Large music labels have made statements since the late sass regarding the Internet’s damage to music sales through piracy by showing the decline of CDC sold year over year. However, the music labels themselves did not realize the sales opportunities that could be provided by the Internet and only saw a damaging environment. The same music labels also neglected to take advantage of the Internet as a new venue to find popular music artists.
As with all types of modernization, understanding takes time, and the music industry is beginning to come around by offering portions of their libraries for sale through sanctioned distributes like Amazon and tunes as well as taking notice of new artists found through sites like Youth. The Internet has helped the music industry by providing new methods of music distribution as well as a global arena for self-promotion by new artists. The Amazon MPH store has provided a place for music lovers to find new music as well as provide a digital storage space for all new purchases.
One of the best features Is “Customers can now store all of their Amazon MPH purchases for free in Cloud Drive,” (Amazon. Mom, Inc. , 2011). The Cloud Drive helps to ensure safety of purchases as well as the continued availability of the MPH regardless of any hardware malfunction. By allowing access to the Cloud Drive in a native application for both Android and Apple products over 35 million Americans can buy new music and stream It anywhere there Is an Internet connection. Amazon’s MPH store also Includes the ability for users to comment on albums and songs.
By having first-person reviews by ordinary music lovers, Amazon has taken out some of the guesswork on whether or not to make new music purchases. On the front page of the Amazon MPH store there is a promotion section specifically for new artists. The “Artists on the Rise” section includes recommendations based on similar artists. The recommendation links the visitor directly to the new artists purchasing page, and Includes a percentage Image of how likely visitors of that page were to buy the album suggested. The front page also includes various music sales.
Every week there are 100 albums on sale for $5. With $5 discount albums consumers would be more likely to purchase multiple albums knowing that they are obtaining a bargain. In the tunes 9 upgrade, Apple included additional features that help users to share new artist purchase recommendations with friends. The addition of the share feature in the tunes store allows users to “click the arrow next to the item’s Buy button and choose Share On Backbone or Share On Twitter to post a message about the Item on your social-networking platform of choice,” (Brakes, 2009).
The Share On feature will allow people to tell their entire friend network on Backbone or all of their Twitter followers about the new artist that they discovered through the tunes store. With over 275 lion pods sold over the last decade, the tunes user group community can easily help a new artist become well-known (Ford, 2011). Plastic generation Is also done only create playbills from songs in a computer’s local library, it will also search the tunes music store for similar artists helping discovery of new artists.
The Genius sidebar even allows users to play a sample of the suggested new purchase without Changing the view within tunes from the library. With a total of 1 1. 7 billion tracks sold since the inception of tunes in 2001 the Genius software is one more tool for Apple to ensure legitimate music sales continue to flourish (Ford, 2011). The rise of the Internet has made Youth a popular site for new artists to display their musical prowess as well as current popular artists to exhibit their newest works.
The music industry has access to talent across the globe through sites like Youth where they could interview new prospective artists prior to signing them. With features like newer count and user comments on Youth music labels can now also see if the artist is rising in popularity or falling, helping to ensure the label makes the right decision in signing or continuing support for an artist. However, Youth has a reputation for silly pet videos and video blobs, but Youth can also turn a local band into an overnight sensation.
The band K Go signed with Capital in 2001, but it Nas not until posting a Youth video in 2006 that the band gained any national recognition (Money, 2006). The band released the album Oh No in 2005, but initial sales for the first year were low. K Go previously had performed a dance routine for song from an earlier album as part of the live show experience. However, this time the dance routine was choreographed, filmed, and placed on the Internet, where lions of users had access. The catchy dance routine video helped boost album sales 182% a year after the Oh No album’s initial release.
The band has since provided at least one new video for each album. The new videos continue to receive millions of views helping to ensure K Go’s cultural relevance and album sales. Few other Internet technologies have changed the way people listen to music online more than Pandora. Pandora is available directly through any Flash-capable browser, any ISO device, Android device, Blackberry, Monika, Palm, or Windows mobile (MacMillan, Burrows, & Ante, 2009). Pandora has changed how music lovers enjoy music by using “the music genome–that lets users create online radio stations generated by the software’s recommendations” (Guilford, 2007).
The benefit of Pandora over regular radio stations is the level of interaction allowed by the listener. However, the record labels still receive the same type of fee as they would from a traditional broadcast radio station, including royalties of $30 million in 2009 to record labels and artists Copeland, 2010). The listener begins by choosing one song, and the Music Genome Project takes over and selects music from similar genres and artists. As new music is created, it is added to Pander’s library in a similar way to commercial radio stations.
However, unlike commercial radio stations, if that song is not what the audience Ants to hear they can give the song a “thumbs down” removing it from that user’s station. By allowing the user to customize the type of music that holds interest, the Music Genome Project can take over and begin to play new artists, introducing users to new bands with albums for sale online. Despite all of the claims that the music industry is suffering from the Internet age, the Internet has provided many new methods of sales and listeners.