Essay 3 – Free service and production

As the development of the internet, all the information gradually became available on the net. It tended to be that we can find all the information we want there, music is also the same. Actually, the music industry has been changing, for example, the carrier of music. Between 1980 and 1990, the major format of music album is magnetic tape; the next decade it changed to CD; although it seems that CD is still the main format of music nowadays, but what about digital music, can you see how much it eat into the music industry? And how it gonna change the way it used to be.

According to research, CD takes the proportion of 90 percent of the revenue of the music selling while digital format shares the rest 10 percent, roughly. However, the thing is, people changed the feeling of physical CDs and the invisible digits. Some people buy the CD they want, but they mainly listen to the digital music on the computer and mp3 player. CD is more and more tend to be function as souvenir or collection. People do listen to digital music more and more.

I think, in the future, the music will be served more through the internet, and will be FREE. Internet users love the things with a tag named ‘free’. Where is a will, there is a way. As people have a need for free music on the net, there will be people fulfill it legally or illegally, and make money there. In the future, this will be legal and based on standard rules. What I said ‘free’ means that, people do not have to pay money for the music, instead, they offer something else, just like all the other free productions, for example, the newspaper Metro. Through the free music, music companies can sell the advertisements, bundle marketing information, branding, get a higher reputation of the singer, producer, composer, and the company themselves, also, word of mouth and so on. Through the free music the companies serve, they get the money back rely on the ‘side affect’ of their free productions and service.

Physical CDs will still exist, I think, because people like the thing they can touch and feel. In the future, CD will be more and more clear to be defined as souvenir and collections, instead of the carrier of the music we gonna listen to. Digital music will dominate our daily need of music; in addition, mostly they will be served free.

Mu Xiwei