Online Entertainment has consumed both music and the movie industry. consumer spending on digital music is increasing at an increasing rate. We all remember the initial music download applications such as Kazaa and Limewire. now there are hundreds of platforms including BitTorrent which allows a user to download an entire discography of an artist at once rather than an individual song. We all take a risk when stealing music online and do not realize how much we are truly negatively affecting the artist's bottom line.
Some artists or most I would think take it as an insult when a fan steals their music. This article focuses on one artist who made the controversial decision to pull her music from the online a streaming site Spotify. "Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for," says pop artist Taylor Swift. personally I agree this action is standing up for the work the artist does and yes there will be upsetting backlash from fans. In all honesty I feel the fan should put their cells in the artist shoes and true fans would understand the legal action she is taking.
We all knew it was coming 2014 seems to be the first year of zero platinum selling records due to excessive file sharing. Unfortunately file sharing is not going away and as the article states no amount of diva tantrums will change this. extreme amounts of money used to be generated in the music industry fast forward to today and record stores are closing. Just this past week Google and YouTube announced they're streaming launch music key. The release has already been plagued with reported threats to pull independent artists and pulling of independent labels. Spotify admits paying on average less than 1 penny to her record companies per play which results in an extremely minimal money being trickle down to the artists.
On a positive note for the online music industry is that an artist really does not need a record deal between online promotions, website design, maintenance, booking of venues, and even international tourists can all be done online by the artist themselves.
Solutions are being seek in favor of the artist. Offering exclusive material through independent channels with direct payment while reducing bank and credit card fees can slowly reduce dependence on these platforms and the hefty costs associated with being heard that can assist in re-establishing music as a true career option.
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