this week I read a little about how social media affects music and music sales, and the information on this topic was amazing. With all the new technology that’s literally in the palm of our hands, we never think to go out and buy a cd anymore, or better yet, actually buy music in general. There was a research that music sales have been at an overall decline of 30% over the past ten years, making it harder to reach statuses like gold or platinum due to people streaming music as opposed to buying it. Streaming sites such as Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal have made agreements with billboard to include a certain amount of streams to equal one unit sale of music. For example, 1 million streams equals 100 sales of that song. The other problem at hand that makes social media and technology a difficult for artists music sales is illegal downloading and free music streaming that don’t count towards music sales. Sites such as zippy share, lime wire, and soundcloud let you listen to music and download it for free without any consequence. The quality of music my not head great as something that you paid for, but it’s free. A lot of people have have argued that these musicians have money so why should we have to pay for their music? That’s not fair. These artists pay for studio time and promotion and production and music video shoots and outfits and royalties, the least we could do is respect their creativity and pay for it as they have asked us to do. Honestly, you aren’t a true fan if you illegally download these artists music, you aren’t supporting them, and you damn sure aren’t respecting them and their artistry.
Dec 112016