1. How do audiences
consume music?

2. The I n t e r n e t
The internet has had an enormous impact on the way in which audiences consume music. With
global access to any artists from all over the world and of all different genre’s has created a
proliferation in the amount of styles of music we now consume.
Online alone there are vast amounts of ways to access music from YouTube to soundcloud.
Artists and bands create websites where they can market their music, merchandise, genre and
tour dates to the masses. This ability to get ‘online’ has helped out smaller bands and artists
when looking to be discovered by talent scouts, labels and even just establish a fan base. By
having websites and social networking pages set up they are able to share their talent with
people and get them to spread the word, which if done correctly can spread like a fire. Smaller
artists might start off on soundcloud of unsigned.com and start to process through the ranks to
creating YouTube channels and starting to produce videos to share with their Facebook and
twitter followers.
To put into perspective how crazy YouTube fame can become the international success of PSY’s
Gangnam Style has resulted in the video reaching over 1billion views on YouTube in under 6
months. This genre is Korean Pop something that until last year never travelled into British Pop
culture.

3. Yo u Tu b e
Leading on from the previous slide YouTube has been influential in creating fame of
undiscovered talents to artists from all over the world.
The site was launched on February 14th 2005. It was set up by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and
Jawed Karim. The men started up the site and ran it from 2005-2006 when they then sold the
right to the site to Google for $1.65 billion. This extreme investment from Google has paid off as
YouTube is one of the most visited sites on the web.
Before it came along there were no real sites dedicated to allowing people to set up and share
videos online. This gap in the market was perfectly filled and thanks to the site the music
industry has been able to utilise this with artists and labels setting up channels and broadcasting
videos for the world to view. It has been an idea way for international stars to access a wider
audience and not only become famous and successful in their home country but also in
others, an example of this which may seem obvious is the ability for British audiences to access
American music. Before the internet and especially YouTube it would be much more difficult for
audiences over seas to get hold of music from other countries let alone continents.

4. I Tu n e s
This platform for discovering music was created by apple. It acts as a database for mostly signed
musicians to advertise and sell their music. It offers over 28 million songs, videos, eBooks and
apps for sale all available online. This virtual Store possesses 400 million active user accounts, and
serves over 315 million mobile devices, including iPods, iPhones and iPads.
This online store allows audiences instant access to music of all different genres. There are
various ways in which to search/discover new talent for example if you like a specific genre there
is the option to search by genre alternately you can search an artists name or even look at what
staff at apple are listening to currently. These mass of options allow people to become interactive
with music, to pro-actively search and discover new styles, tracks, artists and influences.
None of this would be available without the internet, therefore enforcing how massive it’s impact
has been on the music industry.

5. Unsigned websites
Although lots of artists are established on the ITunes store there are many more unsigned artists
wanting to get their music out there for people to consume. These unsigned artists are not as
likely to have their music readily available for download on ITunes, therefore they turn to other
mediums such as sites specifically catering for unsigned acts. A popular example of this is
usigned.com.
By giving these unsigned acts a platform for getting their music out there it is again diversifying
they music industry more than before. Again the internet has been key in helping this process
along. By providing a vast set of alternate genre’s and artists to the spoon fed pop culture society
is predominantly exposed to people are free to develop their own tastes and this in turn
constructs identity. This supports the Post Modernist views that we use ‘bricoloage’ to construct
identity and are no longer constrained by traditional groups. Maffesoli explained this as young
people living in ‘tribes’; this provides them with a sense of belonging and identification with
others. This helps artists to target specific groups of people and create an ideal target
audience, this proliferation in social groups means there is more scope for artists to market music
to and more sub-genres are evolving to fit certain audience needs.

6. Piracy
Whilst many people do download music from legal sources and pay for what they are listening to
some do not. The plus sides the internet has provided for the music industry have been
phenomenal however there is also the major downside of torrenting and illegal p2p sharing of
music.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/18/illegal-music-filesharing-mainstream-ed-
sheeran
From reading this article I picked out a quote from Ed Sheeran which I think puts in black and
white just how extreme illegal music downloading has become When asked about piracy, Sheeran
said: "I've sold 1.2 million albums, and the stat is that there's 8 million downloads of that as well
illegally.” This means that more illegal copies of his music has been downloaded than legal. For
smaller artists breaking onto the scene this can be problematic as the potential profit the total
downloads could make is not being generated, when people download and share files I think they
forget that the sale of albums is in effect a musicians career and they are actually stealing from
them.
However known these statists are, piracy is difficult to tackle as sites are set up all over the world
to avoid regulations and legal issues, then anonymous users log on to upload files and share them
for others to download and use. The sheer amount of music shared makes it difficult to monitor
all movement online and to find the sources of the downloads.

