Surviving in the Music Industry Today

Tunecore - Price, J. (n.d.). Music Industry Survival Guide. Retrieved November 26, 2014, from http://www.tunecore.com/guides/promote_introduction `In many ways technology has changed the music industry. The way music is distributed and sold and how music is discovered today are the two main ways technology has affected the music industry. The article basically explains how the music industry used to be and how it was changed. Before a record label would contact you if they were legitimately interested in your music. They would then help you mass produce your music, market your music and finally sell your music. However, it is not like this anymore. Now anyone has the opportunity to do this while keeping their rights. In todays world the internet and technology are a musicians best friend. Through mp3 blogs and such its very easy to get your name out there. MP3 blogs are very effective in communicating your music with the world. It's fairly simple, one person anywhere can like your music and put a link in their blog then their friend clicks on it and loves it and bam! you've single handed-ly made your music famous just through our little friend called the internet, while at the same time keeping your rights that the record labels would have stripped you of. IMPORTANT QUOTES "In the old model, most people primarily discovered music in one of three ways: Radio Print magazines like Rolling Stone Viacom owned properties like MTV, VH1, BET etc These three outlets would choose what songs they played, what videos they showed or what bands they wrote about from a limited pool of artists pushed to them by the labels. If you were not on a label, you were not in the pool, and therefore you had virtually no opportunity to get exposure from any of these outlets." "You cause the music to sell and they take money from these sales while controlling your rights." "The music industry is about distribution. Record labels make the "thing" to give to the distributor. The distributor puts the "thing" in the store. The record label then markets the "thing" to create demand." I love this article. This is the future. The main argument presented in the article is that musicians can market, promote, and make money while still keeping there rights. Have you ever heard the term sell-out? Record companies gave birth to that term. Before the internet music revolution you would basically have to sell your soul to these record companies just to get your music out there and sold. Lets say now that your music isn't as big of a hit as they originally thought, your fucked! So your in a hole your music wasn't as good as they expected, and you've just sold your soul to sell the music that didn't sell. The Internet fixes all these problems. Musicians nowadays are blessed to be able to easily promote their music through blogs and to actually be able to keep their rights.