Upon listening to the topic of the first assignment, I couldn't help wondering about the niches of music that could potentially be the future of the music industry. With the internet and the vast body of information and meda transmitable to a worldwide audience immediately, I find that it is impossible to think that MP3 files could not be the future of music. I also think that musicians that have taken a cue from napster and other free music sites have seen the wave of the future. It seems to me that the web has become a constant free, virtual concert for interested musicians interested in sharing their art more than making money from their art. But I can't help but separate the musician from the music business. Bach, for instance, was never a well known musician during his lifetime, but instead an unknown, albiet prolific, church musician later discovered by Mendelssohn in the Romantic period - some 200-300 years after his time. We now consider Bach a staple of the Baroque period and classical music studies in general. Is it those "free" musicians that see their art as an entity to be enjoyed firstly and bought perhaps secondly or not at all that make discovery of incredible music unknown? Are they following in the footsteps of all great starving artists before them but instead cutting out the middle man - the great explorer or discover, the Mendelssohn to our Bach? I don't know what the internet will hold for the future of music, or the entity of the album for that matter. But I await new developments with interest. Final thought - in these changing times, will the internet destroy the album as our attention spans wane?
Posted by hourenk at January 18, 2005 01:05 AM