Tuesday, November 23, 2010

NET102Power and Economy

How do economic relationships conflict with or support existing power structures through the Internet?
In my Essay 1 I discussed how the internet has changed the music industry. iTunes Music Store is a classic example of how they have gained economic globalisation of the music industry. When Apple introduced their online store front on April 28 2003, at the time there was over 200,000 where available to purchase. Since then it has grown astoundingly and on February 24 2010, the store served it’s 10 billionth song download (Wikipedia, 2010).
Apple iTunes has obviously changed the way people browse and buy music, hitting the retail music chain stores hard. I remember back in the 90s, buying music albums and singles were a luxury. The average price of a CD was over $30 and for singles, $5 or more, just for the one song. Compared to the prices of today, $2.16 per track or $16.99 for an album. (prices as at 16/10/2010 on iTunes Store) Thats a vast difference, and if you compare this to the inflation rates over the past decade you would also note that back in the 90s that $30 was a lot of money… especially for a high schooler such as myself at that time.
But not just for the consumer has the the music industry changed, but the business of the the music industry. David Kusek, author of the book “The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution”, he predicted the new age of digitisation and how it would affect the business of music. Long gone are the days of the music label, new independent labels are the way of the future, giving artist more creative control over their final tracks. Unlike in the days of the Beatles and U2 where you needed a record label to get into the billboard charts.
Kusek is the Vice President of Berklee College of Music responsible for managing the online music school, Berkleemusic.com. This school is dedicated in training upcoming artist to be marketers of their own music career.
On Kusek online blog, he discuss’ many ways in which new media is affected the music industry. On his recent blog he talks about the new media, iPad. New technology, called reactable systems, fuses DJ culture, touch screen topography and electro-pop showmanship, coming to an iPad near you (Kusek, 2010)
I could go on forever on how the internet has changed the economy and the power of the music industry. The power is now not in the music record labels hands, but back to the music artist them self. Though no longer a place to make billions, but the internet has created new ways for music artist to make money. Watch this space, there is a bright future for the music industry, but not in the way we have known it to be.
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store
Kusek, David. “Future of Music – music industry, music business, digital music and free music downloads.” Future of Music – music industry, music business, digital music and free music downloads. N.p., n.d. Accessed. 8 Oct. 2010. <http://www.futureofmusicbook.com>.
http://www.futureofmusicbook.com/2010/10/react-to-the-music-around-you/

No comments:

Post a Comment