I like this quote because it helps me understand the trade-off music will experience as it transitions from an analog medium to a digital one.

It could be argued, then, that as the formats music is stored on become less material and increasingly stripped of visual dimensions (album covers, reproduction of lyrics and other information), such loss is compensated by music's increased connection to other visual formats such as music videos and web-based data flows (pg. 99)[1]

We know this is inevitable, but it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out.

In recent years, significant transformations have diminished the roles of record labels and distributors. The advent of new media has allowed consumers to access music directly from the musician. As a result, the traditional form of physical distribution was slowly dwindling music sales as consumers welcomed the new era of digital distribution (Kusek, 2005). [2]

Footnotes

More

  1. Sexton, J., 2009. Digital music: production, distribution, and consumption. ↩︎

  2. Valencia, J. A., 2008. The impact of technology on the music industry. Florida Atlantic University. ↩︎