Music, Culture and Value of Music in a Digital Future

Music, Culture and Value of Music in a Digital proximoThe uses of Music, Culture and the value of free Music In a Digital futureWeve lost a whole generation of kids, who grew up downloading free medicament from the web and hobonot fathom paying for itAbstractThe early(prenominal) cristal years demand witnessed an extensive growth of euphonyology within the medicine and entertainment manufacture with questions concerning melodic meaning and the extent to which its informed by cultural realise and soci onlyy derived k immediatelyledge. Groundbreaking developments be increa smatterly encouraging the demand for refreshed harvest-festivals and platforms from consumer markets that drop grown up downloading symphony knowing no break up than to find their entertainment through the internet with the illusion that it is free.This dissertation looks at the early forms and purposes of melody up to present day, factors threatening the practice of medicine industry and what has affected it oer new-made years. The increased use of the internet, cheap softwargon equipment and other technological imposture forms, have throwd the itinerary we sell, listen to and cloud sweet music. I want to investigate what effects go forth this have on the industry in the future and what does this mean for artists and the way music is created and valued.IntroductionIntroduction will contextualise the central theme and notion of the work and describe my motivation and intensions.I will centralise the introduction on the chapters individually.The industry has been hanging off the edge for some time(McQuinvey, J. Date. P.).Chapter 1 Talk ab verboten the development of technological devices related to unused formats, and the main purposes of music up until today.Chapter 2 Talk about the technological developments which have an effect on the way we buy and listen to music. New devices and gadgets are demanding newer ways to attain music and how we consume new music.Cha pter 3 Talk a little about the different types of mint using and making music, how this is touching record labels and what will happen in the future.As the development and discoery of engine room grows and grows from early dates to present day, enabling much(prenominal) and more possiblilities.Cultures and social activities are affected by radical technological change.One of the primary proponents of this categorization was William. F. Ogburn. He argued that in most cases it is the sequence of engineering that causes social changeOver the past however umteen years, digital downloads have been fought against buy, major labels, causing decades of copyright and pirate copying of music assumes and entertainment fairs. 2005 onwards directly in 2008 the subject of digital downloading and the internet is organism redefined and recognised by the major record labels hoping to create a future with easy penetration to new music quickly and cheaply. Starting new web sites for downloads etc. People want faster choices and ways to attain their entertainment.The fast changing destinations within rules of orderGrowth of music technologyInternet sites- Amazon competing with major companies to sell a entirer range of products as more and more people are purchasing online instead of using high street shops and other retailers.Modes and categories inherited from the past no intermin commensurate seem to fit todays reality, experienced by a new generation.Chapter 1 (Progression of early forms of music, formats and purposes)For centuries music has been the biggest form of entertainment within households, pubs, clubs and events ever since the recording of enceinte, but since the early days of music the purposes and the intend to consume music has grown considerably up to the 20th century forcing formats, technology and the music industry to change with time. This chapter will outline the progression of technology associated with music and its m over of use in relat ion to new entertainment.When Bartolomeo Cristofori became the inventor of the piano, identified as a stringed keyboard instrument with mechanically operated rebounding hammers, Cristoforis invention became a success and around 1922, a survey was carried out which shows that the piano was the most touristy instrument apply in over 25% of the average household. along with many other musical instruments dated ahead and aft(prenominal) the piano, instruments were used for enjoyment and entertainment and at times for families and friends who would gather together to play and sing birdsongs on special occasions.When the very first off phonograph was introduced by Thomas Edison around 1878 and the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company was establish. The phonograph would be treated in the same way as a piano or organ as families would again sit around and listen to records or family stories within the menage but Edison realised the opportunities he had created with his invention. Ediso ns invention enabled the possibilities of using the phonograph to perhaps dictate a permitter, dictate books for the blind, make family recordings of their voices, music boxes and toys, clocks that communicate the time, and a connection with the skirt company to record conversations.In 1857 Frenchman, Leon Scott de Martinville was the first to have invented his documented phonoautograph machine which was able to record sound waves but scarcely created a visual analogue of the waves, until around 20 years later when Thomas Edison allowed two innovators to re-develop the later phonograph which became the gramophone. The gramophone used disk molded materials to record onto which produced better recording quality and a longer play suffer time. American inventor Emile Berliner then created a exploit which allowed the sound tracing to be graven side-to-side in a spiral onto a zinc disk, this master would then be electroplated to create a negative which would then be used to stamp du plicate copies onto vulcanized rubber (and later shellac), a process which would change the path of music forever, a process now known as the spile re ware of musical entertainment.The process to record, duplicate and play back music opened endless forms of entertainment and the industry were set to take the solid ground by storm, selling records