Running Head: HOW HAS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY CHANGED?

How Has the Music Industry Swiftly Modernised Using Technologies That Go Against
Traditional Industry Methods?

Luke. J Langley
University of North Carolina Charlotte

HOW HAS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY CHANGED?

Background/ Introduction
Is it possible for you to become a global luminary and/ or YouTube sensation and be global idols
comparable to Against the Current within the next six months to a year? Throughout human
history, practically since human life began, music has been a compelling part of peoples lives
influencing their day to day activities and lifestyles. It is virtually impossible to avoid because
music is everywhere we visit from singing around camp fires, hearing the London orchestra play
a Christmas concert at the Royal Albert Hall, to hearing global sensations such as Taylor Swift
breaking sell out records in the worlds most popular stadiums (McGeorge 2015); everybody loves
some kind of music. Obviously today music is not the same as it was in medieval times. Music is
not even the same today as it was a year ago for the reason that peoples tastes in music genres
change endlessly. Music would not be popular without mediums for it to be produced, recorded
and shared. Over the last fifteen years the music industry has undergone significant change. With
the rise of social media, digital downloads, streaming services and video sharing websites; an
overwhelming number of artists are becoming successful quickly without the need of support from
an initial record label. Some artists have even released videos that have gone viral overnight.
Against the Current is an example of a band that has taken this approach and only signed to record
label Fueled By Ramen in early 2015 (Fueled By Ramen 2015). Throughout this paper I will be
researching how the music industry has changed in a way that gives more people the opportunity
to produce music and where the music industry is likely to head in the future.
The focus for my research will evolve around music artists who all have different levels of
success from their own starting source including Against the Current, Taylor Swift, Alex Day and
Wade Johnston. I will be enquiring into the different routes it is possible to take to become
successful in the music industry, whether it be from taking the traditional path of getting a record

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HOW HAS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY CHANGED?

label to notice you following the path of artists like Swift with Big Machine Records (Cubbison,
L. 2015) or take advantage of technologies such as YouTube for example, comparable to what
Against the Current have achieved (Langley. 2014). The research I conduct will discover
information about how the music industry has shifted away from physical album sales, to digital
downloads, to streaming services and even back to vinyl records all within a minuscule time
period. I would like to capture what it is like for a music artist starting up in the music industry
today and how this differentiates from when music industry veterans, such as Bon Jovi and The
Rolling Stones launched. An overall statement for my research is How Has the Music Industry
Swiftly Modernised Using Technologies That Go against Traditional Industry Methods?
Before proceeding further into this paper it is vital that I outline my relationship to the topic
I have chosen and consequently any biases I may hold. I have spent my teenage years seeing social
media services such as Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter cultivate and find that I have a natural
instinct when it comes to using technology. This is presumably due to the fact I have always had
an interest in gadgets and the latest computer technologies for example, when Apple Music
launched earlier in 2015 (Ganz 2015), I instantly downloaded the beta and was extremely keen to
become a public beta tester. Due to the fact I am contemporary on state of the art technologies, I
sometimes believe they are superior to older technologies, such as CDs when in reality, some
people prefer to have a physical copy of their music rather than a digital download. Although I
will try my best to take a neutral factual view on the technologies I discuss, I may sometimes come
across as bias. Another bias I may have is I am a considerable fan of most the musical artists I
deliberate on throughout this paper including but not limited to Taylor Swift and Against the
Current. Consequently some readers may believe I have written in a way which highly regards
their work rather than taking a neutral standing point.

Luke Langley

HOW HAS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY CHANGED?

