"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get."
I have been sitting outside the library for the past 30 minutes since it is one of the most trafficked places on campus. I have taken notice of the people coming and going and what they are doing. Most of them were simply walking in and out, but there were a good number of them on cell phones. Now some believe that the "consensual hallucinations" that we spend a lot of our time in is real. But it is not. It can never offer the same kind of reality that reality does.
You can go on someone's facebook profile to learn who they are or how they are doing, etc. But you can't actually know someone unless you are face-to-face. There is also no variety online. On Facebook you are looking at the same 10 friends every day and ignore the rest. I see hundreds of different faces every single day on campus. There is spontaneity and feeling of the unknown in the real world. I never know who I am going to see each day or what I am going to experience. When I am online it is the same thing every day. Same emails (spiderbytes), same Facebook, same news stories (usually bad). The real world is a journey, the online world is a destination. In the end, the unknown of the real world (and curiosity for adventure) always wins.
This class has taught me more than I could have expected. I knew very little about Cyberspace and information technologies before this semester other than that I loved them. Now as the semester is coming to a close, my eyes have been opened to the online world and its effects on society. Online worlds have become more and more prevalent that one day we could end up completely living in them! The biggest shock for me from this class was realizing my dependence on technology. It is scary to think that there are very few of us who could live without the Internet or cell phones or any of the other information technologies we have come to love. I wish we could have talked more about specific companies such as Facebook, Google, and Apple and their impacts on us and why they do what they do. This class has advanced my abilities as a writer as well as a thinker. My FYS experience has been more helpful than I could have imagined. I have grown as a writer and analytical thinker. I look forward to using what I have learned (in writing and thinking) in all of my future endeavors.
The online virtual world is a very interesting one. You may think to yourself that you don't play online virtual games, but you would be surprised how many actually do. It is estimated that there are 20-30 million people worldwide playing in online fantasy worlds (Castranova). All 20-30 million people are not avid players who spend hours each day playing, but there are good amount that do this. And it ruins their lives and well-being. As Castranova says in his book Exodus to the Virtual World, "While we are playing, things we used to do on the outside, in "reality," won't be happening any more, or won't be happening in the same way" (xv - xvi). This notion of people actually affecting their mental well-being and how they live is astounding. When people spend hours on end living in fake worlds, the real world just doesn't feel the same anymore. It is mind blowing.
But for some people, these fantasy worlds are the only ones they want to be in. They may have been moderately happy in real life, but online worlds allow you to be whoever you want to be. But when you think about it, "for each happy, fulfilled person, how many are there who are bored, frustrated, unappreciated, defeated, unhappy?" (xvi). It is true, some people need these fake worlds. They are their escape from the unhappy world they are currently living in. In online worlds, anything is possible. You can become anyone you want to be, act however you want, and have no reservations about it. People feel safer in these types of worlds and their true selves come out.
I am certain that there have been multiple psychological studies done to determine what attracts so many people worldwide to online universes. It is scary to think that one day there may be more people living in the online world instead of the real, physical world. At one point does the line between reality and fantasy become so blurred that the distinction between them is lost?
Music is a universal language enjoyed by every generation and every age group. The genre of music is endless and I have begun to notice that wherever I am there is music playing. In the mall, in the car, in restaurants, in elevators, in the Commons, there is always some form of music being played. I also noticed that much of the music feels and sounds different from my music. This made me think of how I acquire my music as opposed to the University of Richmond and the radio stations I listen to. What happened to those days of vinyl records, cassettes and compact discs? There is only one answer to that question: the Internet. It has reshaped the way average consumers like myself purchase tracks from their favorite artists. While this online music revolution has been detrimental to the music industry, it has allowed the listening public from infants to seniors to access a world of music like never before.
