With all the content this week about music and radio, there’s definitely a lot to talk about. I found it interesting how many juxtaposing views there are throughout all of the developments in this particular media. It seems with every new advancement and change that happens to music, someone is helped and someone is hurt. When the gramophone came out, it made music more accessible to the middle class which is fantastic, but at the time it greatly hurt those who sold sheet music. Again when records came out and then CD’s and so on. Every time there’s greater accessibility, at least one market gets hurt. Looking back on this though, I don’t think anyone would say it shouldn’t have happened. As said in the showing we watched, Downloaded, it seems that those who sell music become too complacent with the current times and feel the repercussions of that once things change. These advancements end up helping so many people in a vast amount of ways in the long run, it’s a shame to know how many of these were most likely hated on or discouraged because of how they force the market to change. Imagine a world where something like the record was never developed because the dent in the previous industry it would cause. It’s almost impossible to try and think of it!

The best example of the shunning developments receive within the music industry is Napster. While it was being created and used people demonized it and focused on how it harms certain people instead of the incredible improvements that came from it and the possibilities it could be used for. Thankfully, it’s been a while since Napster happened and we can now see how it’s influenced the current music industry and how things have changed. It was one of the first ways of truly spreading music, yes it is considered pirating or stealing, seeing as once one person had the music, anyone else using the service would also be able to listen to it. However, it helped many artists in different ways. Some artists saw more fans than they could imagine at distance concerts purely because Napster introduced so many people to their music. Sure the download is free, but people love to find other ways to support musicians such as seeing them live or purchasing merchandise. Instead of viewing Napster as hurting one way and helping in another, I feel it should be seen for how it instead shifted how the market works.

Throughout all the developments in the history of music and radio, music was made more and more available to those who are not seen as elite. Music has always been available to everyone, but as an industry, it had to be forced to allow more people into it’s market. Not only did these advancements allow for at this current time, basically anyone to have access to all music, but it allowed for more diversity in music that gets pushed into the public’s view. The use of the internet especially encouraged more people to gain success with music. No longer did you need to be associated with a label or anything like that to have your music heard. At this point you just need to find a platform to upload your music and most likely, it will amass some kind of traffic. It makes me very happy to know that music has become much less of a corporate structure and has been changed to what it is today. It makes me wonder what the next kind of change in the industry might happen. What are the problems that still exist with the current system of music sharing and what kind of opposition might any fixes face? It’s hard to remember that what the present is like now is bound to change, it’s easy to say “well of course that would get improved upon” to past things like records, but it’s not as easy to have the same view with our present.