Date Posted: 4/26/2013 10:52:12 AM
Posted By: samilito Membership Level: Bronze Total Points: 9
The music scene and music industry has changed so much over the last couple of decades and it’s not as easy to make a living from it. Some things have gotten easier, though, while other things have become more difficult. What do I mean? Oh, let me count at least some of the ways.I have only been involved in the music scene for just a couple of decades but even in that short time I have seen some changes in the industry that are better , while some things have gotten worse. Much has to do with the advancement of technology. Technology has been both helpful to musicians while, at the same time, hurtful in some other ways as well.It is much easier now for a band to release its music and present it to a mass audience. With the development of recording technology available for home studios, that task is so much easier. Even a basic home computer for sale these days can handle most of the high end music software. Even the lower end and cheaper software is capable of producing quality recordings. That’s something for the plus column obviously.However, once you get your music recorded and converted to MP3 format, making money from it isn’t all that easy. With the invention and popularization of the MP3 format, audio piracy has gone through the roof. In the old days, musicians just had to worry about poor quality bootlegs cutting into their profits. Now you have high quality MP3’s that anyone can rip off of a borrowed CD. People can borrow a CD from a library, take it home, rip MP’s from it and then return the CD back to the library. Or they may borrow it from a friend. Even worse, friends can make up data CD’s with loads of MP3 files and trade with each other.Music gear has advanced technologically to an amazing extent as well. You have effects processors that do things live now that were only able to be done in the studio on the latest equipment 20 years ago. The prices also have fallen dramatically. That’s after adjusting for inflation of course. MIDI technology was new 20 years ago but is now commonplace. Try to find a rackmount effects unit or some other piece of electronic music gear without a MIDI port. We even have MIDI foot controllers for many rackmount effects units and processors. We also have pitch correction software and effects processors for tone deaf singers. It’s amazing really. Unfortunately, it makes it harder for those with the real talent to stand out when many others are cheating.The potential to reach a mass audience has gotten easier with the growth of the Internet. Developing your own website is so easy now and there are many social networking sites you can use as a musician to reach people from all over the world. You can also send out mass e-mails to an e-mail list. Just as long as it is not spam. In the old days, you would have to buy a lot of stamps and send out to a snail mail list. E-mailing is a lot cheaper and easier. Although, some people have learned to tune out certain e-mail subject lines and some of your e-mails might go straight into their junk bin.The live music scene has changed dramatically as well; unfortunately, not always for the better. With the popularity of karaoke increasing, many potential venues have scaled back on the number of live bands they have performing at their establishments. There is even a problem with piracy concerning karaoke music, so even the companies producing karaoke backing tracks are being hurt by that.Creating fliers to promote your gigs are a breeze now with office productivity software. In the old days you would have to create one by hand but now you can lay it all out on a personal computer and go run up a bunch of copies at your local Staples. It really doesn't get much easier than that. On the flip side, getting people to show at your gigs is a bit of a challenge with the current state of the economy. Also, I think there might be a little less of an appreciation now for live music, with the popularization of such things as karaoke and certain reality TV shows having to deal with music.Online publishing is great for musicians wanting to reach people through articles, selling sheet music, MP3’s and CD’s. However, many people are taking the sheet music, scanning it and posting it online for free download. Not to mention that there are many file sharing sites for the music itself. It’s really hard to make a buck these days from selling your own music.So it’s easy to see the many pluses and minuses that rapidly advancing technology has heaped upon the music world. Some things have gotten better and some things have gotten worse. Let’s just hope that the good eventually outweighs the bad.
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