The face of music has always been changing, from the days of Mozart to Buddy Holly there has only been one constant factor remaining consistent throughout the centuries, the music industry is a commercial medium. The musical revolutionaries of the 60s might well disagree however even at that point people were buying records and labels were making millions. This is more true than ever in this day and age, where musical instruments have been replaced by grinding women in bikinis, low riding Cadillacs and more bling than you can shake a stick. The changing face of music is not only in the image and artists but also in the musical equipment used to produce and distribute music. Musical piracy as it is being called, is dominating the music industry and there are two schools of thought on it. One being that of the music industry and the law who understand the illegal sharing and distribution of music as copyright infringement, the other being the people who believe that music should be free to everyone, however it is not clear how they are suggesting that the Cadillacs and bling are going to be financed. This has come due to the massive technological advances in the last decade in the field of musical technology. The face of music has changed due to the accessibility of musical production and distribution. You can now at a click access your favourite music legally and free of charge via various video hosting sites and it is a massive form of marketing now. Production takes place in many a bedroom and have become very accessible to those with very little musical knowledge due to the relatively simple midi based software packages that have saturated the market. These have made music production much more accessible than previously and with many global forums you can share your music and potentially distribute it with great ease. The digital age has rendered other formats almost obsolete. As the CD killed off the cassette in one foul swoop, CD is now on the edge of extinction being replaced by an array of audio files. The death of CDs has been slower than the predeceasing format, this might be accounted for because the retailers buying from the music industry still need to sell products and there has been no next generation product that can be bought over the counter to replace CDs. The retailers are encouraging people to buy CDs and then rip them onto their iPod or MP3 players. It is thought that CDs will stick around for a while. The greatest surviving format has to be vinyl which is still massively popular with DJs around the globe. This again is under attack by products such as the Tonium Pacemaker, which is the size of a Nintendo DS, however holds 120gig, about 3000 hours work of music.
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