Has iTunes Improved or Worsened the Music Industry?
When music piracy was in its greatest heat with Napster allowing any college kid with an Internet connection to download a lifetimes worth of music, the industry was looking for a way to capitalize on peoples desire for fast music downloads. We here at Wiser-Rocker pose the following question to you:
Has iTunes Improved or Worsened the Music Industry? Sure, they may have sold a few billion songs to date but at what expense? Is the album dead? Do we now live in a culture which is happy with one hit wonder artists and do not delve deeper into records anymore?
On the other hand, do you think more music, and thus more artists are exposed in this fashion than ever before? What do you think?
Perhaps the greatest mistake that the major music labels has made is no viewing Napster as a viable business model and instead tried everything in their power to destroy it from the start- which they successfully had done. In my opinion this only caused people to go more crazy for stealing music. The ease of online downloads cannot be matched. After realizing that their efforts to sue the hell out of song file sharing was futile, the music industry then tried in vien in capitalize on the online download craze. However, these early pay per song download models were so confusing and complicated, most people desired to steal music.
To Apple's credit, they succeeded at the pay per song model because they made buying songs easier than stealing them. This was not an easy task and not many other companies have been able to replicate this magic formula.
The effects, however, of a pay per song model is that the need or desire to purchase a full length album is obliterated completely. Apple has tried to give incentives for buying full length albums in the form of 1) cheaper prices for full cd's and 2) extra bonus material only available through buying the album. Unfortunetly, this has not completely helped the music industry.
The reality is that we live in an American Idol society which does not want to listen to an entire album from start to finish. Is this such a bad thing? For the artist, it may actually make the process of staying on the radio easier, as the artist does not need to waste time and resources on an album pumped up with filler tracks. The artist simply needs to focus on a good hit song every 6 months. This will reak havok on live performances, as the American Adol crowd will go insane when hit songs are not played every five minutes.
One thing is for certain: the music industry and recording artists need to search for creative ways to make new revenue that simply did not exist when Jimi Hendrix roamed this great earth. With the ecomony in shambles and music listeners paying for only the single tracks the artist revenues are hurting.