My parent’s generation remembers the days when they had to go down to their local record store, purchase a vinyl record of their favorite artist and bring it back home to listen to on their record players. I still remember my early childhood when music was available on cassette tapes that had to be flipped over halfway through. The ‘90s brought the compact disc (CD) to the forefront of manufacturing where it remained for over a decade. In 2009, however, CDs only made up 65% of all music sold (Graham). The remaining 35% was through a new technology: digital downloads.
The availability of digital music on the Internet has changed the way we listen to music. It has also changed the way the record companies make money from the music we listen to. The major record companies, or the “big five,” are Sony Music, Universal, EMI, Warner Brothers, and BMG (Alderman). Since online digital file sharing emerged in 1999, U.S. music sales have dropped from $14.6 billion to $7.7 billion, a 47 percent decrease (RIAA). Digital music has produced some revenue, but nowhere near enough to cover the losses of physical music’s decline. The big five have been losing money faster than they could manage from the mp3 and its power. Mp3 wasn’t a completely new concept, but all it needed was “some kids to find it and shake things up” (Alderman).
This online music revolution started in 18 year old Shawn Fanning’s dorm room at Northeastern University in 1999 (Goldsworthy). Fanning wanted a program that combined a search engine solely for finding mp3 files, the ability to trade mp3 files directly (file-sharing), and a way to find and communicate with other mp3 users (Tyson). What he eventually created became known as Napster. This peer-to-peer (P2P) program allowed users to download a song from another user’s computer without using a centralized server. Napster was simply the platform that connected everyone that wanted to share music files. These users were now able to get music for free instead of having to buy CDs. However, when major record companies and high profile artists realized consumers had their music but had not legally purchased it, they took action. In July 2001, Napster was temporarily shut down for violating copyright laws. It was relaunched as a legal retail music distributor in 2003 after being purchased by Roxio (Goldsworthy). However, the cat was out of the bag. Consumers now knew of the new world available to them for acquiring music files without having to spend a single cent.
Since Napster, new illegal programs such as LimeWire and legal programs like iTunes have become available on the Internet. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was formed in response to “protect the intellectual property and First Amendment rights of artists and music labels; conduct consumer, industry and technical research; and monitor and review state and federal laws, regulations and policies” (RIAA). The RIAA has had a difficult time doing their job when 30 billion songs have been illegally downloaded from 2004 to 2009 (RIAA). An even more astonishing statistic is that today only 1 in 20 downloads are legal (Wardrop). These statistics are horrifying to the major record companies which are losing out on billions of dollars. But to consumers, the ease of acquiring music without having to pay a fee is ideal.
The Internet hasn’t been completely negative to those in the music industry. Artists are now able to release music to the public and hear their feedback. Even artists who are still small can get recognized through the Internet and hopefully sign a major record deal. Danny Goldberg said in 2004 that he doesn’t “think the music business was ever available to everyone who dreamed of being in it” (Kirk). In 2011, that statement may no longer be true. The Internet has allowed unsigned artists to post their music online and has also allowed record companies to hear hundreds of thousands of more artists. More and more artists are being discovered because of their songs on the Internet.
The recent teen pop sensation Justin Bieber was discovered by a talent agent who stumbled upon his YouTube videos and eventually introduced him to Usher who helped him get a record deal with Island Records and RMBG (Herrera). Similarly, artist Sam Adams, who performed at the University of Richmond last fall, released “I Hate College (Remix)” on YouTube, a remix of Asher Roth’s I Love College. The vast attention from teenagers in high school and college got him a record deal with 1st Round Records (1st Round). Websites such as YouTube have allowed artists to post their amateur recordings in hopes that someone notices them. The Internet now gives everyone the opportunity to be noticed. The perception of having to be that “one in a million” has become more realistic with websites such as Facebook and YouTube becoming personal marketing platforms.