Literature Review
Over the last 15 years the most major factor that has caused change in the music industry
is the internet. With the launch of services such as YouTube, iTunes and Spotify, music has
become easily available to the general public at a more competitive price. Unfortunately, the
internet also has a negative side which is that it has made illegal file sharing significantly easier.
On the 29th of January the file sharing website Mega Upload, owned and operated by
multimillionaire Kim Dotcom, was raided and shut down due to the US government. Some people
even believe that Dotcom is one of the Worlds Largest Pirates making huge amounts of profit
through the work of others (All Things Considered 2012). Ever since a long legal battle has been
taking place as Dotcom, any many of his followers, believe that he did not actually do anything
illegal. Swift, Adele and several other artists believe that music streaming services for example,
Spotify are significantly harming album sales and are almost as bad as music pirating services
because the revenue they generate is so small nobody can possible earn a living from it. On the
controversy, Spotify argue that it is vital to provide free streaming services following a freemium
model, supported by advertisements, in order to attract fans who will then pay for the service and
consequently will be able to pay artists more in the long run (Cubbison 2015). All these services
are making it hard to value music in this digital world. People are willing to pay larger sums of
money in order to gain higher quality music files. This is one reason why vinyl record sales are
increasing dramatically and are actually more successful today than they were in the 1960s and
1970s when they peaked (Sherman 2015).
YouTube is arguably one of the fundamental resources that has caused such a huge change
in the music industry. YouTube has over 1 billion users! That is almost one third of the internets
population and every day hundreds of millions of hours of content is viewed (YouTube 2015).

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HOW HAS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY CHANGED?

This has provided a huge market for people who do not necessary have record labels to start
producing music and actually have an opportunity of being noticed and achieving global success.
Alex Day, Against the Current and Wade Johnston are all examples of people with these
characteristics. Before Christmas 2009, Day decided that he wanted to attempt achieving the UK
Christmas number one chart position and consequently produced a song he titled Forever Yours.
At first his song was not excessively successful in traveling up the chart rankings however, after
lots of promotion was carried out through methods such as contacting newspapers, social media
etc, and Day releasing the same fundamental song as lots of different versions (Acoustic, Pop
Punk, Rock etc) to take advantage of a chart loop hole, Days song charted at position number four
on Christmas Day (TEDxYouth 2013). Despite the fact Day did not reach his goal, he proved that
the music industry is changing because he proved that you no longer need huge financial supplies
or record labels to achieve a top ten position in the Christmas charts.
Against the Current are an indie/ pop/ rock band who similarly arrived at their success
through the promotional platform YouTube. The observations conducted by Langley in
Assignment One show progress of how Against the Current have grown from a band that are no
longer in a basement to livestreaming in a pleasant living room. (Langley, 2015, Lines 326327). Against the Current are now conducting a world tour stopping at over fifteen different
countries and will contain performances in over forty five unique venues. It was only in early 2015
when Against the Current make the conscious decision to sign to a record label (Langley 2015).
Cayaris (2011) article follows a comparable story of a teenager named Wade Johnston who takes
the view that YouTube has replaced the way ancient way music was produced, shared and. The
idea that a character with no experience or financial backing is explored.

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Change is a word that is distributed and echo by a significant number of people in the
modern music industry. In the video Big Think (2012), John Legend, a 38-year-old music icon
from Springfield Ohio, identifies that there has been a breath-taking fall in sales of records in the
recent past. Legend believes that this has led to a compelling loss in revenue for record labels who
accordingly are making less profits. To combat this, record labels want to encompass terms in to
contacts that grant them access to profits earned through other streams such as touring and
merchandise sales. This previously was not the case as record labels knew that good music artist
would generate physical record sales providing them with a steady income. In Cloonans article
Rethinking the Music Industry (2007), Cloonan suggests we should no longer think of the music
industry as just one industry and instead break it down into separate industries including the
recording industry. The article points out that the world has changed significantly due to high
levels of globalisation through technologies such as the internet and consequently the industry has
naturally changed.
Entering the Conversation
After reading through all my collected sources and carrying out necessary research it has become
clear to me that the music industry needs changes in order to be profitable for future music
creators, listeners and everyone else involved in the music industry. Due to album sales falling
in the face of music piracy (Cubbison 2015, p1), it is clear to me that people no longer want to
purchase music outright. Although streaming services, in the likes of Spotify and the more recent
Apple Music, have helped please music consumers, many producers feel that streaming services
are little better than the music pirates (Cubbison 2015). Streaming services, with perhaps the
exception of YouTube, also do not necessary make it easy for new independent music producers,
such as Against the Current (Langley 2015) to become noticed and achieve their big break. I

