Ten years ago, when we poke a pencil into a tape and desperately rotate to manually rewind it, we never imagined that nowadays, on a palm-sized device, we only need to gently drag a progress bar. When a charming melody suddenly came out from the radio before, we would hold the Walkman’s small microphone close to the radio speaker and record it in an attempt to "own" the music. Now, we can recognize a song instantly using Shazam, and listen to it anytime, anywhere on Spotify or Apple Music. Believe it or not, technology has already changed everything about music.
Did technology make us get along better with music? At least some people don’t think so. Some argues that streaming media overwhelms users by smashing tens of thousands of albums to them all at once, resulting in the “paradox of choice”. Thus, composers have been creating more and more superficial songs with fancy melodies to catch the listeners in a short time, rather than using rich meaning and emotion, and delicate lyrics. Some also criticize the use of artificial intelligence in music that it cannot understand the human emotions in a song and analyzing music with it is detrimental. Even taxi drivers will complain to you that songs nowadays are so bland while playing nostalgic radio stations. The lack of classics seems to confirm that this is an era in which it is difficult to produce classics. Technology promotes productivity, making today's music production completely unimaginable in the past, and it has greatly shortened the cycle of a piece of music from production to heard by fans to it being forgotten, and even the creative music can’t escape the fate of being quickly replaced by more creative ones. But is the music nowadays really bad? The answer is no. Technology has actually largely driven the development of music.
First of all, technology has made producing music much easier. "Bedroom producers" have already emerged in the music industry long time ago. For example, Bob Dylan once recorded “The Basement Tapes” with his band in his basement. For many other musicians, the cost of professional recording studios and producers is unaffordable: the average cost of recording in a professional studio is $100, and to record a whole album, it usually takes between 90 to 120 hours to complete. So, they have no choice but to record in the basement or even in the bedroom.
Nowadays, although the cost factor is still very important, compared with the past, the concept of "everyone can make music" is the reason for the popularity of "bedroom producers" in the technological age. The development of computer technology has promoted the popularization of recording and editing software, for example, now anyone can create music simply using Garageband. The price of recording hardware equipment has also become more and more affordable. Both independent musicians and music lovers can establish their own "home recording studios."
In addition, online music platforms such as Spotify and iTunes provide independent musicians with a platform to distribute and promote music. In this way, music producers only need to pay very low fees, and they can also enjoy many open sources, all of which greatly reduce the cost of music production. “Streaming media provides a great platform for new musicians like me. I never imagined that I could release a song so easily.” Joanna, a junior majoring music business at Berklee College of Music, who recently released her single "Come On Light Me Up", says, “Then I can ask playlists that have songs of the similar style with mine to include my song, so that it can be effectively promoted.”
However, some think that digitizing music actually hurts the interests of musicians. For example, in an op-ed “Music streaming services are gaslighting us”, the author Darren Hemmings criticizes streaming platforms that “any artist must hit millions of streams in order to actually generate income of any meaningful amount”, revealing the current hardships of many musicians. This problem does exist, but another new technology has enough potential to address this problem.
From an industry perspective, the combination of blockchain and music is an emerging field, and its goal is to solve the problem of unfair distribution structure in the music industry. Blockchain is a decentralized system that stores digital information that can be viewed and updated, and two parties can agree on a transaction without the involvement of a third party. At present, many small blockchain platforms have emerged around the world, and they are committed to establishing a transparent platform to promote "fair remuneration" in the music industry.
As suggested in the op-ed “Blockchain to Disrupt Music Industry and Make It Change Tune” by António Madeira, artists and fans benefit from the removal of middlemen in selling music through block chain.
Indeed, in the blockchain world, each musician no longer has to hand over his/her work to a music company, but they can store it digitally on the blockchain. Then, the consumers download it through distributed nodes, making this a direct deal between musicians and consumers. Also, while the copyright is protected, the musician's income will get more because there is no "middleperson". And it greatly enriches the creative space of musicians and encourages them to make more and better works.
True, having artificial intelligence (AI) technology involved in the creation of a song may reduce the quality of the song because machine cannot add genuine emotion to a song, but having AI to assist the promotion of songs is very useful. Like other industries, in the music industry, AI technology can automate services, discover patterns and insights in a large amount of data, and improve execution efficiency.
In Ali Colwell's op-ed “How Spotify became the cornerstone of music streaming”, she states that Spotify’s algorithm helps users find more good songs that meet their musical tastes, enhancing their experience of enjoying music. Currently, 20,000 new songs are uploaded to Spotify every day, and AI technology can quickly categorize these songs and provide users with recommendations based on their past preferences. The emergence of AI and big data makes "music style" no longer applicable, because the playlists generated by AI are no longer based on styles and genres, but pay more attention to the quality of the music itself. AI technology can help determine which fans will like which artist's work. Similarly, the AI-supported function, such as Spotify's Discovery Weekly, can provide each listener with a selection of works, helping fans to quickly categorize music resources to find new works that can really appeal to them. In this way, people will not be limited to just listening to the songs of some famous musicians, and new musicians’ songs have more opportunities to be heard. The market will be more competitive, and more high-quality music will be created.
Technology has indeed changed the music market to a great extent. Perhaps from the moment MP3 was invented, many things were destined to change. Now we can see a music awards ceremony on the other side of the earth in time and we can listen to the music of countries that we may not even be able to find on the globe. Although we may regret the end of the previous music era, it is better to look forward to the rebirth of the music industry.