Senior Project Essay

Ostapenko 1
W-1-18
Period 1
Wood
4/23/2018
The Volatile Industry
Have you ever thought why concert ticket prices are so high today, in comparison to what
they were 20 years ago? In my research, I decided to explore how technology and internet
innovations have affected the music industry. Bands and music artists, for example, a renegade
heavy metal band, Metallica, have nearly tripled their ticket prices when compared to their
original ticket prices from almost 40 years ago. A large reason behind the change is how the
music industry has evolved with technological developments and especially with the
advancements in the internet. But the effects of technology on music are far beyond the music
artists raising live performance ticket prices, the innovations of the last 20 to 30 years have led to
a rapid change in the production and recording of music, the fluctuation of popular genres in
society, and the way that bands plan to reach their audiences with their music after a release of a
record.
When you think of major turns in the music industry in the last 20 years, there is one
event that always sticks out, the creation of Napster. Napster was an interface that was
co-founded by an 18 year old Northeastern University dropout by the name of Shawn Fanning.
This program allowed users to share and download any music file for free. After its creation, the
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application exploded in popularity, gaining millions of users within the first 3 months of
existence. Although this may seem like a great idea, since it creates an infinite digital music
library, the damage is much greater than the upside. In order to understand why this program is
so destructive, you have to put yourself into the shoes of an artist who makes a living off selling
their music. It hurt the artists who were barely scraping by, but it also gave them a way to reach
a much larger audience. “Looking back, Napster was really just an inevitable and necessary step
toward getting us where we are today with online stores and streaming services. It forced
everyone to take the new century seriously. It wasn’t a sustainable model, but it opened
Pandora’s box.” said Robin Hilton, a co-host of NPR’s All Songs Considered. (Suskind). Almost
20 years after the Napster scandal, the artists have yet again retained control over their music and
the choice of what gets released, and when. Napster was a stepping stone for new music
providers like Spotify, Apple Music, and Soundcloud to reach their audience with on-demand
music. “The music industry responded [to Napster] with a hysterical-sounding campaign, and
then it started criminalizing and suing kids. Which was an idiotic and disastrous choice. It took
creators from outside the music industry—from Apple and iTunes—to show the way to a more
imaginative response that worked with the technology rather than against it.” claimed Slate’s
Music Critic, Carl Wilson. (Suskind). This scandal definitely shaped the way music is
distributed today, and how much control bands and musicians have over the way they want to
reach their listeners, but technology also affected the way music was recorded and produced.
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Today almost everyone listens to music, whether you are driving to work or doing some
mundane chores, you need your music at the best possible quality, and on demand. Although
modern music recording makes it very available for us to listen to it whenever we want, music
production almost a half-century ago was rather difficult. An innovative composer, Christopher
Fox explains that “For the first 50 years of the recording era the manufactured cylinder or disc
was a duplicate of a live performance. As the musicians played, the disturbances they created in
the air were caught by a horn, later a microphone, and etched into a groove. But with the advent
of magnetic tape it became possible to combine layers of time, recording different performances
side by side on the same length of tape. As tape technology developed in the 50s and 60s, the
number of tracks multiplied, and musicians' imaginations could wander through a labyrinth of
takes, re-takes, overdubs and patches. With more and more tracks available nothing needed to be
thrown away; recording became a sort of musical hoarding. Not sure about the bass line? Don't
delete it, just mute that track and add another version.” (Fox). With developments in the music
industry recording got easier and easier, as it allowed the musicians to mix different recordings
into one song, rather than doing it all in one take and hoping for the best. Arguably the biggest
change in the music industry in the past 20 to 30 years has been the process how music is
recorded and how easy it is for upcoming artists to put out a record. Today we face an influx of
new artists who release songs on applications such as Soundcloud, where you do not need to
have a large following to publish music. These upcoming artists usually don’t have a large
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budget to produce a record, and would have struggled very much 20 to 30 years ago. But today,
the tools needed to produce a record are everyday devices, such as a laptop or even a cell phone.
