The New Music Frontier Part 1

The music industry is a paradox. Sales of CDs, which peaked in 2000, have dropped every year since, yet Internet and cellphone downloads have soared in the past few years, but not enough to replace CD sales yet. Likewise, record companies have downsized and retrenched staff, yet music consumption is at an all-time high thanks to nifty inventions like the MP3 player and cost-effective big car sound systems.

So where does this leave both the music creator and music consumer today? The saying “the more things change the more they stay the same” has never rung more true: the players may have changed but the game is still music. Some suggest that companies like Apple with the iPod and MTN with music-enabled cellphones are the new industry moguls, but old established record companies like EMI or Universal won’t simply give up their positions that easily. Whatever the status of the music industry, there will always be people who make music and there will always be people who listen to it and, if they like it, buy it (or swap it with friends).

But a certain theme has emerged in the past few years, fuelled by trends in the United States, which still controls more than a third of the world’s music market: DIY (do-it-yourself) music. This can be seen on both fronts: more bands or singers record their own demos, EPs or full albums in small efficient electronic home studios, while listeners have found new and interesting ways of discovering music other than what they hear on the radio. The numbers have changed, though: for example, there are over 2 million registered bands on MySpace, with more people making music now than at any other time in history. Given the fact that the world now has the biggest population it has ever had, this makes sense.