http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/09/17/youtube.music.ap/index.html I still remember the first time I bought a CD. I was in fifth grade and had bought Bon Jovi’s “Crossroads” album at Sam Goodys. I was so excited and remember how ‘cool’ I felt to be getting rid of my cassettes and, in keeping up with the new trend, starting a CD collection. I started buying CDs all the time, easily throwing down a few hundred dollars a years, never thinking that there would eventually be a better way to listen to music. Well, not surprisingly, I was wrong.
Fast-forward to my Junior year of high school and music sharing over the internet became the quick, easy, free solution to listening to any song, anytime. Who can forget Napster? The hype surrounding that application was for good reason. There had never been any music sharing program quite like that before. Generally speaking, consumers and artists had their opposing opinions of the program, and what ensued was an unforgettable controversy over the legality of music sharing. On the one side, you had artists drumming up lawsuits sighting copywright infringements. And, on the other side, there was the public outcry from society (tired of spending $20 on a CD) arguing that MP3 sharing is the way of the future and artists needed to understand that. The lawsuits inevitably led to the demise of Napster, but only paved the road for a new source for purchasing and listening to music... the internet.
From Napster, came ITUNES which still holds popular today. It’s hard to think of any other source competing with the apple giant but, as I’ve learned, never say never.
The attached article showcases a new method that music producers and artists alike are utilizing to promote their music to make it more readily available and accessible to their fans. That application? YouTube. YouTube has always been a source for music videos (as well as just about any other form of mainstream media you can think of), but in an attempt to gain popularity and give fans access to music not yet released, people in the music industry are putting unreleased tracks (with no accompanying video but rather just a picture or photo montage) on Youtube. They reason that the marketing, advertising and general promotional capabilities provided by such an application are unmatched, as is the low cost of such efforts.
I don’t really know what to think of this new phenomenon and the potential impact it will have on music buying, sharing, etc. While I don’t feel as though it will gain the popularity of ITUNES, mainly because it does not have the accompanying accessories of the IPOD, etc. I do feel as though it has great potential, specifically for the reasons listed by the article. There have been many times when I’ve tried to find a new song on ITUNES, only to find that it has not yet been released for sale. As a second resource, I have turned to ‘google’ to find another outlet to listen to that specific song. Almost 100 percent of the time, YouTube is the best source. Not only do I find the song, but I come across a variety of media sources associated with the artist that I stop to tune into.
Thus, I think YouTube is a great source for promoting new, unreleased music. Artists may fear that it will dampen sales, but being that you can only listen to music via Youtube on the Internet, I think that most consumers would still purchase tracks, once released in an attempt to sync songs with ipods, cds, etc. Through YouTube, people can not only listen to unreleased tracks, but can find more songs, videos, etc. of new artists and be further turned on to that musician’s music. I have had this experience, as has my music obsessed roommate. Last week, she left her IPOD at her parents house in Milton. She was freaking out, wondering how she’d go the entire week without it, but later admitted, that not having her IPOD “was secretly the best thing...” because as a replacement, she turned to Youtube and spends a majority of her workday watching/listening to live performances of her favorite artists...ones that she never knew existed.