and making profits to consumers. The gramophone quickly out exchange and overtook the phonograph and by the end of World War 1 the disc had become the supreme commercial recording format. A technological development which has had a major impact on music in this century is sound recording.Over the past seventy years the concert audience has been transformed from musical amateurs to a large number of potential buyers. The birth of sound recording started as a mechanical process, and with the exception of the Telegraphone in 1899 this process remained until the 1920s when a group of groundbreaking inventions in the field of electronics rev olutionized sound recording and the young recording industry. hale transducers were introduced such as microphones and loudspeakers and a some various electronic devices were made for the purpose of amplification and modifications of early electrical sound signals resulting in the mixing desk. Inevitably, over time all these components and inventions have had an affect on the way musicians record music, the uses of music and the growing demands of the music consumers to attain music.These electronic inventions created the means for growth and development within the music industry opening a wide range of possibilities for the recording process. Although many inventions and ideas were yet to be discovered, early music and its uses had progressed from a means of confined entertainment within the household to a possible, world wide product with which Emile Berliners early duplication process vie a large part when it came to distribution and portability of recorded music. As time pass ed, increasingly people were able to buy recorded music which would be vie on a gramophone wherever it may be.Emile Berliner realized the market wanted a range of music which can be bought, stored and played at any knuckle undern point, the money earning potential would be high and with the importance of his discoveries, decided to start his very own brand of recorded music which up until today, with the changes and the new strains on the industry has been extremely successful with the famous dog and gramophone design of His Masters Voice (HMV). Music was now, not only universe used just for enjoyment or purely for entertainment but was now, universe recorded, duplicated and distributed to consumers around the world who are able to replay music over and over and enjoy their collections when ever and most importantly where ever.The next major progression concerning music which would increase the needs of high quality equipment was the introduction of descriptive and respective m usic tracks within film. The years 1920-1928 were known to be the golden age of silent movies. Early movies were accompanied by music scores containing pieces commonly played by an organist, pianist or an orchestra depending on the class of the theatre. Sound tracks however were introduced to cinema audiences around 1926-1927 even though technology to add sound to film was discovered in 1911 it took another 15 years or so to be introduced and implemented into movie productions.The use of music within film during this particular period was preponderantly used to raise the attraction of early movie productions which would change forever after the opening of Pandoras Box in 1927 and the increase of technical achievements which led Al-Jolson to ad-lib a few spoken words in The Jazz Singer.Recorded music for films then after became extremely successful within the movie industry and over the next few years Warner Bros. took control of this area (now a multi-billion pound industry) by pro ducing ten all-talking films with accompanied sound tracks and scores leaving the silent movies on the shelf. This production process increasingly outlined the importance of having good quality sound systems to playback the music and sounds on film. Music will always essentially be a huge form of entertainment in many ways but now different music was being used for more reasons than originally supposed.With the on going growth of equipment and technology music became a money making product after the discovery of sound recording, music began to be used to compliment or serve describe a visual performance rather than being an individual form of entertainment, it was now coinciding with other art forms and was boosting the fashionableity and profits of associated productions. With the discovery of magnetic media music will be promoted on a mass worldwide scale and allow the public and potential music buyers to listen to broadcasts over the air.The first communicate broadcast which i nvolved music was said to be in 1906 at Brant Rock MA, when Fessenden played his violin, sang a song and read a few verses from a bible into his wireless telephone on Christmas Eve 1906. It was classed as a broadcast because it was designed for more than one listener and was pre-announced rather than a one to one conversation. 1920 saw the first licensed radio broadcast, as Frank Conrads company was asked to go on air on a regular basis to send out music to the listeners and would sell radios to pay for the service.Radios were advertised in local newspapers to households and within a few years there were hundreds of stations entertaining thousands of people who had bought or built their own receivers. It was no longer, that an audience had to sit in their own home and manually operate a gramophone, no need to necessarily buy records from HMV and will no longer need to worry about play back time of records as the public could listen to the radio everyday, and tune in to their favorit e radio stations free of charge.Growing factors underlined the importance of good quality equipment to further the success of music and the portability of music, which led to new discoveries of early formats and fund devices such as magnetic show machines, cassettes shows/players to audio cds. After the rubber and shellac records, which were the primary recording medium at the time, a new means for recording came about in 1934/35 when Joseph Begun of Germany built the first magnetic videotape machine which was used for mobile radio broadcasting before creating the first consumer tape recorder which provided the 3M Company with a billion dollar industry.Magnetic tape machines became very touristy storage and recording devices