Assess the impact of new technologies on the music industry – Discuss the significance and implications of these developments

Over the years, the development of new technology has caused remarkable changes in the medicine labor. The presence of radio and digital radio, digital television, mini discs and the net has created challenges and opportunities for the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) and RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) alike.Radio works in jibe with the accede industry because airplay determines to approximately extent, the chart position of an artist or group. If chart success is dependent on radio, then(prenominal) radio is an crucial tool to the euphony industry. To show just how important, pluggers are employed to apostrophize disc jockeys to play their bands music for promotion and chart placement.Furthermore, the introduction of digital radio has excluded some of the restrictions of area broadcasting so citizenry pretend more rag to music. This is significant because radio now has a large audience than before and more people are being influenced. This changes t he sort music is purchased and determines the success of artists and the record companies.Digital television works in the same way as radio in that the music channel help promote single through the playing of music videos. specialized channels and radio stations target specific audiences this is known as narrow casting which let every genre of music be heard enabling audiences to make up their own minds near what they like. As homogenous music exists alongside specialist music produced mainly by A and R (Artist and Repertoire), record companies want to target the right audiences for maximal exposure and therefore corresponding sales. For example, the channels MTV Hits, The Box and Smash Hits play by and large pop music, whereas channels like Kerrang, Q and MTV2 specialize in alternative and rock music.The Internet has proved to be both helpful and challenging to the music industry. For record companies, it advertises and sells their music and is an easy way for people to pur chase singles and albums. The introduction of selling CDs on the Internet has not meant that high-street stores will go out of business as not everyone buys music from their computers. For example junior people do not have credit cards and are therefore not able to buy music on the Internet. Instead, it has provided record companies with another profitable venture, as now there is more access to buy music.The downside of the Internet for the music industry is the emergence of MP3. This compresses material without modify the end product so it can be downloaded onto PC. Many millions of people now download music for free and burn the songs onto a blank disk. This is illegal but available and at present because of the mass rime of people doing it, the BPI and RIAA cannot stop it from happeningThere are some(prenominal) arguments in favour of downloading, but the music industry insists outright that it should be banned. Their arguments against appoint sharing are that it deprives artists (and record companies) of royalties. The money gained from selling music provides an inducing to very make it if there is no money then there is no incentive and it will discourage artists from recording music. However, some artists may not consider money to be the main incentive to make music and even record straight to MP3 format. For example, David Bowie, the Beastie Boys and Muse do this. opposite implications of downloading music are that if profits continue to fall, record companies will get to fewer risks and not introduce new bands with different styles of music. This means that music will become even more predictable and formulaic which in turn creates a limited choice for the consumer.They also claim that it could sabotage the record industry. The industry does feel threatened as in 1999 cardinal hundred free music websites were shut down. Record companies say that the industry will be weakened because of MP3, and eventually smaller, independent record compan ies would dethaw and again, peoples choice in music will be limited. However, it can be argued that through buying albums choice is already limited. File sharing actually allows audiences more freedom to obtain the music that they want to hear, rather than remunerative for an album and only liking two out of ten songs. on base the threat of Internet downloading is the existence of mini disks and mini disk players. This causes a problem for the record industry as people can throttle an extensive collection of music from a variety of different genres on one small disk for the price of a blank mini disk rather that a compilation compact disk for about fifteen pounds.The new technologies discussed above have a mixture of lordly and negative outcomes for the record industry. They benefit from some for example radio and digital television, even the Internet, but suffer from other developments such as file sharing. In order to compete with the ever-growing demand for music that is che ap and promptly available, then it is advised that the industry make a number of significant changes that will benefit themselves and the consumer.