Remember when CDs were a big hit? I certainly do. The 2000s was a decade of being “hood” or “emo” — when everyone was buying Britney Spears “Oops I Did it Again” album.
As a person born in the mid 90s, the 2000s meant a lot to me but it seemed like music got worse by 2010. As technology progressed, CDs beat out cassette tapes, then digital downloads beat out CDs. We have smartphones with apps that have changed the way we access music.
According to an article on complex.com, “we’re now living in a digital era where audio hardware, enhanced media formats and on demand streaming services determine our music intake.”
Goodbye compact discs, hello Spotify and iTunes. Pandora is here too but it is not as popular since the ads bother listeners, but they always advertise the ad-free Pandora One app for $4.99 a month or $54.89 a year.
Apple is dominant with its sales of the iPhone 6 and the iPad Pro, but when a new streaming service such as Spotify comes along, of course the increase of competition occurs. According to an article from the Wall Street Journal, “The tech giant is betting that for the second time in as many decades it can persuade millions of people around the world to change how they listen to and pay for music.”
Yes, technology is changing the way we purchase and view music. Now there’s many ways beyond CDs to access music. The digital era is taking the world by storm. However some people in the music industry might not like the constant technology changes from product sellers.
“Not everyone in the music industry is optimistic about the change. Some artists and smaller labels have complained about low royalty sales for streamed music, over which they have little control.” So it seems as if the advances in technology is affecting musicians, in a way of not having control.
But customers are looking at various ways to discover new music besides digital streaming, and one of the ways is social media. According to the article on complex.com, “social media and music seem to go hand-in-hand these days especially since everyone loves an audience and the industry’s biggest names consistently remain trending topics.” In the 2000s, we only had popular social media sites such as MySpace and YouTube and now we have even more sites that connect to each other in a way of accessing music.
But as technology is advancing, things musically could get worse especially for the musicians. It changes the way they can sell their products especially with Apples constant changes.
According to the article from The Wall Street Journal, “Persuading a significant share of those buyers to switch to a product that costs $120 a year will be a challenge, but would be lucrative for apple and the record companies. But the move could backfire, if many subscribers are drawn from the elite ranks of iTunes purchases who spend more than $120 a year.”
In other words, as technology is progressing, customers who are drawn to certain products can decrease. With the costs of music streaming service with this decades technology its better to be safe then sorry, and have back up ideas in case something goes wrong.