in radio stations and recording studios as they offer higher quality recording and longer continuous playback of recorded material, the most beneficial aspect of the invention of tape was its portability. Eventually two track tape machines were introduced w hich extended recording possibilities within the studio but magnetic tape was never used commercially by consumers until the release of the first compact audio-cassette tape in 1963 by The Phillips Company of the Netherlands.With a cheap and easy recording medium such as the cassette tape combined with a cassette tape player, It could be argued that this sparked the ever destructive and ongoing betrothal of music piracy. Taperecorders/players were sold with built in radios as standard and by the touch of a button it was possible torecord sounds and music straight from the radio. After Phillips had patented the cassette tape in 1965 and decided to make it free of charge all over the world, companies then started to design new portable recorders and players to compliment the compact size of the cassette tape. One of the habitual models of tape players was the Sony Pressman which was a monaural tape recorder released in 1977. The next year in 1978 Sony founder and chief advisor Masar u Ibuka requested the general manger of the Tape Recorder Business socio-economic class to start work on a stereo based model of the earlier Sony Pressman which birthed the Sony TPS-L2 headphone stereo Walkman in 1979 that would completely change the way consumers listen to music.Theyll take it everywhere with them, and they wont care about record functions. If we put a playback-only headphone stereo like this on the market, itll be a hit.What made the Sony Walkman such a big hit was the portability that it was offering to its consumers. Ever since the invention of the piano/organ, phonograph, gramophone, record players, wireless recorders and receivers, although, all mediums allowed the consumer to listen to music in various ways, none of which actually enabled the listener to become portable, on the move to be able to listen to their material literally wherever they wanted. arrangement and earshot to music from this point onwards almost became a hobby for a generation of people who would listen to the radio to try and catch their favourite song to record to tape, allowing them to repeatedly replay the material and start a collection of stored music.Many types of storage formats have been introduced by this point but very few which are truly beneficial to the storage and quality of music mediums. After the magnetic media such as wire, core memory, drum, card, tape, disk and OM disk came many diskette disk formats which played a great part in early computing storage formats. Different versions of optical mediums were introduced optic data disk flood tide before Sony proposed a standard for the compact disk (CD) in 1980 but was followed by formats such as DVD, HD-DVD, holographic, Blu-ray DVD and developments with OM disks.The introduction of optical mediums saw Sonys standard CD to hit the very top in high quality recording and storage mediums. CD-Rs are a salve once, read many optical medium (WORM) which is a recordable version of the CD and holds a high level of compatibility with standard CD readers unlike CD-RWs which can be overwritten many times but has a lower compatibility level with CD readers and the disks are slightly more expensive. CDs became the most popular medium of music and data storage out-of-pocket to its capacity and ease of recording but there is one flaw in its design as after a life span of around 2 years its possible for the CDs data to degrade with time masking a coloured dye as a result. CDs hold a standard capacity of 700Mb where as the introduction of DVDs upped the capacity to 4.1 GB but was mostly associated with movies projects which contain much larger levels. CDs are still the highest quality recording/storage medium to attain or store music on outside of a computers hard drive but with newer, smaller compressed formats such as MP3 on the market the picking of buying a CD compared to a smaller and cheaper alternative looks bleak with time, so we see the CD taking a backseat to let newer recordin g and storage devices into the scene.Chapter 2 (A demanding society)In todays society where consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and easier methods of gaining entertainment, they in addition demand a new outlook towards devices, gadgets and components with which to view or listen to their product. This chapter underlines the changes of which new technology has an effect, they way society and subcultures are contrived by technology and how technology is forced to develop and become more groundbreaking to meet the needs and perceptions of its consumers.In recent years the compact disk has ended the forty year reign of the twelve inch LP, with which came consequences for production, distribution and marketing, and in turn disks and tapes have been threatened by technologies which can deliver high quality sound via cable direct to potential consumers, eliminating the need for the already established pattern of product marketing and distribution.Although the invention of the phono graph and gramophones were considered important aspects in creating the a mass market for music and entertainment, the record industry has been wreakd by the need to cope with its volatile market so its established practices and institutions have been constantly undermined by technological innovations which not only offer new and better ways of doing things but, as we shall see, have generally had the effect of increasing the consumers choice at the expense of the industries ability to control its market.(Scott, D. Martin, P. 1995 p.209)There are many important connections betwixt technology, musical characteristics and social groups, and as it may be argued that the fundamental coordinates of a musical form are not determined by its social base, but each social group or subculture corresponds to certain acceptable genres. During the 1970s and 1980s the idea that the characteristics of a musical form could give life or influence to the social reality of a culture became more and m ore popular with incorporated sociological categories such as class, ethnicity and importantly age.In 1987 John Shepard extended this type of analysis to gender, arguing that different voice types or timbres in popular music gave stockpileion to different kinds of gender identities.