In the process, people employed in old industries have lost their jobs. A new technology has raised, once again, doubts about the future of the music industry and fears that the artistes that make up its ecosystem will be made redundant.Įvery new technology has disrupted the one in use before it. ![]() This, more than anything else, has given rise to a fear that we are not far from the time when there will finally be no need for human music-makers. However, what is of the greatest concern seems to be the rise of Artificial Intelligence, technology that has finally made it possible for music to be created without human intervention. Since technology brought down the entry barriers to becoming a musician, it’s getting harder and harder for even the best musicians to stand out. Streaming, they claim, earns artistes less than ever before since per-play revenues are a fraction of what they used to earn from album sales. However, people have found reason to protest against these technologies, as well. As a result, we have stopped thinking of music in terms of ownership, forsaking the collection of records and CDs in favour of subscription services that allow us to listen to whatever we feel like over the air. Once music became digital and shareable, it wasn’t long before we started seeing the streaming music services that are all around us today. The digitization of sound made it possible for more and more people to experience the high-fidelity perfection of a CD and, in time, gave rise to the MP3, a format that shrank digital songs down to a size that let them easily be shared over the internet. Where previously music could only be experienced live, technology democratized access, bringing it within the reach of common people. ![]() Technology also changed the way we consume music. With advances in electronics, they began to construct layered, intricate soundscapes that would have otherwise been impossible to fashion.Īs a result, children continued to study music, even if the music they studied was of a different kind and learnt in a different way. They invented tools, such as loopers, that played sequences of music in a constant loop, adding unique musical elements to their repertoire. They could splice together bits of different recordings to create new ones, giving rise to new genres of music based on remixes of existing works. They had new opportunities for experimentation. Music itself became more perfect, as musicians could hear the mistakes they made on their recordings and correct them before they were released to the public. This meant that audiences were able to experience sounds that were impossible to produce in concert halls. ![]() As records were replaced by magnetic tape, fidelity improved to the point where singers could record with their voices at a whisper. Not only did music not die, but it also evolved, flourishing in myriad new ways that simply would not have been possible had it not been for recording technologies. ![]() History has shown us that Sousa’s fears were unfounded. Eventually, he argued, singing would no longer be a fine accomplishment but something that could be turned on and off like an electric light. Once a mechanical music-maker is introduced into the home, children would simply listen to the machine and lose all interest in studying music. Music, he argued, required “the labor of study and close application" and the “slow process of acquiring a technic". He disliked this new technology so much that he wrote a widely quoted article bemoaning the harm that it would cause to American taste. Sousa himself was no fan of the fledgling recording industry.
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