Facebook has become the second most trafficked website on the Internet behind Google (Most Popular). Almost every major musician/band, as well as thousands of amateur and less mainstream artists, has a Facebook page. With more than 500 million users, Facebook is an ideal platform for artists to showcase their music (Statistics). The Facebook Music page describes its uses as sending updates about tours and concerts, showcasing new releases, selling tickets and merchandise, engaging fans, importing photos, and allowing content to spread virally and become discovered (Music on Facebook). The Internet has vastly expanded artists’ reach to fans and the interaction between them.
In 2001 the biggest thing to the online music world arrived: Apple’s iTunes (Cassidy). However, it was not the first program to join the music player world. A media player is a computer software used to play multimedia files: audio and video. In April 1995, RealAudio Player, the first version of RealPlayer, was released (RealPlayer History). It was one of the first media players capable of streaming media over the Internet. RealPlayer was the most popular software when it was first released, but today it has been surpassed by Windows Media Player and iTunes. Microsoft Windows has had a media player since 1991 (Windows Version History), but it wasn’t until the release of Windows 98 that it had been given the name it is known by today; Windows Media Player (Chandler). These two programs were the fundamental programs for online streaming of digital music, but today it is iTunes that is the standard.
The iTunes we think of today is far from the one that first appeared in 2001. In 1999 SoundJam MP was released by Casady & Greene (Kincaid). It was purchased by Apple in 2000 where it became the basis for their music player. Apple took the program, touched it up, and released it in January 2001 as iTunes (Sasser). But it was the release of iTunes 2.0 in late 2001 when it really started to become popular (Apple Announces iTunes 2). At the same time, Apple released its first version of the iPod (2001 to Present). The two programs took off together and haven’t looked back. They have become the standard for portable mp3 players and media players.
The release of iTunes 4 brought with it the biggest change to the music industry: the support of an online music store (iTunes – Rebranding History). Users could now log on to the iTunes Music Store and purchase songs and albums that would automatically download to their music library. Consumers no longer needed to drive to the mall to purchase CDs so they could then import them into their libraries. Songs could easily be purchased and downloaded in a matter of minutes. But the feature that consumers loved most was that they no longer had to purchase an entire CD for that one song they wanted. You can now easily buy only the songs you want to hear. This business strategy created by Apple has worked out better than anyone could have ever imagined.
iTunes has over 13 million songs available on the music store that can be purchased a song at a time or as an entire album (iTunes A to Z). No physical store can offer the consumer a collection of music even close to that size. The online world is infinitely large, allowing iTunes to carry as much music as they can get digital rights for. That is exactly what they have done. The iTunes Music Store accounts for 70% of all legal downloads of singles and albums (Albanesius). On February 24, 2010 iTunes sold its 10 billionth song. (iTunes Store Tops 10 Billion Songs Sold). The vast grasp that iTunes has on the legal online digital music world has allowed its continuing success.
Why is iTunes so successful? Why not the original programs like RealPlayer and Windows Media Player? Why is iTunes so much better? There is no clear cut answer, but it seems that the iPod brought iTunes into the limelight. Every iPod purchase comes with a user guide. The very first instruction for setting up your new iPod is to “download and install the latest version of iTunes from www.itunes.com/download” (iPod Touch User Guide). The iPod was becoming extremely popular as an mp3 player. As new owners became aware of the ability to download iTunes, they quickly did so. It spread like wildfire. The iPod and iTunes have gone hand-in-hand since their release and today almost everyone has either an iPod, iTunes or both!
When iTunes users open their music library, they will find their iTunes Sidebar. Based on the music you already listen to and have downloaded, “Genius” recommends what you might like. Similarly, the iTunes Store features a recommendations section. Based on previous purchases, iTunes will create a list of music you’ll enjoy. Another feature of the iTunes Store is iTunes Essentials. This allows you to discover new music, new artists, or even rediscover old artists. Delve into an artist’s biggest hits or their hidden gems to find something new.
iTunes isn’t only beneficial to consumers. Artists have been very receptive to what the program offers as well. From a business perspective, online music stores allow artists to receive revenue for their work constantly. Stores are not going to carry CDs years after they have been released, but iTunes will. Whenever customers want to purchase an old song from their past, they can log on to iTunes and purchase what they want. Musicians that have stopped recording new music and performing live can still earn income from online sales. The revenue stream is endless.
