Being able to download your favorite songs and create your own music library for free was the biggest appeal for its users. However, this became a controversial issue very fast as record label industries now had to compete with Napster in addition to the fact that it was copyright infringement. From an economic standpoint, it was an easy choice to use Napster to access music for free rather than pay for the newest album’s CD. As a result, record label industries and artists were basically working for free, reaping no economic benefit to the work they put in to create new songs and music for others. It cost nothing for the consumer, however artists needed the revenue to pay for their record label, publicist, and everything else essential to maintaining their fame.
The villain to the creation of Napster and the threat to the music industry was the increasing innovation and technology present at the time. This wasn’t the first time technology had created economic issues, and it won’t be the last. From watching this documentary, I started to think about how newly invented technology at the turn of the 20th century allowed for music videos to threaten radio stars, just like the song “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles.
Instead of Napster, meet MTV, Music Television, which was another platform responsible for decreasing the need for radio artists. Released on August 1, 1981, MTV made the experience of seeing bands live available to the public from the comfort of their own house on their own couch. Reporters described radio as a “skeleton” as the public tended to choose to watch shows live than listen to them on the radio. MTV also made it possible for international artists to broadcast in other parts of the country. During this time, even British music was made available and popular in America, while artists had to compete with each other for auditory and visual images. MTV allowed artists to be more creative with their music as they were able to express themselves more.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/feb/24/napster-music-free-file-sharing
https://www.cnet.com/news/did-video-kill-the-radio-star/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2016/08/01/35-years-ago-mtv-debuted-and-video-killed-radio-star/87678898/
I think this is interesting. I feel like the music industry especially is constantly evolving with technology. From records to cassettes to cds to video. I feel like they should of expected a Napster to pop up. They had to know music would evolve to be sold online.
ReplyDeleteI agree, it seems that the music industry has had to constantly adapt to evolving technology. Even on the side of the artists, many have adapted to utilizing the new developments in audio manipulation. Furthermore, as audio production continues to grow and evolve, independent artists not bound to major record labels are on an increasingly level playing field.
ReplyDeleteGoing off of Evelyns point, music being a new trend especially with the creation of MTV etc. music producers and artists should have expected that something like Napster was bound to happen. Look at how we stream music today, there is a free Spotify where you can stream around 30 million songs for free, or Youtube which provides free access to music videos. The one downfall I see in this was because technology was not so "advanced" when Napster was released, the amount of people that knew how to work the internet was not as expected like today. Even in the video some people did not know how to define the word "internet".
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