Has Technology Ruined Music?

When you listen to music it is suppose to stir up emotions whether they are good or bad. So one would think that a product that is created from emotion to create an emotion would have people behind it that will want to promote that and not just looking to make money. Unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world and this is what the music industry is all about.

Record labels had all the power in the past. They made all the decisions

·      Artist image

·      Type of music the artist created

·      Structure of the album

·      Which songs became singles

·      When the singles would be released

The labels also retained a large portion of the profits made from the artist’s music. So labels more that artists made a profit off of record sales. With the change into the digital age this proposed a problem for the labels. People were using P2P (Peer 2 Peer) sites to download music instead of buying it.

With the access to various sites consumers can search for music easily, choose to purchase it or just listen to it while streaming online. Artist can also upload their music to various websites and cut out the middleman and keep most of the profits. No longer needing the label to pick and choose what artists are worthy to produce music for the public, it is now accessible to everyone.

So the question is – Has technology ruined music?

In my opinion I would say yes, not so much in the profit to the artist or the label but in the quality of music. No longer is music about substance or trying to create emotions or tell a story. Music has turned into displaying a famous lifestyle to the masses. Since artist can upload their own music they are producing cookie cutter versions of songs that are trending at the time.

We need to get back to a time where an artist created their own path with their music. Where songs talked about more than women, money and cars. The labels need to embrace technology, not fight it. This can help promote a change of the industry by integrating the old with the new and forcing artist to create the type of music that they did in the past.