For those artists that are not mainstream, online music stores allow them to become recognized. Each year 30,000 albums are released and of those only about 100 become hits (Kirk). However, with online media stores such as iTunes, the number of failed records has decreased. Artists are more easily available to consumers and are becoming recognized and noticed more readily. All it takes is that one hit single for artists to become known. Unfortunately, this mentality has begun to ruin the music industry. The idea of the “one hit single” has become more accepted amongst artists and takes away from the musical beauty of creating entire albums. This is contributing to the loss of revenue for the record companies. Consumers no longer have to purchase an entire CD to listen to just one favorite song. The Internet allows them to get specifically what they want at the moment they want it.
The impact the Internet has had on the music industry is hard to fathom. It will be interesting to see what type of impact the Internet has on other aspects of the entertainment industry such as film and television. It may still be too soon to speculate how the Internet will impact other industries. The Internet is still a relatively new technology and has yet to get its full grip on the film and television industries, but the seeds have been planted. Many films and television shows are available online for illegal download as well as on legal programs such as iTunes, but I cannot see the effects being as severe as they have been on the music industry. The physical music standard has been the CD which I don’t see anyone buying anymore. The DVD/Blu-Ray is still being purchased by many consumers. It is harder to watch movies on devices other than a computer and most times the clarity is not as crisp as a DVD. Consumers will still spend that $20 to buy a movie so they can watch it at home on the biggest screen in the best quality possible.
As I sit here writing this research paper while listening to music on my iTunes library, I realize that none of it has come from CDs or any physical form of music. It seems clear to me that the Internet has had a monumental effect on the music industry. From 2008 to 2009, digital music sales increased by $319 million, but physical sales have decreased by $1.12 billion (2009 Year-End Shipment Statistics). The record companies are losing millions of dollars in revenue to digital music. New companies like Apple and Napster saw the opportunity available to them and are snatching up the digital music world’s money. But even they are losing money to the billions of dollars lost to illegal downloads. It is estimated that between $7 and $20 billion is lost to digitally pirated music (RIAA). The standard form for music distribution from artist to record company to consumer has been shattered (Fink). The Internet and its various forums have been that element causing drastic changes. The new music industry is more proof of the Internet as a disruptive technology to some, but an opportunity for artists and their fans from the youngest to the oldest to continue to enjoy the universal language of music.
Works Cited
"2001 to Present." IPod History - The Complete History of the IPod. Web. 25 Mar. 2011. <http://www.ipodhistory.com/>.
2009 Year-End Shipment Statistics. Recording Industry Association of America, 2010. PDF.
Look at everything around you. Whether you are in a dorm room, a coffee shop, a mall, or even on a street corner. Look at everything around you. Go ahead, take a few seconds. Take notice of who is there and what is there. Specifically, look at the technology. People talking on their cell phones, listening to their iPods, video chatting on their computers, and surfing the Internet on their cell phones, iPods, and computers. Now imagine that scene you are looking at and if everyone’s technology suddenly stopped working. Picture people’s reactions if they were no longer able to be connected to anyone, anywhere, at any time. What about 24 hours from now, how will people act? A week? A month? Imagine this world without constant connectedness.
We live in a world where people need to have some form of technology with them at all times that connects them with everyone. It would be a catastrophic event if all of a sudden BOOM! no more Internet. No more Facebook, no more email, no more Twitter, no more websites that dictate our lives. It may be for the better, but the utter shock of no longer having something that you use every single day is cataclysmic. The stock market would not be able to crash because there would be no more stock market. All of society would fall apart.
