ITunes Reviving Or Killing The Music Industry Zach Campbell

Zach Campbell

English 110

Hannah Stephenson

ITunes Reviving Or Killing The Music Industry

Music is one thing that everyone has in common. Not that everyone has the same taste, but just that everyone likes music in general. You also hear music almost everywhere you go. You go to the store and music is playing, you drive somewhere and music is on the radio, you go for a walk and you bring your iPod to listen to. The music industry is not at its peak but more people are listening to music than ever before. This is due to new technology and the accessibility to get music.

Everyone wants to keep up with the newest music. This is sometimes hard. I know when I listen to the radio I am sometimes lost with who sings the song. One thing that helps me find out who sings the songs I love is iTunes. The program is free to download like most downloaders, but charges a small price for each song you want to download. It makes it easy to find popular songs and I am confident that the information is correct because iTunes has licenses to the songs. ITunes doesn’t make a bunch of money off of the downloads. Most of the money goes to the record labels and artists which is another reason to use them. Other downloaders are illegal if they are free to download and they don’t have licenses. These are the ones that are bad for the music industry because the artist don’t get paid. You could use other music downloaders but be careful. These are not legitimate and you are at risk of getting a virus. I wouldn’t recommend you use these. Risking your computer isn’t worth saving a few bucks. You also don’t have to deal with annoying ads in the middle of songs either.

ITunes helps fans all over the world find new artist and keep up with the latest hits from their favorite musicians. People including myself find new artist on iTunes by using Genius. It is one of the newest features on iTunes. It is easy to use. All you do is choose to use it and it analyzes your music and video library on your iTunes and it finds songs similar to your artists. This allows for small bands that no one has heard of a chance to get noticed. This is a big up for the music industry.

A lot of people including myself thought that mp3s and file sharing would be the end of the music industry. I thought how the industry will make money when you can download songs for free or a percentage of the price of a cd. A study done back in 2002 showed that the sales of these mp3s barely affected the sales of albums. This research was done to show the record companies that this technology could help the industry and instead of fighting it they should embrace it. The research was dismissed by the record label companies though.

Mp3s and file sharing are not bad for the music industry just bad for the label companies. Recording companies are responsible for distributing the music and with new technology and with higher quality audio music being easier to make artist see no reason to sign with a record label. They hold off seeing if there is a better deal.

The music industry was already falling before the use of iTunes. There was no avoiding the fall of the industry. The digital revolution has changed all media industries. Some bad things came out of the revolution but overall the music industry was helped out a lot. Music industry is about making money but it is more about entertaining. The celebrities do it for the fans. ITunes and online file sharing has opened so many opportunities for artist and the industry. ITunes has helped create new fans for artist and keep existing fans up to date with music. Mp3 and other file sharing technologies were just building blocks for the music industry to further entertain their fans. ITunes really isn’t the rise or the fall of the music industry. It helped bring great things to an already diminishing industry. In my opinion it helped the industry but we have just seen the beginning of it and hopefully artist still strive and succeed.