Thoughts On Music

Digital Media Vs Music - The multi Media soundclash

The commercial landscape for the talented musician is changing, once there was the near monopoly of opportunity for musicians and producers to showcase their works - the major record company. These lumbering giants of creative administration once had a stranglehold on the career prospects of the commercial musician and the A&R and marketing functions of the major record company was seen as the only way to get your music heard. Companies such as Sony BMG, Warner Bros, EMI, Polygram and Universal all treated the music marketplace as their kingdom and the subjects were seen as disposable heroes of the hour or minute or in the case of the low budget low priority artist - the second. What this did to the prospects of maintaining a sustained career in the music industry was to create an eternal bottle neck of talent at the HQ of the record company and an opportunity for different business models to come to the fore.

The advance of digital media emerged to create a balance of opportunity and the development of MP3 technology ushered in a new media to enable musicians to reach their audience with exciting new channels to take their music to their public with little interference from the traditional music industry. MP3 technology fairly recent (the first MP3 mass uptake of music sharing begun with Napster in 1998 but the technology dates back to 1987) and this technology revolution began to signify the demise of the traditional music industry. With the opening up of music on demand over the web the power began to shift from the record label administrators to the creators/musicians. The only problem that still remained for the creative music producer or artist was to find methods of advertising and marketing in better ways than the record label.

The traditional areas of marketing and promotions that the record label claimed as its domain was soon to be challenged by new forms of media that enabled musicians to ride the new wave of marketing and promotions by the use of digital media. The market was opening up for a new form of communications that would enable the musician to short circuit the functions of the record label by establishing alternative routes to the music marketplace, all that remained to be challenged was a new methodology to reach out to music buying public.