Indie Music-Trends 1.
Peer-to peer file sharing services may have actually helped assist in establishing a market for digital singles even before legal means of selling them existed. As discussed in my blog Indie Music- Trends, applications such as Napster had user friendly interfaces that allowed illegal downloaders to search the names of virtually any individual song and download it practically instantaneously. The advent of the iTunes store enabled consumers to purchase single songs from their extensive library legally, conveniently and with guaranteed high quality, for a relatively low price of 99 cents. In this way, they were able to take advantage of this newfound demand for individual songs while helping record labels recover at least a portion of sales displacement due to piracy.
Even though legal digital singles helped reverse the negative trend in unit sales, the value of record sales returned to its negative trajectory after 2004 and was cut in half between the years of 2005 and 2011. Although the number of albums, and other non-single formats, sold slightly recovered from 2004-2006, they saw a staggering reduction of 52% between 2007 and 2012, coinciding with a nearly 60% boost in the number of singles sold. From a value standpoint, sales of albums, and other non-single formats, steadily declined every year from 2000-2011, netting a decimation of 77%. It stands to reason that a rise in popularity of a lower priced product, and steep decline in a more expensive one, in this case albums, could net overall losses. The rise in the Internet as it pertains to illegal piracy and legal digital distribution undeniably played a major role in the massive shift in consumer preference by providing them the means to easily access individual songs without even stepping out of their front door.
Between the years of 2004 and 2011, though, the effects of the Internet on the recording industry cannot be limited to piracy and the introduction of legal distribution. Several aspects in the rise of social media make it another key element represented by the rise of the Internet. Using social media outlets, artists have begun to release free music directly to their fans, a practice that, although helps promote acts and expand their fan base, probably has mixed results in terms of record sales. Music released free of charge can be seen as sampling for upcoming works for sale, potentially uplifting record purchases. On the other hand, this surely can serve to hurt sales simply by notion of providing free entertainment that could be charged for. More generally, the role of social media marketing has been essential in the success of many of the internet generation’s stars and can be seen as a valuable way to promote record sales. In addition, online communities developed by new media outlets can help enhance an artist’s popularity, and subsequently sales. Max Miller, an independent hip-hop artist based in Pittsburgh is an outstanding example of the effective use of social media through latest technology to become commercially and financially successful. As discussed in my blog Promoting Indie Music on Social Media, Miller became a multi-millionaire when he was just 20, and was featured in The Forbes Magazine’s ‘30 under 30’ list in 2011. He released free ‘mixtapes’ as they are called in the hip-hop community, creating clout online by posting music videos to YouTube. Gaining approval from several notable music blogs and websites, Miller built a steady fan base reaching nearly 400 million views on his YouTube channel. This buzz surrounding him was more than sufficient for Miller to get to play over 200 shows in 2011. This earned him an average gross of 40,000 dollars a night. His independent album released in 2011 was ardently supported by fans and 144,000 units were sold in the first week. This made it the first independent album to top the charts since 1995.
The multi-faceted rise of the Internet as it has developed in the last decade has likely contributed to the decline in record sales, but piracy can only explain so much of this change. Rather, the Internet as a whole seems to have altered consumer preference, and the overall demand schedule, within the record sale market. In the following posts, I will briefly examine other factors that may have impacted the demand for recorded music.
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