and opera was mainly by managers and professors while there were no blue collar workers present. Popular arts like Jazz and rock were equally consumed by all classes of society (Dimaggio & Useem, 1978). Music Hardware and Storage In addition to the modern models of music retail and distribution, there has been a wide variety of new and equally dramatic changes that affect how we access, and store both our entertainment and art. In the early 1980s, the Sony Walkman marked a large milestone in personal entertainment innovation and how we were able to access music while on the go. Newer technologies have been able to make it possible for us to store massive quantities of digital entertainment. Diamond Multimedia released what they called the Rio portable MP3 player in 1998. These simple units were capable of holding up to about 128MB of flash RAM. This space was enough for the storage of about three music albums that mainly comprised of compressed audio files. This technology was eventually superseded by Apple’s introduction of the iPod that offered about 40GB of storage capacity and expanded the potential of portable music to about 10,000 songs. This is in addition to the iPod being small enough to fit into an average sized shirt pocket (Charbonneau 2010). Modern forms of Music Consumption 1. SatCasting, BroadCatching and Webcasting The United States issued two exclusive satellite radio broadcasting licenses to Sat Casters in the 1990’ which resulted in the creation of two Satellite radio stations, namely XM Satellite radio and Sirius. The advent of satellite radio broadcasting further widened music consumers’ music source options, this is because more music channels were now available in both the rural and metropolitan areas. In the United States alone, there were more than 200 additional music stations that boasted of being commercial-free and were now available to customers who were willing to pay a standard monthly fee to access them. On the online front, there has been a steady growth and expansion of programmed video and audio channels that are commonly referred as webcasts. The total number of Webcast stations is now being estimated to be in excess of 100,000. The use of Broadcatchers media such as PodCasts is growing steadily. Podcasts utilize simply technology were user created audio programming touching on a wide variety of subjects ranging from science fiction to more popular music. These podcasts are made available for downloading and playback on any music playing device (Ferrell and Hartline 2008). 2. Subscription Services Recent innovations have made possible the renting of music. This has mainly been enabled by the use of various music subscription services. Examples of these music subscription services providers include, Napster, MusicMatch and VirginDigital. These providers are able to provide music lovers access to an excessively huge catalog of music which is often more than one million music tracks for a low monthly fee. This music catalog continues to increase by the day. 3. Peer-to-Peer Networks P2P is arguably the most controversial music files sharing avenue. In a research conducted by Jupiter research in the year 2004, it was found that approximately 42 percent of all persons surveyed and were aged between the ages of 18 to 24 years regularly traded their music via file sharing (Jupiter Research, 2004). By equipping individuals with the capacity of being able to search and subsequently download music from the various hard drives of their peers computers, these P2P networks inadvertently helped in making it possible for a large number of people to be able to easily access million of unique music recordings. 4. Music Customization and Personalization The ability of our being able to personalize and customize our music entertainment experience is gradually and continually improving. Online collaborative filtering systems such as Amazon’s which once a buyer has bought a certain book, show the buyer other books that happen to have been bought by persons who have also bought the same book that the buyer has just bought have been essential in the customization of one’s music experience. These systems such as LaunchCast which is a division of Yahoo! Music, work by permitting the customization of audio programming based mainly on pre-selected music artists or genres that a listener has just selected. Various audio providers like Last.fm further expand these music listening personalization capabilities by creating various custom radio programming that is mainly based on a user’s listening behaviour and their own music collection. Although the music consumption industry has been seeing increasingly enlightened consumption as a result of personalization and customization, there are several authors that have raised various concerns over the personalization and customization of music (Sunstein 2001). New advertising and marketing technologies are quickly taking advantage of these new technologies in their information gathering and data cross-referencing so as to be able to create target campaigns. It is predicted that consumers will soon be seeing various adverts on their computers, televisions and PDA’s that have been carefully tailored to appeal to their particular taste category. This situation will be seen to reflect the notion of the “Daily Me” that projects that people will increasingly be putting together very specialized and particular portfolio’s of culture, information and news that will be seen to further reinforce their existing views and preferences while at the same time creating a filter that will be responsible for filtering out everything else (Negroponte 1995). Explaining the Strategies and Behaviors Employed by Consumers in their Consumption There are three main general explanations that have been put forth by various scholars in an