Rough Middle 2
Napster Paragraphs (Cont.):
Napster created not only a music-sharing community but also the desire for free goods, music specifically. It threw the music industry into a conundrum – satisfy their consumers or satisfy the suppliers. The “culture of free” spawned from that system, and it has influenced other industries, such as newspapers, magazines, books, etc. It built a generation who “believes that the written word, whether on processed wood or in pixels, should come without charge” (Grappling with the ‘Culture of Free’ in Napster’s Aftermath). Despite a few artists seeing Napster as the enemy, there were some who saw it as an opportunity to find prospective fans. Even though the original Napster was taken down by the law, one thing was for sure: people will not give up their desire for free products. Apple created the iTunes store, where people could purchase songs for only 99 cents. Although artists were not getting paid the whole album, they saw this better than their music being given away for free. The music business was once again reshaped by the improving technology. Streaming services, such as YouTube and Spotify, simply gave companies a migraine as listeners can just listen or watch their favourite artists and music. The only difference between them and Napster? They are legal. They paid music companies to stream music to consumers, and they get cash from advertisements and through the services’ subscriptions, which usually include no commercials and subscribers-only music. Through this, album sales, physical and digital, dropped by 15 percent and individual track downloads also dropped 13 percent. However, the results “culture of free” were not all positives; the negative aftermaths included a spike in the music industry’s unemployment rate – “workers who make the discs, wholesale buyers, salespeople, stockroom clerks, accountants and others” (Grappling with the ‘Culture of Free’ in Napster’s Aftermath). Artists were also not getting the appropriate pay for every song plays, resulting in a music royalties war, which will be discussed later on.
Music Technology Portion:
Many acknowledge the change in technology over the years. We used to have huge computer monitors, floppy disks, stereos, etc., and they slowly progressed to lightweight laptops, iPods, and the one everybody uses, smartphones. However, people seem to not appreciate the evolution of music playing formats. The very first music playing format was the phonographic cylinder in 1877, which slowly progressed to gramophone record in 1895, also known as vinyl records. Afterwards, in the 1930s, there was the reel-to-reel, which is the form of a tape recording on an open reel. As the years went on, the cassette tapes from the early 1960s evolved into compact discs in the 1980s. MP3 players, cd players like the Walkmans came along, and iPods basically changed everybody’s lives because listening to music became portable and accessible. All one needed was one of those music playing devices and headphones. Along the changes and the advancements in the music playing technology, the technology for music is also changing in general, especially the creation of an upcoming music genre, creating music without needing an actual person, and listening and being able to see artists perform.
EDM, or Electronic Dance Music, has grown rapidly since the early 2000s. It is one of the newest music styles with worldwide sales around $6.2 billion. Major artists include Steve Aoki, Alesso, Martin Garrix, Avicii, Zedd, and many more, and they all create music that became “dance hit classics” (How EDM has Changed Over the Years). Artists can create music with a just a laptop; however, if creating music can be done electronically, are creativity and uniqueness taken away by such technology? There are people who believe that creativity is dying, especially EDM artists’ creativity. He points out how they, over an hour set, will only have three to five of their own tracks, and the rest of the set is spent on playing a remix of other people’s tracks. Brian Zucker, in “The Saturated EDM Market: Eliminating the Celebration of Creativity,” criticizes the artists for “shy[ing] away from playing their own tracks live.” He looks down on the artists because he believes that they should take risks and let their fans hear their unique music. However, “uniqueness” is the point. Over the years, there are subgroups under EDM, from trap to dubstep; however, the general genre is not just beat drops and the same bass beats. It is about “expressing the music in new ways with new sounds” (How EDM has Changed Over the Years). There are unique sounds ranging from bass house dubstep to hard trap. EDM is about pushing beyond your limits and reaching out to the listeners. Artists are applying their music styles on other artists’ tracks and making it part of them. Additionally, both artists’ fan groups will expand as consumers will be listening to the works of both artists.
Artificial Intelligence is sweeping the nation in the 21stcentury. They are robots programmed by people to perform what people used to do. They could replace humans in manual labour and high-level production areas. What about in the arts? There are people who are creating AI to compose classical music (A New AI Can Write Music as Well as a Human Composer) and its tracks are being used in films, advertisements, and games. They created the AI with algorithms that use “reinforcement learning techniques,” loosely mimicking the human brain. The technology is able to create its own music and “capture the diversity and variation found in creative arts;” however, it still needs humans to program the orchestration and music creation into it in order to even make pieces. Artificial Intelligence and humans have actually been working together for some time now. David Bowie helped create an app called the Verbasizer, which rearranges words that can be used as lyrics. Companies even created software that made melodies; however, none of these AI are good enough to win their own awards. They however provide a lot of help to artists especially when they lack some musical skills, such as music theory, which is helpful for creating music. [I wanna research more on if AI is affecting the creative process]
Comments