I compare such an event to two people who have been dating for five years. They do everything together and their lives revolve around each other. Then one day they break up and are completely no longer a part of each other’s lives. There is now a huge gap in both of those people’s lives. If the Internet was suddenly taken away, there would be an enormous gap in everyone’s lives. No one would know how to react. There would be panic in the streets with people rioting. The technology that is suddenly gone is one that we have become so reliant on and one that is integrated into everything that we use and do.
Now that you are utterly scared of such an event, look back at the scene in front of your eyes right now. You see people walking around talking on the phone or you see your cell phone and computer on your desk. You see other people who live their lives on a technological, Internet crutch. But being as you are not them, you gotta ask yourself a question: Do I feel addicted? Well, do ya, cyberpunk?
We have begun to read Feed by M. T. Anderson. I went to the bookshelf in my room and grabbed the book and saw it was small (good) but then thought that means there is probably really small print (bad). It turns out that the print is rather large and its an extremely easy read. I found it extremely interesting as well how nonchalantly and lackadaisically the novel is written. Now I don't mean to say Anderson was lazy when he wrote this, but that the way in which he wrote it and the tone is very relaxed.
I was able to relate to a lot of the form of writing. It seems to be written in the perspective of the main character, Titus, a boy probably about my own age. There are a lot of "likes" and slang words that are not good syntax for normally works. However, they seem very appropriate for the story that he is telling. I was skeptical at first thinking that this was going to be a lot like The Matrix with a cord being plugged into your brain and then you're in the matrix. Not at all. These characters have chips implanted in their heads and instead of entering the "computer world," the computer world enters them.
I do enjoy the informal tone of the novel, especially as a teenager. It makes for a much easier read and allows me to focus more on what is happening rather than try and understand what all the big, fancy words mean. I am interested in continuing the book to see what happens to those in a world where the Internet or "feed" combine with reality.
Music has been a part of humans’ lives for all of time. Cavemen would bang on walls and their chests to make sounds. That was the first form of music. The earliest known mechanical musical instrument, the “Banu Musa,” which was a hydraulic powered organ, dates back to around 875 A.D (Fowler). We have come a long way since then in the way that we create, record, and distribute music. But in the last 12 years, the way music has been created and shared with the world has changed in a way so drastic no one could have seen coming.
The older generations of today remember the days when they had to go down to their local record store and purchase a vinyl record and bring it back home to listen on their record players to hear their favorite artists. I still remember my early childhood when music was available on cassette tapes that had to be flipped over halfway through. The ‘90s brought the compact disc (CD) to the forefront of manufacturing where it remained for over a decade. In 2009, however, CDs only made up 65% of all music sold (Graham). The remaining 35% was through a new technology; digital downloads.
The availability of digital music on the Internet has changed the way we listen to music. It has also changed the way the record companies make money off of the music we listen to. The major record companies or the “big five” are Sony Music, Universal, EMI, Warner Brothers, and BMG (Alderman). Since online digital file sharing emerged in 1999, U.S. music sales have dropped from $14.6 billion to $7.7 billion, a 47 percent decrease (RIAA). Digital music has produced some revenue, but nowhere near enough to cover the losses of physical music’s decline. The big five have been losing money faster than they could have managed from the mp3 and its power. It wasn’t a completely new concept, but all it need was “some kids to find it and shake things up” (Alderman).
This online music revolution started in 18 year old Shawn Fanning’s dorm room at Northeastern University in 1999 (Goldsworthy). Fanning wanted a program that combined a search engine solely for finding mp3 files, the ability to trade mp3 files directly (file-sharing), and a way to find and communicate with other mp3 users (Tyson). What he eventually created became known as Napster. This peer-to-peer (P2P) program allowed users to download a song from another user’s computer without using a centralized server. Napster was simply the platform that connected everyone that wanted to share music files. These users were now able to get music for free instead of having to buy CDs. However, when major record companies and high profile artists realized consumers had their music, but had not legally purchased it, they took action. In July 2001, Napster was temporarily shut down for violating copyright laws. It was relaunched as a legal retail music distributor in 2003 after being purchased by Roxio (Goldsworthy). However, the cat was out of the bag. Consumers now knew of the new world available to them for acquiring music files without having to spend a single cent.