attempt to try and explain the strategies and behaviors of consumers and various audiences. As it has been previously noted in this paper, technology is considered to be a tool that essentially helps users in the navigation of the ever expanding cultural catalogues. It is supposed to guide a user towards more diverse and greater cultural consumption. Several pundits and scholars have been seen to be keenly adhering to the notion that if they build up something, then definitely consumers will come to consume it. This notion is seen to suggest that by creating various large new catalogues, the sheer sizes of these catalogues will eventually incite and encourage people to try experimenting and discovering new things. The main advantage of this is that with the reduced browsing costs, consumers will be able to avoid buying a whole music album only for them to discover that they only like one song (Doctorow 2003). Based on these arguments, it can be seen that technology is generally being assumed to be a tool that students can be able to use as they attempt to seek out new music. The second explanation put forth to explain the strategies and behaviors of consumers focuses on the role that various social networks play in helping various individuals in making purchase decisions and in finding information (DiMaggio and Louch 1998). Social networks generally help people to find out about politics, jobs, health services and culture (Granovetter 1995). It has been noted that people tend to heavily rely on their acquaintances and friends for reviews and recommendations. In media, culture and art, various influence leaders and trend setters have been seen to play a vital role in the broad circulation of information concerning new products (Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955). Corporations such as Procter and Gamble are now enlisting and hiring the services of “cool hunters” to help in the creation of a buzz around their new product offerings. As a result of this trend, the second hypothesis is that face to face and social networks will always remain as important avenues in the exploration and sharing of new music (Gladwell 2000). Consumers are always being influenced by advertising and mass media. In the United States alone, it has been estimated that roughly more than 400 billion dollars is annually spent by the advertising industry. In the 1950’s advertisement agencies were employing various psychologists so as for them to be able to help these agencies to perfect the “Science of persuasion”. In recent years, there has resistance to the idea propagated by this trend that consumers are not only dupes but also passive media consumers. It has been shown that audiences are capable of resisting dominant media messages, actively navigating the market place as well as actively take advantage of new technological advances that empower them. Research conducted by W. Russell Neuman found that both the explosion of cultural choice and development and use of cable television did not lead to a situation where consumers actively used the new medium to try and explore new programming and channels. It was instead found out that audiences were basically habit bound and exhibited a tendency of resisting these technologies if the technologies tried to force them to change their existing media usage habits. Audiences were also seen to be quite passive and disliked working for their entertainment (Neuman 1991). The third hypothesis put forth is that it is quite possible that the new emerging digital technologies will be quite slow in their taking hold and most cultural consumers will essentially continue to rely on the traditional mass media such as newspapers, radio and films to act as the main sources for helping them discover new music. Conclusion Most music lovers tend to spend a considerable amount of time consuming music. The process of discovering new music styles, artists and songs has been found to be an integral part of the music consumption experience. Most people tend to rely on music “trend setters” who are acquaintances and friends who actively search for as well as make recommendations on which music they should attempt to try. Modern music consumers have portrayed a trend whereby the want to discover and consume their music quickly. They are seen to tend to prefer instant gratification and dislike paying for music that they think they should be getting for free. There has been a rather significant exponential increase in the overall volume of sale of digital music. This increase in the sale of digital music has been the main herald of the death of the album as consumers now prefer using media such as iTunes in selecting specific songs for their consumption. Since the turn of this century, various technological innovations have continued to reshape how people experience music. After the World War II, the earlier technological innovations such as the radio and LP (Long playing, high-fidelity disc) led to a situation that the founder of Elektra records described as a hitherto unprecedented flowing of sonic experimentation and musical styles (Karr 2002). This exponential growth in music consumption can be expected to continue growing as new technological innovations continue being developed every day. Bibliography: Karr, Rick. 2002. "TechnoPop: The Secret History of Technology and Pop Music." National Public Radio. Neuman, W. Russell. 1991. The Future of the Mass Audience. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gladwell, Malcolm. 2000. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston, Mass: Little, Brown and Company. Katz, Elihu and Paul Lazarsfeld. 1955. Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press. Granovetter, Mark. 1995. Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers. 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