Indie Music and the Internet

Indie Music and the Internet.

The invention of internet has had many direct and indirect effects on the music industry – both good and bad. This article is a part of a larger article about the evolution of the indie music industry. You can read more about this in my blog Indie Music Industry. I will follow up with a new article about indirect effects of internet on the music industry. If you have been following my previous articles on music copyrights and royalties, by now you should have a good understanding of the fundamentals. It might be wise to re-read those articles, or bookmark them to grab back whenever you encounter a subject that I have written about!

An important factor behind online music communities beginning to form is the benefit of social media associated with the rising popularity of the internet. Additionally, the new strategies for marketing, promotion and advertising offered by the internet, allow indie artists and bands to connect directly with their fans and easily distribute their work to a highly expanded audience. One such interesting approach to advertising is to release free music as a means to market your live performances. Another way is to carry CDs with a glimpse of your upcoming work to the festivals and tours where you are performing, to give out to those who are awed by your performance. You can read more about this in my blog Music Festivals. Add information for fans and audience to connect with you online. It makes sense to have the take-home product available for fans, when you are touring, performing your music and selling it. Let them listen to your music, remember you and promote you. Make them remember you enough to go home and download your music.

It has been the record companies to hold the oligopoly position for over half a century. They have traditionally reaped benefit of music sales quite disproportionately, while musicians have actually generated the majority of their income from sales of concert tickets. This shifted dichotomy may be the result of growth in the live music sector and has interesting implications on potential alternative business models and indie artist welfare in general. Most of us have read academic literature largely narrowing down the focus on the impact of illegal file sharing on the music industry and sale of record music. However, as I have written in my blog Indie Music Industry, the impact of the internet has expanded well beyond illegal downloading, as technological change continues at a rate never seen before. Today it has become imperative for indie artists to have their own full-fledged website to display their work, YouTube video links and links to other social media accounts and online libraries. HyperEffects is a company that makes websites and helps artists connect with their audience, display their talent and sell their products. The founder, a friend, tells me that they get requests from music artists every day to create a website for their work or to upgrade their existing website, it has become that important to have your own website today!

Here, I am trying to understand and evaluate the live and recorded music business with regard to the more encompassing implications of the Internet. I hope to provide some insight on the future of music industry through this research, and share with the indies artists and bands some conclusions about the impact and related factors leading to this “absolute transformation”.

The indie music industry has been fairly static for a long time, but today, it faces its largest challenges to date, in the United States. Seems like a drastic change was long overdue for the sector, and is going to take place in the 21^st century. A full-scale restructuring looks inevitable due to the technological advances taking place every day after the advent of internet. In following this, I will be covering in brief the original blueprint with regard to live music business and the recording industry. My research revolves mostly around the legal background, technologies primarily involved in bringing about the above discussed transformation, diving deeper into first century of the millennium to cover the events marking the implications of internet on the music industry.

In my next blog I am going to write about the original structure of the music industry and the live music business.

Please share your experiences in the comments section and I will add them to my future blogs.