The Impact Of The Internet On The Music Industry

The music industry is contently increasing and changing every year, every month, everyday! And nobody can be certain of what will happen to the industry in the time to come.

One way the internet has had an impact on the music industry is the way people now listen to music. It is no longer large records on record players or CD's in a portable CD Player, instead people are using internet services such as We7 and Spotify to listen to their own music from a very large selection...for free. Of course things which are free have issues, one issue is that people can use free software that records the system sound and record the song as it is being streamed for free across the internet...Money does not need to be spent on music now that the internet has gotten involved!

As well as people getting music via recording, they also download it from peer-to-peer websites and services which offer a wide range of music for no fee. The songs are hosted by real people who then host more, who then host more...the cycle is never ending.

Legal actions are trying to be taken to some of these sites as it breaches Copyrights and other Acts. However seeing that well over half the populations music is illegally obtained it is a very long process to put an official end to illegal file sharing and music pirating.

However the internet has not ruined music completely. When a person likes a song they would want to share it with their friends, before the major increase in the internet and music they would have had to asked the people to meet up in order to listen to the song. Now days you click one button and you can share it with the world using social networking, viral. People on social networking sites such as Facebook receive a notification whenever a friend has posted a song for example on their wall, this friend may then re-post and so on. This is not illegal however works along the same lines as illegal file sharing, once it starts it is almost impossible to stop.

Like I said earlier nobody really knows what is around the next corner however I believe that the relationship between the music industry and the internet is going to increase until the internet will be the only place to get and share music with friends and family.