(Clayton, M. Herbert, T. Middleton, R. 2003, p. 7, p. 14)The 1990s saw different factors concerning the cultural study of music and the analytical evidence with particular social categories such as, class, ethnicity, age, subculture and counterculture. This had been replaced with a more embracing and forbidding concern with social identity. With the concept of youth culture, its assumed that teenagers share similar leisure interests and pursuits and were involved in some kind of revolt against their parents and elders.The reach of youth culture is said to be linked with the growth and increased incomes of early working class youths which allowed greater spending power and the means to express their in dividual interests and styles which caused large markets to develop more interest for the youth culture, most notably resulting in music and fashion. Its with particular music styles, genres and c dispersehing styles and labels that predominantly place our identities within a culture or subculture, which technology helps shape and create aspirations in a similar way.Teenage culture is a irrelevant mixture of the authentic and the manufactured it is an area of self-expression for the young and a lush grazing ground for the commercial providers.(Hall, S. Whannel, P. 1964, p.)The compressed file format known as MP3 is at the centre of debate towards file-sharing and digital downloading and is thought to be downgrading towards the level of audible quality in music. Yet the mp3 is also a cultural artefact, apsychoacoustic technology that literally playsits listeners. Being a container technology type for recorded sound, the mp3 proves that the quality of portability is central to the hi story of auditory representation and shows that digital audio culture deeds according to logics somewhat dissimilar from digital visual culture.(Jonathan Sterne, 2006. New Media and Society, Vol. 8, No. 5, 825-842 DOI 10.1177/1461444806067737)Todays young generation arent so aware of the historical factors and important issues which lead to the advances, demands and uses of audible quality music but more so, on the social aspects of consumption, portability and quantity of music.A spokes person for the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand, Terrance ONeill-Joyce, argues thatThe problem is not with the actual technology of MP3, which he believes is being effectively used by many music producers, but rather the ineffective means of securing remuneration for artists. Its a case of technology outstripping legislation and a lack of proper commercial role model being established as of yet(Shuker. 2001 p. 65)MP3 is a technology encoding, recorded sound, so that it takes up less st orage space than it would otherwise. The size of an MP3 file makes it virtual(a) to transfer high quality music files over the internet and store them on a computers hard drive, where as CD quality tracks take longer to download and transfer. The MP3 file has become very popular as a way to distribute and access music even though there has been enormous debate over the economic and cultural implications of this new technology.For the typical music consumer the MP3 file is considered a blessing as anyone can access a wide range and varieties of music mostly for free as well as having the option to compile their own albums of single tracks from their favorite artists without having to acquire the whole album itself. For artists and producers the MP3 allows them to distribute their music possibly to a world wide audience without tackling the political processes and mediation of the music industry. For mainstream artists on major record labels the MP3 raises concerns of profit bolshy from consumers due to illegal downloads which are free of charge and easy to attain. On the other hand for strictly internet distributed music producers and publishers the MP3 opens up many opportunities for smaller, more innovative labels and companies. (Shuker. 2001, Pg 65)Each new medium of technology, communication or entertainment thats introduced to a mainstream audience creates drastic changes towards the way in which we experience music, this also has implications for how we relate to and consume music. The changes and advances in technological recording equipment open, both constraints and opportunities relating to the organisation process and production of music, while the developments within musical instrumentation allow the way out of new sounds.Most important of all, each new recording format or device used for transmission inevitably alters the previously established process of music production and consumption they also raise questions about authorship and the legal s tatus of music as a property and the ongoing battle with piracy and profit loss.Napster software was introduced in 1999, designed as a search engine, communication portal and file-sharing software that facilitated the sharing process by granting users access to all other Napster and the mp3 files they choose to share. Within a few months, transfers of music files using Napster reached megs per day, and at its peak, it was estimated that as many as sixty million people were using the site.Whereas Napster requires users to first log onto a central server to access other users MP3 files, these newer networks allow direct user-to-user (P2P) connections involving multiple file types. These innovations expand the universe of file sharing activity and make it virtually impossibly to track users of the files they choose to share(Garofalo, 2003 cited in Shuker, 2008 pg, 23)Digital distribution continuously threatened the music barter and the control of music by the record companies. This m ethod also lowers manufacturing and distribution costs while putting pressure on marketing and other aspects of the process. With the industry failing to stop illegal downloads and P2P (peer-to-peer) distribution of recorded music over the experience five years, record labels have finally decided to adapt their demarcation to suit the way its consumers get hold on their music.Its becoming more and more apparent that albums and artists are making very little or no money in