State of the Music Industry

For the past decade the music industry has been going downhill, there are many reasons for this downfall. The most obvious one is illegal file sharing, this was first formed in 1999 by Napster (created by Shaun Fanning) which was shut down in 2001. This prohibited site allowed peer-to-peer file sharing which let people download songs illegally. However shutting down Napster wasn’t a good idea, it then opened up the doors for other file sharing sites of its sort. Another reason to this downfall is selling single music tracks instead of a whole album as the artist and producers get very little profit from it. Nevertheless the music industry isn’t all bad as they now make most of their profit from live shows and selling merchandise. Production of music has became much easier in the last couple of years as not more people can get hold of the equipment. The ways in which music is now distributed has also changed as before it was heard through radio or tv and now there is a much bigger selection for example itunes, youtube, tv and radio.