Universal access to music – The impact of New Media on the music industry

Universal access to music – The impact of New Media on the music industry

There hasn’t been a time in the past where music was that accessible than today. Manmade music has been existing for ages; the oldest instruments ever found are more than 35.000 years old and proof the desire for music since time immemorial. Nowadays music is actively and passively surrounding us everywhere in our daily life.  Not only scholarly researches proof that globalization and digitalization has a huge impact on the availability, distribution and production of music. There is an unmanageable quantitative offer of physical music objects like CD’s and vinyl as well as digital objects like music files, videos or movies. Due to the invention of the internet and internet-capable smartphones, New Media extends the limits of the music industry and makes music more accessible to the users like never before. It seems like centuries ago since we used tape decks recording songs of radio shows or secretly burning CD’s of the latest music. It was not that easy than today having access to an unimaginable variety of music in internet pages like youtube only a few clicks away. While you had to go to the next music store to buy the latest music of preference some time ago or find the right radio channel, there is even more variety to approach music through new technologies. Digital devices like smartphones and tablets offer a combination of different functions at the same time. At any place we are able to consume media related content like movies online or listening to music though mobile devices. 

It’s a fact that digitalization has a big impact on the globalization of the world. When we focus on various countries with different cultures we can observe cultural and social changes according to the music consumption and production. The creasing popularity of western music in Asian countries shows a change in cultural values and social behavior. Nowadays the young Japanese people for example listen mostly to western or western-influenced music. By now the disco scene for example is almost entirely dominated by this kind of foreign music. We can see that digital content is easily spread all over the world and due to New Media it is even easier to access a variety of music genres from all over the word. 

A survey of Media Insight Consulting from 2014 shows how new music is nowadays discovered. In order to understand changing music habits within the country and abroad more than 2500 citizens in the UK were asked how they discover new music. Fifty-nine percent of the respondents surprisingly said they would still listen to radio as an easy way to explore new songs. A big percentage of the people use the TV which offers a variety of music channels, shows and concerts. Almost as much as that amount obviously use the internet including youtube and social networks which make it very easy and fast to share and consume new videos and songs. The enormous flow of music related content is strongly influenced by the opportunity of active contribution via social networks.  Apps offer another way to find out more about new releases and the latest videos of the preferred band or DJ. Even though a smartphone itself as a digital device doesn’t appear in the survey, its functions include most of the ways to discover new music due to New Media and the convergence of the music availability. 

 “This circulation of media content […]”, as Henry Jenkins claims, “[…] across different media systems, competing media economies, and national borders – depends heavily on consumer’s active participation.” According to Jenkins the so called convergence occurs in the heads of the consumers and users by socially interacting with other people. We can therefore situate the improved availability of music in the context of the social and cultural processes related to the convergence process which opens up new ways for the flow of music related content.

Written by Felix Goldmann