7. Piracy continued
A major site responsible for various kinds of illegal downloads from music to films was Pirate Bay.
In 2009, the website’s founders were put on trial in Sweden, they were being charged with
facilitating illegal downloading of material that was copyrighted. After being found guilty the
founders served a short sentence in prison and were made to pay a fine of US$3.5M as of 2009.
Due to this outcome some countries revoked any access to the website and have blocked it
entirely.
Although this was a step forward in tackling illegal downloading many more sites are up and
running providing people with free services that would otherwise cost them money they feel is
unnecessary to spend. Personally I think that people will always find a way to illegally share and
duplicate music no matter how many restrictions are enforced. However the effect this has had on
the music industry has not yet caused any artists to be greatly out of pocket. This then poses the
question of should they charge so much for an album as if they didn’t would people be more likely
to support the artists music by choosing to buy the album rather than acquire it for free.

8. Music Stores
The face of music on the British high-street has been HMV, however their recent announcement
of going into administration has shocked many. This substantial loss will effect the way in which
people purchase their music. From the 60-90’s the company grew and became a staple store on
the British high-street, it allowed customers to go in and look around examining albums, cd’s and
merchandise. The diverse mix of music available in stores set it apart from old record shops and as
we started to move into the digital age in music HMV’s stock of CD’s became an advantage for the
company.
“Deloitte, the administrators, confirmed that they plan to close a further wave of shops on top of
the 66 closures announced earlier in the month. HMV will be left with a “residual portfolio” of 116
stores once the closures have taken place within the next few weeks. When HMV collapsed into
administration, the company had 223 UK sites and employed 4,123 staff.
Hilco, the turnaround group, remains in pole position to buy HMV. It is in talks with Deloitte and
HMV’s suppliers about a deal. “
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9882759/HMV-job-losses-
hit-1600-as-37-more-stores-close.html
This information could be linked back the issue of piracy, with the amount of people illegally
downloading companies such as HMV are left with less turnover and as we are witnessing at this
moment this can effect companies on a large scale.

9. TV and Radio
The radio has been important for the music industry for a long time. In the past the radio was
used for discussions and getting information out to the public before the times of television, this
was extremely important during the war. The influence of the radio has meant that people value
this medium when it comes to listening to music.
As television has developed music channels have been established, the most popular and well
known channel is MTV. First launched in New York 1981, originally the channels purpose was to
play music videos guided by the on-air hosts. During its early stages MTV's main target audience
were young adults however today their main programmes are targeted at adolescents and
teenagers.
As music genres have developed MTV have branched off to create new channels to cater for a
variety of music tastes. For example MTV Rocks, MTV Dance and so on. This allows audiences to
access a variety of genres and as it is easy to access they are also able to tune into channels which
play a genre of music they may not necessarily choose to listen to, thus expanding their music
tastes. Another aspect of MTV which has been successful is MTV Unplugged sessions. This is
where rockers put down their electric guitars and turn off their amps to play acoustic covers of
songs and allows audiences to see the artists talents on a different level which could lead them to
listen to more of their ‘Plugged’ music.

10. Festivals and Gigs
Another way in which audiences are able to consume music is through attending live
performances. When artists tour a country they often only visit the main cities of that country and
perform for a night doing a 45min-1hour set following support acts. In Norwich there are two
main venues that you can visit to see an artist perform live, The Waterfront and the UEA LCR.
There are all different styles of music hosted at these venues giving people a vast choice of what
gigs to attend.
A similar way to consume music is for audiences to attend music festivals, there are many to
choose from however there are arguable some main summer music festivals in England. These
festivals host different genres of music however they tend to follow one specific genre and feature
more artists who fit that mould. An example would be Download festival, predominantly
marketed at Male Rock/Metal/Hardcore fans they would not organise for an artist like The Kooks
to play there as they are a more mainstream indie band. Audiences access to live performances
on both of these scales means they have a wide choice of what genre to consume and
furthermore festivals in particular enable them to discover new artists and bands that appeal to
their music tastes.

11. Sources
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk
T h e Te l e g r a p h
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Yo u Tu b e
http://www.youtube.com