Downey 1

Dravin Downey

Prof. Garrett

English 1201

19 March 2021

The music industry is a constantly changing, growing, and evolving field. New artists,

genres, and technologies can very quickly change the standards of the entire industry. With that

in mind, technology has been evolving at an incredible pace, and thus its impact on the music

industry cannot be ignored. Playing, recording, releasing, and even listening to music have all

been touched in some way by the digital era. The question at hand, however, is not “has the

music industry been impacted by the digital era,” but rather, “how has the digital era impacted

the music industry?”

In the beginning of the recorded music industry things were very different. Many

recordings were almost entirely live and completely unedited, they were recorded straight to

acetate, they were then distributed either as vinyl records or via radio stations. Then in the 60s

and seventies things were still analogue, but edits began being made to recordings. Now sounds

could be edited, stored, and manipulated however the user wished. This ability, along with the

more widespread use of computers in the 80s, would begin the spiral into the digital age.

(Kramer)

The biggest impact the digital era has had on the industry as a whole is the distribution of

the music itself. Almost all of the resources bring this fact up. The first form of digital media
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distribution was the CD, which made music more portable and accessible, yet didn’t sacrifice

audio quality like previous portable media forms, such as cassettes and 8-tracks. (Kramer) It

should be noted that Kramer’s research is valuable to gain a wider lens when it comes to the

history of the music industry and the change new technology brings, but it doesn’t reflect the

most recent trends in digital distribution, as this source was written in the late 1990s.

The CD has recently become far surpassed by digital streaming services and mp3s. Now

all the listener needs is a smartphone or mp3 player and they have a nearly limitless library in the

palm of their hands. (Valencia) Most streaming services, such as Spotify and Apple Music, even

allow access to their massive libraries of music for only a few dollars a month. This allows

musicians to share their music online with a rapidly growing, global audience. (Eiriz and Leite)

Eiriz and Leite’s 2017 deep-dive into the process of digital distribution, “The Digital Distribution

of Music and its Impact on the Business Models of Independent musicians” is incredibly useful

in breaking down and understanding the complex and sometimes confusing process of how the

music reaches the listener, and how the money is shared amongst the parties involved in an

increasingly digital market. It also looks at the viability of this process for an independent

musician, who does not have the money a major record label can provide, which is a very unique

perspective. This differs slightly from Valencia’s paper on the subject, “The Impact of

Technology on the Music Industry,” which tries to provide a more broad picture of the industry

at the time it was written, 2008, and tries to address and propose solutions for artists struggling

with profiting off this system.

Despite how positive digital distribution may seem, as mentioned earlier, it comes with

some major negatives. These negatives mostly stack up against the very artists using digital

methods to distribute their music. The ease of access and shareability of these files on the
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internet is great for reaching new audiences, however it also allows for rampant piracy. Ever

since the introduction of the music sharing program Napster back in 1998, which allowed users

to swap copyrighted music files back and forth without payment, digital piracy of music has only

grown. This makes the artist lose out on album sales and royalties that could make or break their

careers. A song could get very popular, but the artist may not see a single cent from it if it is

shared through these illegal means. (Bender and Wang) Bender and Wang’s paper, “The Impact

of Digital Piracy on Music Sales: A Cross-Country Analysis,” is a very compelling piece of

literature to use in this discussion, with a more serious and scientific audience in mind. It

includes not only a history and in-depth description of music piracy, but backs up claims made

with scientific studies and data collected over 8 years of research into the topic.
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Getting away from music distribution, another major element brought up by several of

these sources is sampling. Sampling is a common practice in the digital age, and is heavily used

in Hip-Hop, Rap, and modern Pop music. It refers to the process of taking, or “sampling,”

another recording and placing it in a different piece of music by a different artist. It took off in

the 90s and caused many lawsuits due to the artists being sampled not getting the credit for the

piece used. It is now illegal for an artist to sample another work without permission from the

original artist and giving them written credit on the release. (Egel) The article, “Copyright

Infringement and the Music Industry,” by Debbie Egel is interesting as it gives clear definitions

to all of terms surrounding the practice of sampling. Egel has a lot of credibility in the field as

well, being both the owner of an independent record label for over 10 years, and specializing as

an attorney in these types of cases. The article even provides an example of an ongoing legal

dispute about sampling against the artist Nicki Minaj.

These resources have helped provide multiple potential answers to the question of, "how

has the digital era impacted the music industry?” The digital era has made it so that music is

more easily accessible to the consumer, and more easily distributed and produced by the artist,

but potentially at the cost of profits. Further research could be done into the digital production of

music as well. Outside of sampling these resources didn’t go very deep into this process, but

more information is available and could be useful in providing more answers.

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Works Cited

Bender, Mark T., and Yongsheng Wang. “The Impact of Digital Piracy on Music Sales: A Cross-

Country Analysis.” International Social Science Review, vol. 84, no. 3/4, June 2009, pp.

157–170. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=slh&AN=47559834&site=eds-live. Accessed 7 March 2021

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Egel, Debbie. “Copyright Infringement And The Music Industry.” Hypebot, 21 Oct. 2020,
www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2020/10/copyright-infringement-and-the-music-industry.html.
Accessed 21 March 2021
Eiriz, Vasco, and Filipe Pinto Leite. “The Digital Distribution of Music and Its Impact on the

Business Models of Independent Musicians.” Service Industries Journal, vol. 37, no. 13–

14, Sept. 2017, pp. 875–895. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/02642069.2017.1361935.

Accessed 7 March 2021

Kramer, Jonathan D. The Impact of Technology on the Musical Experience, 1995,

www.music.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2675%3Athe-impact-

of-technology-on-the-musical-experience&catid=220&Itemid=3665. Accessed 7 March

2021

Valencia, Jazmine A. The Impact of Technology on the Music Industry, May 2008,

http://fau.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fau%3A4299. Accessed 7 March 2021