|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
New technology is changing the way music is purchased. Now recording artists might have to change how they work. PAUL LLOYD reports. TRADITIONAL CDs are under threat as the music industry undergoes a retailing revolution. Interest is swinging to individual songs rather than whole albums, which is evident in both Internet piracy and the music industry's fightback. Some artists believe this could spell the death of 30 years of putting those songs together in thematic ways. Think Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pet Sounds, Nevermind, Dark Side of the Moon . . . albums that were bigger than the sum of their parts. David Bowie, for one, believes the concept of the album now faces an "inevitable" demise. The push towards songs only - which is how all pop music used to be before the long-playing gramophone record - came about as file sharing systems over the Internet satisfied a desire for instant gratification. These systems offered free downloads of millions of tracks, any song that anybody cared to upload, but as single tracks, not as albums. The music industry, saying all this piracy was hurting sales, went online selling digital downloads of these same songs - debundled from albums - with a modest charge in exchange for the knowledge that the sale was legal.
Approximate Word count = 736
Approximate Pages = 2.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|