In the age of the internet, music is even easier to come by. Gone are the days spent browsing through records in stores, replaced by browsing through iTunes from the comfort of your own home. But what does this mean for the artists who create and the for the everyday listener?
Well the artists find it a lot easier to get their music out to the public, be it through YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp or any of the many other platforms that are springing up on an almost weekly basis, however, with the easy upload, it’s harder to stand out and get your music heard due to the sheer amount uploaded. Bands and artists of top and no quality are springing up all over the place, meaning its easy to get lost into obscurity.
With all the new songs and records being produced each day, the everyday listener has the musical world at their fingertips. Fancy listening to your favourite band? Well go ahead and do it, want to find a new band that has a similar sound to your favourite band? Yeah you can do that too! Hell these days, if you wanted to watch your favourite band live while they’re in a different country, you can do! It’s super easy for anyone to find ant form of music on the internet now. A British band can reach potential new fans thousands of miles away in different continents and vice versa. Small bands you may never have heard of are gaining fan clubs of hundreds, maybe even thousands of people in multiple countries they’ve never visited and these fans are hearing and finding new music they never thought they would encounter, all by just spending a bit of time browsing the world wide web.
All this sounds good right? Well yeah it is but it comes at a price for the artists. Before the digital age, artists would get a good amount of money from CD or vinyl sales, but now with the increasing popularity of streaming and digital downloads, artists need a considerable amount of plays just to start making a few pence, meaning that artists have to rely on crowdfunding or merchandise/tour revenues to be able to produce more music of a good quality. But that’s where the catch-22 comes into place, artists need the money from the music and touring to make more music, yet with the easy access of music and live videos on the end, people seem to have begun turning to the internet to get their ‘live’ fix, rather than venturing out and supporting the artists and venues they frequent in person. This is also not fully at a fault of the listener though, as everyday life gets more expensive and the constant influx of new favourite bands appearing, sometimes it just isn’t viable for people to constantly head out to live shows or buy artists products. So we’re stuck in the same cycle in an oversaturated yet supremely talented industry.