The recording industry has changed its tune over the last ten years and as a result the demographics of artistry and production are more dynamic and fluid than ever seen before. This is the dawn of a new era, in which home-based recording and production can be utilised to create sounds that enable flux and flow in the universal music scene in a way never dreamed of until now.
Producing music at home is easy. All you need is a little bit of talent and a lot of enterprise. If you can read an instruction manual and can carry a tune you can work with Ableton or Sibelius to produce a passable tune. With practice and determination this can become a good tune and then a great track worth slapping your DJ name on and launching into cyberspace. And who knows who could be the next Skrillex or Richie Hawtin, it could be you!
This is great in some ways. Artists have always made music, and there are probably countless incredible tracks that were never heard because they didn't make it past some industry head's idea of what was current at the time. This doesn't have to happen any more because no-one can veto you off the internet. Anti-pop culture movements can surface more easily and new sounds can twist and evolve as the sharing of creative ideas can proliferate into cyberspace. You can create whole albums sat in front of your Mac, with no-one to stop you. Except your Mum telling you to turn that dreadful noise down.
It is true to say that the industry is shifting, and not all the outcomes of this are good. Most wannabes will remain just that, and there are countless artists out there that will never make it, as they truly aren't good enough. But what about the pioneers of future genres, deemed not marketable by the industry but able to access the people themselves, with self-promotion, entrepreneurial abilities and a real raw talent? The future of the music industry allows people like this a chance.
Again, for those that actually want to make a career from the music industry, the osmosis of production demographics has led to the decline of the organised core of the industry itself. The lifespan of new artists shortens in an increasingly jaded and overstuffed marketplace, and with the same digitalisation of musical production that allows creativity to flow, we can steal a free track from the internet without much trouble. Call this unstable, call it fluid, it amounts to the same outcome. As the music industry spreads itself further and further from its core, we lose and gain in equal measures within the changing dynamics of an effluent market.
Producing music at home is easy. All you need is a little bit of talent and a lot of enterprise. If you can read an instruction manual and can carry a tune you can work with Ableton or Sibelius to produce a passable tune. With practice and determination this can become a good tune and then a great track worth slapping your DJ name on and launching into cyberspace. And who knows who could be the next Skrillex or Richie Hawtin, it could be you!
This is great in some ways. Artists have always made music, and there are probably countless incredible tracks that were never heard because they didn't make it past some industry head's idea of what was current at the time. This doesn't have to happen any more because no-one can veto you off the internet. Anti-pop culture movements can surface more easily and new sounds can twist and evolve as the sharing of creative ideas can proliferate into cyberspace. You can create whole albums sat in front of your Mac, with no-one to stop you. Except your Mum telling you to turn that dreadful noise down.
It is true to say that the industry is shifting, and not all the outcomes of this are good. Most wannabes will remain just that, and there are countless artists out there that will never make it, as they truly aren't good enough. But what about the pioneers of future genres, deemed not marketable by the industry but able to access the people themselves, with self-promotion, entrepreneurial abilities and a real raw talent? The future of the music industry allows people like this a chance.
Again, for those that actually want to make a career from the music industry, the osmosis of production demographics has led to the decline of the organised core of the industry itself. The lifespan of new artists shortens in an increasingly jaded and overstuffed marketplace, and with the same digitalisation of musical production that allows creativity to flow, we can steal a free track from the internet without much trouble. Call this unstable, call it fluid, it amounts to the same outcome. As the music industry spreads itself further and further from its core, we lose and gain in equal measures within the changing dynamics of an effluent market.
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