Monday, October 13, 2008

The Future of Music

This is mostly for the seniors but I know that the juniors are big on music as well.

TorrentFreak has a very good article about musicians and their new approaches to distributing music. In class we talked about p2p and its impacts. This article gives a better analysis.

There were many good points made. One that stands out is when the member of The Pragmatic says that he probably wouldn't be a musician today if it hadn't been for Napster (the old free Napster). I think that this more than anything exemplifies the open, democratizing and uplifting nature of the Web. Information only has value when it is shared and sharing is the basis of all culture.

As music companies continue to employ more and more punitive measures to protect their profit from album sales (a revenue dead end) the fans will vote with their feet, or their browsers. People want their music their way. The Web delivers this to them. Bands that are good and support their fans will be supported in return, the others will retool or fade away. Instead of marketing people deciding what music we should listen to, because they think they can make money on a musician, the consumers of that music will make that decision.

Which is as it should be.

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