Monday 7 September 2009

News: The Future of Music

Left, you can see a graph, produced by the New York Times in June, highlighting music sales by medium across the decades. According to Charles M. Blow:
The music industry’s deathwatch kicked off about a decade ago, but it seems the vigil could soon be over. According to data from the Recording Industry Association of America, since music sales peaked in 1999, the value of those sales, after adjusting for inflation, has dropped by more than half. At that rate, the industry could be decimated before Madonna’s 60th birthday.
Whichever way you break it down, it's clear that patterns of music access and consumption have already changed for good. On the day that Spotify launches its mobile app, streaming seems to be the inevitable writing on the wall - something that a survey from July also supports.

If you want to participate in the debates surrounding the future of music, a postgraduate at Nottingham Trent University is currently undertaking a survey into the use of music blogs. And once you've done that, you can read Nick Hornby's thoughts on the subject in the Guardian: "All I know is that if you love music, and you have a curious mind, there has never been a better time to be alive."

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