Technology: a Threat or Contribution to Music?

The creation of digital music has changed the music industry for always. However, people seem not yet to reach an agreement whether this change has been beneficial or detrimental.

Society in general seems to be really excited about the new technologies and services related to music downloading and Internet streaming, such as iTunes, Torrent, Spotify, and Pandora. Nowadays, people have instant access to hundreds of thousands of songs for very few money or sometimes even for free. In addition, these songs can be stored or streamed from portable devices, such as cellphones and laptops. Therefore, it seems that society cannot complain about these new technologies. Even for those who do, older technologies, such as CD and Vinyl are always available in the market. In fact, Vinyl has become so popular between young people that modern record players are now being widely commercialized.

However, things are not so “harmonic” in the music industry. Once digital music was invented, the business was forced to reshape and adapt to this technology’s demands. Many benefited from this new system, but many others did not.

Digital music was first incorporated into a digital optical audio disk (compact disk) in 1977 and officially commercialized in 1982. However, CDs were too expensive at that time and did not become widely popular until the early 2000s. On the other hand, the development of digital technology made a huge impact in music studios before the 2000s. Tape recorders became obsolete and were rapidly substituted by computers, which made the editing and mixing procedures easier, cheaper and faster. Moreover, digital effects and instruments provided an extensive selection of new timbers and performance possibilities to the artists.

It seems reasonable to say that so far the digital technology has only contributed to the music recording business. However, this statement does not apply to everyone. David Grohl’s documentary “Sound City” shows that not all studios were capable of keeping up with the latest technologies. Sound City was one of those studios. Its owner, Tom Skeeter, had made a great investment on analog equipment and could not afford to give it all away for a new technology, which had yet to be learned. The studio went through a considerable crisis at that time.

The music industry, however, reached its major crisis when home computer users began sharing digitized music. Napster software was the main contributor to music sharing. It provided free music to people all around the world, and eventually more music sharing software became available, such as Kazaa, eMule, Limewire, Torrent, etc. People stopped paying for music and many record labels went bankruptcy. Recorded music companies tried suing these software companies and many times they were successful. Music sharing even became illegal in many countries. However, as long as digital music exists, illegal music sharing will also exist.

The fight against piracy will probably prevail for many years. Nonetheless, recorded music companies cannot turn their backs to digital music. The constant advancement of computers led contemporary society to migrate to the digital world and so did music. The invention of portable music devices, such as the iPod, smartphones and laptops along with legal music streaming and downloading platforms, such as iTunes, Spotify and Pandora, made digital music more and more popular. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), “In 2014, the industry’s global digital revenues increased by 6.9 per cent to US$6.85 billion. For the first time, the industry derived the same proportion of revenues from digital channels (46%) as physical format sales (46%).

This statement shows that the music industry is being able to adapt to this new technological scenario. In addition, many artists and specially new ones are benefiting from digital music platforms, because music is now reaching a way greater and more varied public than ever before along with a cheap and fast distribution. However, music sales are not so profitable for artists as it used to be. According to Donald Passman, in his book “All You Need to Know about the Music Business”, the artists are paid around 13% to 20% of the wholesale price of their music. Since digital music is cheaper than physical format albums, artists profit less from digital channels. Moreover, in the digital domain people are more likely to buy singles than full albums, diminishing once again artists’ income.

Therefore, digital music was definitely a contribution to society by providing a massive connection and interaction with music. As for the music industry, digital music has contributed with more efficient and cheaper tools, but it has also become a threat when diminishing the market value of songs and facilitating piracy. Nevertheless, it is clear that music had to become part of our digital society in order to survive, and for this reason, digital music is an inevitable contributor to the music business. Without digital music the business would have vanished.