I agree to a great extent that digital media affects the music industry significantly. Services such as social networks, youtube and MP3 downloads have changed the music industry positively and negatively at the same time.
Indie companies are now more rife as promotion, production and exchange now cost a lot less. This is due to some digital services with many users are free to use by anyone for no cost at all. Examples are youtube, twitter and myspace. Indie labels such as XL have used twitter (a social network) to promote one of the vampire weekend gigs on a free youtube livestream to their niche fanbase. The livestream got thousands of views in total by people all over the world, giving not only the band promotion but the livestream service and the indie label (XL Records).This is a form of synergy as the bands music got promoted on another form of media, youtube. In comparison to another gig performance by the X factor former winners their gig was not live streamed for free at all. This can also show that the indie labels are more focused on gaining a more personal, intimate relationship with their niche audience rather than the money. Another indie label WARP used two digital medias to promote a new album, one of the songs featured on the album was used in the introduction of a new film, the whole album was also uploaded onto youtube for anyone around the world to listen to. On the subject of global availability domino records has a radio station that also allows anyone in the world to listen to which can lead to worldwide exposure for bands and artists. Most independent labels also offer their fans to buy vinyls instead of MP3, which can turn them from fans into prosumers if they choose to use the vinyl to remix the song.
Xfactor sells their contestants live performances on iTunes for people to buy, this is an easy way to gain money from their mainstream audience. Xfactor use social networks, which are world wide and extremely popular, to allow their fans to vote for contestants to stay in the competition. The X factor competition also allows their fans to give them feedback on certain contestants on these social network sites, Facebook has a like button which X factor uses to gauge an artist/band popularity. X factor will put a picture of a contestant up with the description "like if you thought JLS's performance was good this week", this shows how certain institutions use social media to see what is popular at the moment. This process is also similar to what the indie labels do to see wether an artist it popular.
Sony also sells all their music on iTunes which allows fans to listen to their favourite artist on iPhones and mp3 players on the go, digital technology has allowed people to listen to music whenever they want. But the internet has opened the doors for people to pirate music of major conglomerates like Sony. Digital technology has also sapped money from the music industry through pirating, this has lead to companies like Sony to loose money, therefor now money can be put into finding new talent. This has lead to an argument as to wether music nowadays is more bland and stale due to the constant recycling of artists. Conglomerates can no longer fund money for new less mainstream artists as they might not make money, they cannot take the risk as money is being taken away through the use of digital pirating.It is now up to the indie labels to produce less mainstream artists.This is a negative example of how digital technology has affected the music industry.
