The Future of Music / The Music Industry

[Londo Mollari]

In the past few years - since the time of Napstar etc - music has been available to download illegally and more recently legally on the internet. With the arrival of video hosting sites such as YouTube etc people are able to post there own music vidoes and gain an international audience on-line, people have even gained record deals via online webcam shows.

So, this brings me to ask...what does the future hold for music, the music industry and musicians as a whole? Please justify your answers and perhaps give your views on why the current situation is like it is.

IMO the music industry overcharges hugely, this is probably the main reason for illegal downloading of music and for that matter DVD's and videos. If the music industry didn't charge so much money for records which cost next to nothing to make then there would be no incentive to download music illegally. This would however annoy many - but not all -musicians.

As video sites like YouTube expand and develop i can quickly see them becoming similar to bit-torrent sites etc. People will stick a track on youtube where it can be watched / downloaded for free and there will be almost nothing that YouTube will be able to do. The music industry threatened in the past to sue people who downloaded music, but they havn't had a great deal of success. Youtube and other sites like it also give small time musicians the chance to get a global audience (for example the 4th most viewed vidoe on Youtube is a guy playing the guitar).

In the future i can see two things happening - the music industry will either reduce its prices reducing the demand for downloading, or they will refuse to do so and will ultimately pay the price...big time!

[Spacey]

IMO the music industry overcharges hugely, this is probably the main reason for illegal downloading of music and for that matter DVD's and videos. If the music industry didn't charge so much money for records which cost next to nothing to make then there would be no incentive to download music illegally.

I did agree with you, up to a point in time when songs were avaliable to be downloaded for $0.99, started by Apple. If a CD costs $20-30 for 10 songs, downloading them at 99 cents each would cost $9.90, a difference of $10.10-20.10. I think paying $0.99 is more than reasonable.

I know I stopped seeing as many movies in theatres due to the high prices of a ticket and rent most of them if I want to see them.

...quickly see them becoming similar to bit-torrent sites etc...watched / downloaded for free and there will be almost nothing that YouTube will be able to do...music industry threatened in the past to sue people who downloaded music...Youtube and other sites like it also give small time musicians the chance to get a global audience...

I don;t think it will get there. Youtube is bringing filtering technology to prevent copyrighted material from making it to their site(namely audio tracks).

Youtube does provide an avenue for pple to get exposure like one girl who got a job out of it(Brookers), but going back to the point about music filters, I think when the kinks are ironed out there won;t be a problem. I could only forsee a problem for people who have bought tracks and created something with it, while citing songs and artists. I doubt the filters would distuniguish between the content.

[R3B3L]

I think that musicians, while not at the moment, will be all screwed.

This is because LOTS of people prefer to download the music, for free... which means that the musicians get less money, and eventually have to stop their jobs, because they can't afford it.

But that's what's going to happen, eventually. At the moment you still have the die hard fans and people who either don't like/don't want/can't be bothered to download the tracks who will buy them.

[Cole]

WhenI buy cds I ALWAYS buy them (most of time serioulsy not allways lol) on internet, on amazon as prices are reasonable, and I'm going soon to spend in xxx€ in buying legally stuff as I did alot in past, so people would go in internet and buy there as prices are ok here, no real excuses for internet users at least about it