Since Napster, new illegal programs such as LimeWire and legal programs like iTunes have become available on the Internet. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was formed in response to “protect the intellectual property and First Amendment rights of artists and music labels; conduct consumer, industry and technical research; and monitor and review state and federal laws, regulations and policies” (RIAA). The RIAA has had a difficult job in doing their job when 30 billion songs have been illegally downloaded from 2004 to 2009 (RIAA). An even more astonishing statistic is that today only 1 in 20 downloads are legal (Wardrop). These statistics are horrifying to the major record companies. They are losing out on billions of dollars. But to consumers, the ease of acquiring music without having to pay a fee is ideal.
The Internet hasn’t been all bad to those in the music industry. Artists are now able to release music to the public and here their feedback. Even artists who are still small can get recognized through the Internet and hopefully sign a major record deal. Danny Goldberg said in 2004 that he doesn’t “think the music business was ever available to everyone who dreamed of being in it” (Kirk). In 2011, that statement may no longer be true. The Internet has allowed unsigned artists to post their music online and has also allowed record companies to hear hundreds of thousands of more artists. More and more artists are being discovered because of their songs on the Internet.
The recent teen pop sensation Justin Bieber was found by a talent agent who stumbled upon his YouTube videos and eventually got him to meet with Usher who helped him get a record deal with Island Records and RMBG (Herrera). Similarly, artist Sam Adams, who performed at the University of Richmond last fall, released “I Hate College (Remix)” on YouTube, a remix of Asher Roth’s I Love College. The vast attention from teenagers in high school and college got him a record deal with 1st Round Records (1st Round). Websites such as YouTube have allowed artists to post their amateur recordings in hopes that someone notices them. The Internet now gives everyone the opportunity to be noticed. The perception of having to be that “one in a million” has become more realistic.
Facebook has become the second most trafficked website on the Internet behind Google (Most Popular). Almost every major musician/band, as well as thousands of amateur and less mainstream artists, has a Facebook page. With more than 500 million users, Facebook is an ideal platform for artists to showcase their music (Statistics). The Facebook Music page describes its uses as sending updates about tours and concerts, showcasing new releases, selling tickets and merchandise, engaging fans, importing photos, and allowing content to spread virally and become discovered (Music on Facebook). The Internet has vastly expanded artists’ reach to fans and the interaction between them.
In 2001 arrived the biggest thing to the online music world; Apple’s iTunes (Cassidy). However, it was not the first program to join the music player world. A media player is a computer software used to play multimedia files; audio and video. In April 1995, RealAudio Player, the first version of RealPlayer, was released (RealPlayer History). It was one of the first media players capable of streaming media over the Internet. RealPlayer was the most popular software when it was first released, but today it has been surpassed by Windows Media Player and iTunes. Microsoft Windows has had a media player since 1991 (Windows Version History), but it wasn’t until the release of Windows 98 that it had been given the name it is known by today; Windows Media Player (Chandler). These two programs were the fundamental programs for online streaming of digital music, but today it is iTunes that is the standard.
The iTunes we think of today is far from the one that first appeared in 2001. In 1999 SoundJam MP was released by Casady & Greene (Kincaid). It was purchased by Apple in 2000 where it became the basis for their music player. Apple took the program, touched it up, and released it in January 2001 as iTunes (Sasser). But it was the release of iTunes 2.0 in late 2001 that it really started to become popular (Apple Announces iTunes 2). At the same time, Apple released its first version of the iPod (2001 to Present). The two programs took off together and haven’t looked back. They have become the standard for portable mp3 players and media players.
