The Music Industry Meets The Digital Side

Sunday, September 2, 2012


      


No one can deny that over the past ten years there has been a huge in the way people listen, buy, or illegally download music from their favorite artist or band. With the world switching gears and now doing everything digitally, the music industry is just now adapting to the new change.

With the growing number of consumers searching for the latest music and the record companies not giving them what they want consumers would soon turn to peer-to-peer sharing. In a nutshell illegal downloading is what was and still is putting a hurting on the music industry.

There are many advantages that can come from digital music. Some of them are being able to take your music with you anywhere you go. Also being able to have your music on different devices such as ipods, smart phones, mp3 players, PC’s, Ipads, and Mac’s. Another plus is consumers don’t have to buy the whole album just to listen the only one or two songs they like from that album; they can buy the single instead.

According to the Nielsen and Billboard report digital music sales made 50.3% of music sales in 2011. Showing that physical sales declined by 5% and digital sales increased by 8.4%. Fast forward to 2011 to present the record companies are now starting to grasp their fingers around this beast they called The Digital Landscape.

WMG (Warner Music Group) gets 25% of its recorded music digital revenue from streaming companies such as MOG, Pandora, Spotify, Ticketfly and a few more. The four major labels also started to invest more in radio, ticketing and artist services. In order to make even more money and encourage consumers to buy albums and not singles, record companies started to add bonuses such as booklets with photos, liner notes and videos on iTunes if you purchase the album. Apple also raised the cost of singles and lowered the cost of catalog albums.

As the social media and technology continue to change it is clear that the music industry will be a few steps behind but they will indeed pull through and continue to be a multi-billion dollar industry.


1 comments:

Steve Gross II said...

Hi Asia,

I absolutely agree with your take on how the entertainment business, specifically the music business, has evolved.

P2P sharing has truly become one of the standard channels for people to obtain media and new content from their favorite artists, bands, actors, directors, and/or documentary filmmakers.

The irony of the entire change is that the entertainment industry is up as a whole, whereas the profit margins of the major record labels have dropped dramatically over the past several years.

Companies had gotten use to three and four hundred percent margins and are now having to adjust to the loss in revenue, due to the perceived gouging of the aggregate dollar.

I would be interested in hearing the opinions of yourself and followers about how much more effective memberships and standard monthly fees for legally downloading lossless quality without violating copyright law.

Again, great blog and well thought out posts… I’ll gladly follow your postings.

-Steve

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