The Sounds of Profit Essay

Has the music industry always been a brutal dogfight? At which point in time did music become more about making money rather than expressing the soul? With the advancements of technology in the past few decades, the value of songs began to steeply decline, causing a tough struggle for artists to make a living fulfilling their childhood dreams. After the digital age began, citizens were allowed unrestricted access to musical databases via a mass network and concerns about the open availability of music began to arise. Before the popularization of the Web, music economists predicted that widespread public access to file sharing through the Internet would destroy the ability for musicians to make a fair profit in today’s recording industry. These people were correct because with such a wide database of free tunes available through the Internet, the public spends markedly less money on recorded music.
With the development and evolution of the World Wide Web, illegal file sharing becomes a major obstacle for allowing performers to make money. If artists and record companies want to stabilize their revenue streams again, then necessary innovations will need to be made to solve this Internet crisis. These musicians can supplement their income by writing songs for alternative media such as television, commercial, and motion pictures. Likewise, artists who embrace social networking opportunities such as Facebook and YouTube, can generate widespread commercial interest to counteract some of the roadblocks faced with the extreme rise in illegally shared music. There are also other outlets within the net media that allows for these musicians to gain more notoriety. In their article about the government’s Digital Economy Act and online security innovations, Bart Cammaerts and Bingchun Meng stress that:
“By embracing the online participatory culture some artists are developing