There’s little to no area where technological advancement hasn’t turned around for a better shape and outcome. The music industry itself is one of those areas today.
Back then, like twenty years ago, you used only walkmans with cassettes and CDs, followed by the revolutionary access to iPods and Bluetooth. Yes, you could go to live concerts, but you had to spend a fortune on that.
Today, you can enjoy music almost anywhere; at home, in vehicles, at work, or even when walking down the road. Parallelly, the change in music production has taken a huge leap too.
In this article, we’ll try to figure out how technology has changed the music industry in nine ways.
1. Music Production Made Easy
If we talk about music production, then free DAW software comes to mind first. DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation, is free software that allows any musician to record, edit, and produce audio files on personal computers. It works with both computer operating systems like Mac and Windows.
Simply put, premium to free DAW apps or software have made music production not only easier but universal.
Music enthusiasts from all over the world can join this vast world with the help of these software— one of the most desirable breakthroughs in music production.
Music production also relates to musical instruments. Transitions in the instruments have also changed the way people used to enjoy it.
For instance, acoustic or classical guitars shared the taste and aura of country cultures, whereas the invention of the electric guitar developed an appeal to those in love with bold and loud music.
2. Sharing Music with Great Accessibility
With the advent of the internet, people can now access their favorite tracks from anywhere in the world. You can open up YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, and many more apps on mobile and PCs where an ocean of songs and music are available.
The Internet doesn’t only let you listen to that music for free; you can also download most of those songs with the help of various apps and software.
Furthermore, there are options to share those favorite songs with your loved ones, friends, and acquaintances on online social media platforms.
In short, music has now become a virtual collaboration community that people celebrate every day with new tunes, colors, and feelings.
3. No Music Ideas to Get Lost
If you come up with the idea of making a solo song or an album, things can be arranged to get the work done much faster than ever before. That’s why millions of songs are swarming the music charts worldwide each year which a decade ago was about a tenth of the current music production and releases.
So, your new music concept isn’t going to get lost in the woods before giving it a try. With the development and release of new free and premium music production apps every other day, you can now write, compose, edit, and produce more complex music than ever.
Autotune, DAW software, etc., have made the task of composing and singing a song easier for the makers. Now, it’s no more about how quickly you can play a particular instrument but rather how good your lyrics and music concepts are.
4. Easiest Promotional Platforms
If you’re able to sing on your own lyrics and make an album or solo out of this, platforms to promote your tracks won’t be a big thing. It’s all about how well you produce a song.
You can even do a cover of a famous song and upload it on various social media or music platforms for free. Internet accessibility and speed have done the job that easily!
You can upload your work with the help of your cell phone or computer.
What follows after your self-promotion is a matter of speculation; however, even if you receive negative reviews from the listeners, you can always improve yourself by cutting out the shortcomings in your production quality while giving more effort next time.
5. Thanks to Multitrack Recording
Gone are the days when musicians had to bring their whole team together in one location to write, compose, edit, and produce a single piece of track before releasing it.
All the instruments and people had to be in one place, and no matter how long it would take, the work had to be accomplished sometimes with tight deadlines in mind.
Nonetheless, with a multitrack recording facility, you can now be in a separate place while working on your part, be it lyrics, singing, background score, composing, or whatever is necessary.
Similarly, your other team members can work at their convenient locations while you all unscramble the isolated pieces together to make it a complete song later on.
This way, no one has to be left out of the production, and the project can be accomplished by maintaining quality without compromising any precious time.
6. Uncommon Sounds and Vibes
Music hasn’t only crossed geographical borders, but it exceeded the conventional tune and rhythm by great lengths— thanks to the constant upgrades of musical instruments and tools over the last decade.
There’s very little music left that has anything to do with natural sounds and beats anymore. Now, you can hear surreal beats, synths, and noises in every pop, rock, or jazz track that ranks on the Billboard (a global media authority brand) chart every year. Most sounds and vibes in songs today are digital, made by various apps and software.
The different types of music range from soft to loud, musical to inaudible, etc. Nonetheless, the inclusion of these versatile sounds has transformed the taste of music to a great extent.
7. Auto-Tune: A Gift of Technology
There was a time when music producers spent hours making one song perfect in their studios. Unless the singer got it a hundred percent accurate, the repetitions would continue. It drained both energy and precious time and, sometimes, thinned the patience of the music directors and producers to the brink of an outburst.
Thankfully, technology has given us something called ‘auto-tune,’ which has made making a song just about perfect. It’s undeniable that not every singer can sing a track with absolutely perfect pitch and keynotes. They keep missing here and there.
However, what an auto-tune does is it catches those drops in pitches and notes while correcting them digitally, so the complete song sounds flawless. Auto-tune has not only pushed the music industry’s productivity upward, but millions of non-professional music enthusiasts are making beautiful tracks almost every day with the help of this cutting-edge tool.
8. Distribution Channels
Neither the producers have to rely on the TV channels and distributors to promote and sell their music albums, nor do the listeners buy cassettes and CDs anymore. The distribution of music has expanded a thousand times wider than the earlier times. And it’s due to the popularity of various streaming as well as social media platforms.
You can now easily pull up your favorite songs on different streaming channels online, and most of them are free. You can binge-listen to your all-time favorite tracks, including classic retros and modern pops and rocks. Simply, there’s no limit.
Furthermore, like you, millions of listeners share their favorite songs with their friends and loved ones on social media. This way latest and even classic masterpieces spread among the listeners like wildfire.
Eventually, the music industry prevails through the vast engagement of their target listeners to their solo songs and albums. The repetitive playing of those songs earns them through online advertisements, royalties, merchandise, and many other means of business.
Reportedly, Billboard is soon to launch an NFT project with Universal Music which is a sign of the music industry’s extension to the digital collectible marketplace.
9. More Engaging Promotion of Events
One of the biggest attractions of the music industry that has kept its traditional appeal until this day is live concerts. The avid listeners are crazy about the concerts of their favorite musicians.
Music producers try their best to give the listeners what they want by arranging the best music events or concerts possible. Following that principle, they’ve adopted state-of-the-art tech gadgets and services to upscale those concerts.
Today, a music concert is all about flashy lighting, holograms, rays, and sound effects. Audiences dig this type of effect in concerts to indulge themselves in an ethereal atmosphere. The production value isn’t only limited to this.
Nowadays, marketing agencies are utilizing drones to capture various musical events and concerts for making virtual connections with audiences worldwide. It’s not only abridging the long distances between people but rather connecting the artists to their crazy fans more.
To Summarize
Simply put, you can’t separate music from technology now. Especially for people who live a bustling city life, music is another form of nectar apart from workouts and prayers.
Nonetheless, for them, the easiest platform of music these days is the internet, which has become the face of technology for billions of people globally.
And with the invention of Bluetooth devices and their connectivity to cellphones and PCs, music and tech will go hand in hand further down the road.