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believe that it is possible to adapt and create new technologies, using ideas and technologies that
already exists, to push forwards the music industry in order to create more advanced tools that
will benefit everyone involved by providing foundations for future development.
Individual Youtubers, such as Day do not necessarily have the essential skill set or
budget required to start producing a band with high quality recording capabilities (TEDxYouth
2013). In a band there is typically a need for a vast range of instruments and tools including
drum kits, guitars, pianos and technical studios full of expensive equipment. To purchase all this
equipment would cost thousands of dollars, which the average person cannot afford (Sherman
2105). The only other current alternative of purchasing all this equipment is to hire recording
studio time however, this is also hugely expensive. Even if someone did own all this equipment,
due to peoples incredibly busy schedules and extravagant travel costs, it can be incredibly
difficult to locate people all in one place at the same time. To combat these issues, I am
proposing that a new only studio is launched which will include several tools, that are
discussed below.
The online studio, due to its very nature of being online, would allow people to be located
anywhere in the world and, as long as they have a computer or smart phone with high speed
internet access, produce music with their friends and/ or band mates. The online studio could
potentially work like an online chatroom, such as a Skype video call, but also have the ability to
stream sound from instruments to a central computer, or server with high processing power
capable of recording all the audio streams simultaneously. In order to reduce costs for the client,
these computers could be owned by the organisation that hosts and developed the online studio
however, still be affordable for this organisation because they can be shared by many people all
with memberships to the online studio. Computers function 24 hours a day 365 days a year
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however, one group of humans will not constantly be recording music therefore, when people in
the United Kingdom are sleeping, people in Australia could be using the online studio to record
their music and vice versa.
One of the main features of the online studio is its ability to allow new and upcoming
artist to record music over the internet instantly. The system provided by the online studio
organisation should then be able to mix and master the recorded audio into a song and allow the
composers to name it and eventually produce their own EP or album. I believe that it is vital that
the system allows producers to publish and share their music and consequently would
recommend there be the ability to publish high quality finished works onto a new special
streaming platform. This streaming platform could also contain music already produced by
existing record labels and artists similar to the music that can be found on todays streaming
services. Music videos, lyric videos, exclusive messages and other content could also be features
added to this platform.
To cover the costs for the organisation providing the online studio and music streaming
services, I would recommend a membership be required to access the services. Depending on
which services the individual requires, different price points should be charged. It also makes
sense to offer a group package as to take advantage of the recording music services, you need a
whole band. This will help the organisation increase their revenue as it provides an incentive to
purchase the service for more people as they feel they are getting a better deal. Shown below is a
table of my recommended pricing model:

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HOW HAS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY CHANGED?

Package

Cost Per Month

9
Description

Trial

Free but limited to one

month.

Access to all the services

offered.

Individual Listener

$9.99

Ability to stream music.

Group Listener

$15.99

Ability stream music for up to

five people.

Individual Producer

$29.99

Ability to stream music and

produce music using the
online studio.

Band Producer

$49.99

Ability to stream music and

produce music using the
online studio for up to five
people.

