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Describing and contrasting the economic, cultural, and technicalogical changes occuring in the digital world.

There are many cultural, economic, and technological changes occurring every second on a world wide basis. One of the most powerful and often overlooked is art.  The scope of this paper will center around music.  Oscar Wilde once said, "life imitates art far more than art imitates life." Music is an inescapable force in modern culture and has been since the beginning of life on earth. Archeologists have found ivory flutes in Germany, dated between 30,000 and 37,000 years old. From instruments made from tusks to the modern flute made from metal.

Music is not new to us, but the many facets in which we experience it and shape it continue to change daily. You can see and hear it everywhere, it permeates modern society.  For instance, you would be hard pressed to find someone who has never heard a jingle for a commercial product or a Britney Spears song. Whether it be a commercial or a pop song, the recordings were made using software tools such as Protools or Cubase. The final product after the recording is marketed using popular online social networks like Myspace, Facebook, or Bebo.

Technology is rapidly changing how we make music, market it, and sell it. It was not so long ago that we were hearing horror stories from the recording industry and the RIAA, telling us that we were killing the music business with illegal downloading from P2P(peer to peer) networks and freeware programs like Soulseek and Napster. According to the 2007 statistics for album sales in the US, retail CD sales were down 17% and there was a 53% increase in online digital sales. Even Walmart has started phasing out their music section because of decline in CD sales. It is only a matter of time untill we see a new music industry because of so many new technologies. The proof is found in such services as Reverbnation, Sellaband, Amazon, CDBaby, Snocap, and others.  The music industry is approaching a new era.

It is no longer the case that an artist’s revenue comes from only CD and touring sales.   There are so many more options for a musician and likewise, a consumer, to exchange goods thanks to services such as Soulseek and iTunes. An example of the smart use of digital distribution is the band Radiohead, who were estimated to have made over 10 million dollars in online sales during the first week of their album release last year. In France there is a service based on a free licensing system called Dogmazic. Not only is this a software based on distributing music for free over the internet but they also exchange music in person. Several times a year they set up booths to have these large scale “information” exchanges.  The consumer has a chance to go to a booth where he is allowed to burn a CD for free, or even plugin a device such as a iPod and copy music at no charge. These types of services and others like them will not only help to change how we view music from an economical standpoint but eventually change the way it's seen and heard all together.

 

References-

Ice age flute - Achim Schneider [http://www.bioedonline.org/picks/news.cfm?art=1442]
Radiohead - AP[http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2006-06-12-riaa_x.htm]
Kristen Nicole - [http://mashable.com/2007/10/19/radiohead-album-sales/]
Album Sales Decline - AP[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18220349/]
Amazon sells music -Michael Arrington - [http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/19/amazon-helping-to-change-the-business-of...]
Andrew Sorkin- [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE1D7123CF937A35756C0A9659C...]
[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18220349/]
Walmart [http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/want-the-new-ac-dc-album-head-to-wal-mart-...]