Digital+Networking

Modern Music - A Social Network

Ever since the internet became available to general public in the 1990s, it revolutionized the way people listen to, learn about, discover, and obtain their music. File sharing, streaming, online music stores,(etc), have become the go-to ways for most people to get their music.

Modern music is no longer tied to physical media like vinyl records or CDs. It used to be that unless you owned an actual copy of the music, you couldn't listen to it, you would have had to borrow one from a friend, or buy it yourself. Now friends can pass along a CD and rip it to their computer's music librairies without ever having had to pay for it. It was this idea, that you could listen to your music for free that led some people to believe that the invention of commercial records would be the end of the industry as people would never go to concerts again if they could stay at home and listen to their records their. Obviously this isn't the case now as people still go to concerts, still buy CDs, heck, some people even still buy vinyl records.



Now besides changing the way people consume music, [|the Internet has also changed the way people make music]. The advancement of recording technologies, and the popularity of sites like Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube that allow users to upload videos has opened the floodgates for people making videos of themselves playing instruments, or singing covers, or their own original music.

Most of these performances aren't anything special really, they're usually average, otherwise they probably wouldn't be getting they're music out through YouTube. That isn't always the case however, the Internet can also be a place for talented or orignal artists to get their music out. One of the most famous examples of this would be the pop artist Justin Bieber. Bieber had started out as just another teenager posting covers on YouTube until 2008 when he was discovered by accident by a talent manager who clicked on one of his videos while he was looking for another artist.



Of course he is just one of the more famous examples of a person this happened, I think it's safe to say that more and more artists are being discovered through the internet as time goes on, and that in the future, sites like YouTube will be a major resource for record companies looking for new artists.