Obviously further research will need to be carried out to discover information such as,
how much licensing for very successful artists content will cost for streaming, the development
costs of the online studio and the costs of purchasing and running the expensive server hardware
needed to power all these services especially the online studio however, I believe these prices are
realistic due to comparisons with competitor prices of streaming services and my knowledge/
experience with server hosting. My knowledge involves the creation and maintenance for
different computer game servers making sure all the hardware and software runs seamlessly and
effectively without any downtime. In order to carry out this further research I believe that it is
essential to conduct more market research. According to Felix Richters research for Statista
(2015), currently Spotify and Apple Music appear to be dominating the market with an overall
market share of over 65% of that top 6 streaming services. The market research I am suggesting
should be conducted should discover why this is and how it would be possible to make the new
online studio listener package become more successful in the long run than the existing market
leaders. Questions that should be incorporated are what is the reason Spotify and Apple Music
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are successful? Is because of the vast range of music they offer, the connivance of the user
friendly user interface, the platforms they are available on or some other factor? This research
will be important for when deciding what to prioritise in the development and launch stages of
the online studio.
In distinction to my research I believe that the new online studio system I am proposing
will help to modernise the music industry and solve the problem of artists not receiving high
enough pay through the current streaming services. The problem the industry is currently facing
is that people are no longer prepared purchase the music they consume however; they will
willingly pay for a much cheaper alternative of a monthly subscription. The problem for the
consumers is these subscriptions do not currently generate enough revenue to pay artist the
revenue they deserve (Cubbison 2015). As Cayari outlines in her article The YouTube Effect:
How YouTube Has Provided New Ways to Consume, and through the vast number of videos
uploaded to YouTube every day, we know that thousands of people enjoy producing their own
music. Presently the only way to record high quality professional music is to either purchasing
expensive equipment or renting recording studio time, I trust that people will be keen to lower
their production costs and consequently will likely pay a high price, outlined earlier, for the
online studio software.
In the long run, after the costs of the servers are covered through large volumes of people
purchasing memberships for the online studio producer, it will be much easier to cover the
running costs for resources resembling servers and music licences. This means that disposable
revenue will be extremely high and consequently more revenue can be paid to artists who
produce music for the streaming service. Artists will receive revenue comparable to the number
of times their songs are played. This revenue will be a proportion of the amount of payment
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made by the consumers subscribing to the listener tariffs and any revenue generated through
advertisements. This will lead to artists becoming happier because they will now be earning
more than they did from previous streaming services and consequently can cover the cost of
paying the monthly producer membership as well as having large profits for themselves. Music
consumers will be satisfied because they have a cheap streaming service they can use to
consumer their music and the organisation providing the online studio will be jubilant due to a
large revenue stream and consequently, in theory, the music industry should be modernised and
more profitable for every party.
Unfortunately, comparable to any contemporary idea, there are some potential
complications that may arise from online performing in the music industry. One of the main
concerns would be how cost effective the new online studio would be without a significant
volume of users paying membership fees. This is for the reason that compulsory licenses and
expensive sever hardware and software are required. Despite the fact I have considered that this
issue would slightly be offset by the membership charges acting as a deterrent to unwanted users,
it would still be challenging to monitor the online studio for clients uploading copyrighted
content, poor quality music or other unwanted content. The system would not be effective or user
friendly if it just got filled with lumber content. A final concern is that if the client has a
lackadaisical internet connection it may make recording music a hard frustrating process. The
client would also likely have to acquire at least one instrument in order to record songs.
In order to try and offset some of these issues, the online studio could also provide some
extra services for example, allowing producers to rent out the physical instruments they purchase
to other aspiring members of the site. This will likely provide an incentive for more future music
producers to sign up. Bands could also setup a profile page where they can sell tickets to their
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concerts, merchandise and more. This would create even more revenue streams for the music
producers and, if the online studio organisation took a percentage of their sales, profits would be
generated for them too. Although this is technically a form of advertising, I believe this will
move forwards advertising because it will be more specific to what people actually want to see
and consequently will not feel like advertisements.
Overall, after reviewing the sources I consulted, I believe that the idea I have proposed
could seriously push forwards the future of the music industry and provide some valuable
insights into helping combat the issues of music privacy and pay outs for artists being too low.
Although I believe further research still needs to be carried out, I hope my work will point the
industry in a good direction for years of success.
Conclusion/ So-What?
Throughout this paper I have researched the reasons how and why the music industry has
changed from physical album sales towards more digital formats including downloads and
streaming. This included concerns artists have about the amount of money they earn as well as
how artists starting out today, are typically taking different paths to the traditional record label
lead industry. I also felt it necessary to propose suggestions for where I believe the music
industry is likely to head to in the future and why I support these ideas. Today I discovered that
less bands and artists are signing to record labels in order to achieve their big break and
become known, instead they are relying more upon services such as YouTube and social media
sites, such as Twitter, to publicise themselves and build an audience. Due to technologies such as
the internet, artists are having to undergo other methods to create loyal fans who will purchase
their music rather than simply using a piracy service. After taking into account the changes the
music industry has undergone and the requirements new artists have I announced an idea I had
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for a new online studio which would allow people who would like to produce music to
collaborate fast and efficiently over the internet to record songs. The online studio makes it
cheap and easy for people to find the necessary musical resources they require and to publish
their music to a potentially huge audience all paying a subscription to generate more revenue
than existing streaming services.
I feel that my contribution is vital to the future of the music industry due to the fact I
believe it combats many of the problems the music industry is currently facing. These problems
include rising piracy, current streaming services not generating enough revenue to pay artists the
payments they deserve and the expanding demand for more people wanting to produce and
publish their own content. Without the music industry undergoing some kind of change like what
I have proposed, piracy will likely continue to increase and consequently existing artists will no
longer be able to afford to produce the work we know and love. We also face the fear that
fantastic new artists could easily go undiscovered therefore some valuable music contributions
may never be heard. The topic of the music industry is momentously critical for the reason that
every culture throughout the worlds history has listened to music of some degree for thousands
of years. Throughout this time huge developments have been produced to help achieve this
music being shared for example we have gone from social gatherings to physical shops and now
online content that can be accessed by over 1/3 of the worlds population instantly (Internet
Users 2015). According to Knight and Fitzsimons (2014), their research has suggested that music
can also help with relieving stress and other medical issues. Music also produces happiness for
millions of people every day and the global power celebrities have as role models inspiring
young teenagers and helping them through difficult times and in some cases also potentially
helping to prevent suicides do to the relatable songs they produce. This is why I believe it is

