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The advancements in music technology are creating avenues for increased profitability for artists worldwide. Today's artists are free to distinguish themselves via compelling stances in crowded ecosystems, without undue pressure from labels and producers, that have their own commercial agendas to protect. As time passes, these technology innovations will create a myriad of opportunities for artists.
As per Tim (Ingham, 2020), there are 15 to 20 million indie artists on Youtube with hundreds of millions of subscribers. The young generation has taken a fascination towards the Tiktok app to mimic different music and tracks, making streaming simple and accessible for all. If we look at Facebook and Music sharing - there are innumerable opportunities to connect people and engage in digital conversations thereby creating special moments.
Popular songs are attracting far better reach and gathering greater support from streaming platforms and re-makers. Minor enhancements through AR and the development of automated tracks are giving rise to new music genres. With few styles available in the 80s and 90s, today hip-hop, punk, EDM, and so on, appear in contemporary music endlessly. We have also witnessed new sounds like trap, country EDM, hip-pop evolving, leaving us to only imagine what's next in the future of the music industry?
The recorded music industry is set to expand for the fifth straight year in 2020. During the past five years, average earnings rose from $14.2 billion to $19.1 billion. We spent around $21bn last year a rise of 9.7% over 2018.
According to the IFPI "Music Listening 2019" survey, 89 percent of respondents acknowledged they used some legal on-demand music streaming service, 64 percent had listened to music on a legal on-demand audio streaming service. This is vastly different from the 2008 music revolution, where 95 percent of downloads were unauthorized, and limited download/use of copyrighted songs prevailed that were accessible online.
The Internet has transformed the music industry entirely in just 20 years and we are only in the early stages. As democratic systems and innovation become the order of the day, on-site musicians will produce hi-tech, quality music. Emerging economies rather than existing ones, which already dominate the industry, would be pushing the democratic process. Streaming has dominated new markets and will provide unrestricted access to music to millions of people in emerging economies. With the merger of mature and new-markets for artists, amazing opportunities will be created in highly innovative forms.
The old media walls are set to crumble. With the digitization of the music industry accelerating, taking a glimpse of what the future holds is like viewing a canvas of endless possibilities.
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