The release of iTunes 4 brought with it the biggest change to the music industry; the support of an online music store (iTunes – Rebranding History). Users could now log on to the iTunes Music Store and purchase songs and albums that would automatically download to their music library. Consumers no longer needed to drive to the mall to purchase CDs so they could then import them into their libraries. They could easily be purchased and downloaded in a matter of minutes. But the feature that consumers loved most was that they no long had to purchase an entire album for that one song they wanted. You can now easily buy only the songs you want to hear. This business strategy created by Apple has worked out better than anyone could have ever imagined.
iTunes has over 13 million songs available on the music store that can be purchased a song at a time or an entire album (iTunes A to Z). No physical store anywhere has a collection of music even close to that size. The online world is infinitely large, allowing iTunes to carry as much music as they can get digital rights for. And that is exactly what they have done too. The iTunes Music Store accounts for 70% of all legal downloads of singles and albums (Albanesius). On February 24, 2010 iTunes sold its 10 billionth song. (iTunes Store Tops 10 Billion Songs Sold). The vast grasp that iTunes has on the legal online digital music world has allowed its continuing success.
When iTunes users open their music library, they will find their iTunes Sidebar. Based on the music you already listen to and have downloaded, “Genius” recommends what you might like. Similarly, the iTunes Store features a recommendations section. Based on previous purchases, iTunes will create a list of music you’ll enjoy. Another feature of the iTunes Store, iTunes Essentials, allows you to discover new music, new artists, or even rediscover old artists. Delve into an artist’s biggest hits or their hidden gems to find something new.
Now iTunes isn’t only beneficial to consumers. Artists have been very receptive to what the program offers as well. From a business perspective, online music stores allow artists to receive revenue for their work constantly. Stores are not going to carry CDs years after they have been released, but iTunes will. Whenever customers want to purchase an old song from their past, they can log on to iTunes and purchase what they want. Musicians that have stopped recording new music and performing live can still make money from online sales. The revenue stream is endless.
For those artists that are not mainstream, online music stores allow them to become recognized. Each year 30,000 albums are released and of those only about 100 become hits (Kirk). However, with online media stores such as iTunes, the number of failed records has decreased. Artists are more easily available to consumers and are becoming recognized and noticed a lot more readily. All it takes is that one hit single for artists to become known. Unfortunately, this mentality has begun to ruin the music industry. The idea of the “one hit single” has become more accepted amongst artists and takes away from the musical beauty of creating entire albums. This is why the record companies are losing money. Consumers no longer have to buy an entire CD for the one song they want. The Internet allows them to get what they want when they want it.
The impact the Internet has had on the music industry is hard to fathom. It will be interesting to see what type of impact the Internet has on other aspects of the entertainment industry such as film and television. It seems that it may still be too soon to determine the impact. The Internet is still a relatively new technology and has yet to get its full grip on the film and television industries, but the seeds have been planted. Many films and television shows are available online for illegal download as well as on programs such as iTunes, but I cannot see the effects being as severe as they have been on the music industry. However, time will tell if I am wrong.
I sit here writing this research paper while listening to music that was illegally downloaded and then transferred to my iTunes library. It seems clear to me that the Internet has had a monumental effect on the music industry. From 2008 to 2009, digital music sales increased by $319 million, but physical sales have decreased by $1.12 billion (2009 Year-End Shipment Statistics). The record companies are losing millions of dollars in revenue, but new companies like Apple and Napster are snatching up that lost money. The standard form for music distribution from artist to record company to consumer has been shattered (Fink). The Internet and its various forums have been that element causing drastic changes. The new music industry is more proof of the Internet as a disruptive technology to some, but an opportunity for others.
Works Cited
"2001 to Present." IPod History - The Complete History of the IPod. Web. 25 Mar. 2011. <http://www.ipodhistory.com/>.
2009 Year-End Shipment Statistics. Recording Industry Association of America, 2010. PDF.