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essential for research to be constantly engaged with into the development of the music industry
so that more spectacular content can be produced and accessed by as many people as possible
throughout the globe helping to supply people with the audio they need for their health and
happiness.
There will always be more research that can be undertaken in order to allow the music
industry to continue to grow and advance by becoming accessible to everyone on the planet no
matter where they are. Questions I believe that should be asked is how can we take the online
studio idea I have proposed and make it more educational and accessible to people with
disabilities for example blindness. Would it be possible to develop tools using technology that
can teach someone who is visually impearled how to play an instrument and share their content
with the world? I also fantasise that it would be intriguing to research into how we can use
technology to make music accessible in some kind of form to death people. Obviously the death
community will never physically be able to hear music, but perhaps technologies could be
developed that produce musical vibrations so that they can listen to music through vibrations
rather than sound. The possibilities of music are endless therefore, I hope that research into this
industry is continuously undergone in a way that benefits as much of the global population as
possible.

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References
Big Think. (2012, April 20). How is the music industry changing? [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa4YuL-jGL8.
Cayari, C. (2011). The YouTube Effect: How YouTube Has Provided New Ways to Consume,
Create, and Share Music. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 12(6).
Cubbison, L. (2015). Will Taylor Swift and Spotify Ever Get Back Together? Top Intellectual
Property Developments of 2014, 38-41. Retrieved October 15, 2015.
Fitzsimons, T. (2014). Why 4.4 Billion People Still Don't Have Internet Access. NPR. Retrieved
November 3, 2015.
Fueled By Ramen. (2015). Retrieved November 7, 2015, from
http://www.fueledbyramen.com/artists
Ganz, J. (2015). Apple Announces Music Streaming Service. NPR. Retrieved November 5,
2015.
Knight, W., & Rickard, N. (2001). Relaxing Music Prevents Stress-Induced Increases in
Subjective Anxiety, Systolic Blood Pressure, and Heart Rate in Healthy Males and
Females. Journal Of Music Therapy, 254-272.
Lam, C., & Tan, B. (2001, August 8). The Internet is Changing the Music Industry.
Communications of the ACM, 62-68.
Langley, L. (2015, October 9). Assignment One Against the Current. Lecture.
McGeorge, A. (2015, August 23). Taylor Swift breaks Staples Centre record as Kobe Bryant
unveils banner celebrating 16th sold out show. The Mirror.

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Richter, F. (2015, October 20). Infographic: Spotify Ahead of the Pack in Terms of Paying
Users. Retrieved November 12, 2015, from http://www.statista.com/chart/3899/paid
-subscribers-of-music-streaming-services/
Sherman, C. (2015, September 23). Valuing Music in A Digital World. Forbes. Retrieved
October 15, 2015.
Sydell, L. (2012, January 20). Four Views On Megaupload. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
TEDxYouth. (2013, January 16). The Future of Music: Alex Day at TEDxYouth@SanDiego
[Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYt4gismyiI.

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