The Online Revolution

Due to the intense and fast development of the types of media music can be played and brought from these days, the internet has played a huge part in changing the music industry.

Music can now be downloaded from various internet site and iTunes (owned by Apple). Apple has kept developing and improving their music playing products, expanding their market and ways in which music can be played, brought and watched. For example, products such as the iPad, the iPhone and the iPod. Each of these products have been developed and are on at least the third developed product (e.g. iPhone 5). This has meant that there is much less of a need for buying music in the forms of CD’s from high street stores such as HMV, and is much more efficient for consumers as they can listen to music directly from their device, or on an internet website they can access on their device. 

Through these changes in the music market, artists can appeal to a younger audience as these are the people who have grown up whilst the industry has changed.  It is also more convenient for the audience because they are ale to buy individual tracks rather than a whole album.

Artists also use social networking sites such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook to advertise their music. Facebook has over 1 billion users, as well as 600 million mobile users, with Twitter having 150 million users, and MySpace having 25 million users. This expands their audience and also appeals to the existing audience. They can also upload music on these sites as well as advertising upcoming gigs and pubic appearances. Music magazine’s such as Q and NME have also developed through the online revolution as they can be downloaded from the internet, making it much more easily accessible to the audience.

In my opinion, I think the online revolution has had a positive impact on how easy artists can communicate and sell their music to their audience. This also means that the younger generation, who are predominantly the main group who listen and buy music, can access it easier.  However, it had affected the high street stores such as HMV, as they have recently had to close a lot of stores because of downloadable music and falling sales. They now only have 273 stores in 4 countries, which is significantly lower than 5-10 years ago.