Revolution of Music

The digital age of music has brought many innovations to the business, but why pay for music on iTunes when it can be attained for free off of any of the hundreds of file sharing sites, such as Limewire, Frostwire, or even bit torrent. As a result, the music industry is in utter chaos, people no longer buy CD's to support their favorite bands. No longer can artists make profits from selling their music, they must turn to other avenues for income. This has been made possible not only because of the rise in technological advancements, but a major change that occurred in the music industry many years ago.

Around the mid 1980's, the music industry took on a completely revolutionary change; the switch from analog recording to digital recording. Many famous artists such as Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, etc. recorded their music via analog recording. As a result, the sound quality that is achieved through analog recording is highly beyond that of digital recording, yet digital recording has a turn-on that highly appeals to the corporate world. Digital recording is much cheaper than recording with analog. Thus, the appeal for the mass production of music was born and it was only a matter of time before this change backed up and led to the decay of the entire industry itself. With the process of recording going digital it seems that it has led to the degradation of musicianship.


(Left: Jerry Garcia performing with the Grateful Dead at Giants Stadium in 1993. Jerry was a musical genius
Right: Jimi Hendrix performing in Honolulu on June 1, 1969. He was the man who put the Rock in Rock N' Roll)







It may seem that it lead to the increased the opportunity of upcoming artists and bands trying to break through, but that is not the case. The more opportunity that is provided means increased competition. That competition causes noise, the noise is the amount of artists that can get in the way of finding "the next popular band". No one pays for music anymore, that is just a simple conclusion to jump to. There is an occasion or two with a particular artist that people will buy their album, but it's rare. So this avenue of revenue is virtually profitless, hence why the emphasis on reducing the cost to produce this recording comes into play. So how can a musician survive and pay their bills if they're struggling to make ends meet, just waiting for their music to be heard.