the music industry because of the lack of physical CD sales as the majority of money spent during the traditional production process goes towards many aspects such as the production, promotion, duplication and distribution of a product. Mainly within the music business P2P technologies are a positive means for consumers and creative artists because all costs of production, promotion, marketing and distribution are dramatically lowered.These new technologies and approaches to digital distribution means old and new artists are able to earn more profits through selling singles and albums through P2P networks as the production process costs a fraction of the album or single. Because they can charge less they earn and sell more which means more artists will benefit financially and the industries broad range of music will receive a wider market to distribute to.It is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and radical social change, it is much less easy to come to terms with the fact that such change will, without doubt, affect the nature of those academic disciplines that both reflect our society and help to shape it(Hawkes. 2003. p.7)The growing concern with the music industry today is focused heavily on the affects of digital downloads and the fall of physical album/record sales sold in high street music shops and online stores. The debate continues as sales in the US as well as the UK have fallen due to a number of factors involving the growth of technology and the way we consume ou r entertainment.According to recent industry researchers, figures show that todays music industry (UK), has suffered a drop of up to 11% of record sales in 2007, but download sales boosted the singles market by nearly 30% last year as single sales increased from 67m in 2006 to 86.6m in 2007, up 29.3%. Despite there being best-selling albums from artists like Amy Winehouse and Leona Lewis, only 138.1 million albums were sold in 2007, compared with 154.7 million in 2006.Amy Winehouses Back to Black was the most popular album of 2007, with 1.85 million copies sold. Leona Lewis debut album Spirit came second, even though it was only released in November. Music industry body the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) put the 10.8% fall down to copyright theft and difficult retail conditions. Having the option of album unbundling is also a problem as consumers are able to select which tracks they want to download from each album, this means albums are not being sold as whole units and says a lot to the artists themselves about what their audience wants.Music Industry Analyst Michael McGuire of Gartner Research told Agency France-Press news agencyIt comes back to consumers being in complete control of their media experience.Mr McGuire said fans were sending artists a messageWhile you may have put a lot of thought into the sequence of the album, I only like these three songs.BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor saidThe UK market has shown considerable resilience in recent years while globalrecorded music markets have declined.Recording companies have a major influence on the music we listen to and shape whats known as popular music within society. The term popular music defies a precise straightforward definition and is usually over looked and the understanding of the term is taken for granted. To fully understand the term popular music its necessary to address the general field of popular culture within cultural studies. (See Studying Popular Music Culture, Tim Wall). In th is instance I refer the word popular music from the historical term for popular as the ordinary people, these days the meaning of the term has expanded, all music is popular music meaning music that is popular with someone. youngish peoples musical activities whatever their cultural background or social position, rest on a substantial and sophisticated body of knowledge about popular music. Most young people have a clear understanding of its different genres, and an ability to hear and place sounds in terms of their histories, influences and sources. Young musicians and audiences have no hesitation about making and justifying judgements of meaning and value(Willis. 1990 59 cited in Shuker. p.98)The music industry is big business, and international multi-billion dollar enterprise historically centred in the United States with the United Kingdom making a significant artistic contribution to the industry and developing trends as well as the ontogeny of Japanese media technologies play ing a major part in the music industry for its commercial designs of gadgets and devices. Recording companies are the most important part of the music industry and fall into two main groups the major international labels and the smaller independent labels whos structures and operating processes take on a similar role, blurring the distinctions between the two. These differences I will try to evaluate later on in chapter 3.The major labels are renowned for sourcing young talent, recording, promoting, marketing and distributing his/her music which has a almighty effect on the popular consumer, cultures and subcultures due to the image associated with that particular genre or style of music which is marketed, but its future is usually determined by the listener themselves.For after the commercial power of the record companies has been recognised, after the persuasive sirens of the radio acknowledged, after the recommendations of the music press noted, it is finally those who buy the r ecords, dance to the regular recurrence and live to the beat who demonstrate, despite the determined conditions of its production, the wider potential of pop(Chambers, 1985 Introduction cited in Shuker 2001 p.23)Consumers are becoming less influenced by the major record labels with the help from the internet as consumers have more freedom to discover new genres and styles which are delivered in new ways. Record labels will always have a certain level of influence to its popular markets but now its the customer who decides on what they really like and want to listen to without feeling outside of the popular music category.I think there are many benefits for a musician not being signed to a label. Ive seen first hand, from my experience at major labels, where they will sign up and coming artists b