“It’s much easier now. Instead of a studio, you can easily do it off of a laptop. Hence the flood of
new artists that seemingly appear out of nowhere. Recording budgets are also far less than what
they used to be. Fleetwood Mac was given a million dollars in 1979 to record “Tusk” and that
album was also a commercial flop. Nowadays budgets are far less, and you better believe those
Record Executives are pinching pennies. For a major artist I believe recording budgets are
probably somewhere in between $100,000- $500,000.” (Dylan) Basically the process of
producing a record, is now made easier for anyone who wants to release a label, whether it is a
largely popular artist, or a teen looking to gain popularity. This leads to a new divide, where it’s
cheaper to produce music, but because of how easily accessible the music is, it is virtually
impossible to make a living by releasing albums. But not only did technology developments
allow for easier recording for the artist and producer, it also made music much more accessible
to the consumer. In an interview with Patrik Wikström, a professor of music in the College of
Arts, Media and Design, the Northeastern University news office asked him to respond on the
constantly evolving music industry in today’s technological age. “Online services that allow
people access to music everywhere, anytime is quickly transforming the music industry and the
way we relate to music. The fact that recorded music is more accessible now than ever before,
however, does not necessarily diminish the value of the music experience. From the record
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labels' point of view, the value of the recorded music business has certainly diminished, but from
music listeners' point of view, it is the opposite. Legal subscription services such as Pandora and
Spotify make it possible for music listeners to experience sounds and genres they hardly would
have encountered in the 20th-century music economy.” (Music) . In other words, services such
as iTunes, Spotify, and Pandora, allow music to spread globally with ease, which allows artists
to reach a worldwide audience with ease. In today’s digital age, music is certainly more
accessible than ever before, but the technological advancements in recording, places an even
bigger value on live performances.
As David Byrne once said, “As music becomes less of a thing--a cylinder, a cassette, a
disc--and more ephemeral, perhaps we will begin to assign an increasing value to live
performances again.” (Byrne). Live performances have always been valued by the mass
audiences that are drawn to different styles of music. But in the last 10 years or so the literal,
money value of these performances have skyrocketed. Heavy metal giants, Metallica, have
nearly tripled their ticket prices since their 1980s and 90s tours. Their manager, Peter Mensch
explained, "We did some tests in the last couple of years. We realized the top price for a
Metallica ticket could be much higher than it used to be, and we charged it — and there was no
audience pushback on it. The ticket price thing has changed everything." (Blabbermouth) . The
reason why the prices are going up is not because there is extra money in a customers pocket, but
rather the lack of it in the musicians’. Although Metallica’s net worth is just over half of a billion
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dollars, their main source of income comes from live performances, rather than selling their
music like it was back in the day. Dylan Davis, a graphic designer that works closely with
musicians, says that “Putting out a record is only beneficial for the artist if they are touring to
promote it. Otherwise it’s pointless because money isn’t made off album sales anymore.”
(Dylan). The explanation is simple, people are not willing to pay for records, because of their
large availability on the internet. All of this ties back to the first time music sharing was
available on a massive scale, and that was when Napster came out. Today, the live performances
are valued more than ever before, because people get to see the artist they love, perform their
music on stage, but that too seems to be going away, with more and more musicians lip syncing
on stage to avoid mistakes, or using auto tune and backing tracks to boost their singing ability.
The genres of music is constantly evolving to adapt to trends, and lately, the popular
music seems to be straying away from artists’ raw ability to sing or play an instrument. As I was
doing research, I interviewed Clarence Turner, who runs a podcast series in which he interviews
house music DJs, producers, and dancers. To comment on the recent trends in comparison to the
past, he said that “ Music follows trends, the same way that fashion does. It is a cycle. The
recent advancements in technology have led to the development which pushed the music towards
autotune and rhythmic type of music. It helps an average artist be outstanding. But this is also
strange because these stars are supposed to be the best of the bunch, but they still lip sync during
their performances. And when asked why they do it, they just say that they are out of breath
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from all the dancing. To that I say either drop the dancing, since you're a musician, or start
running hills to increase your cardio!”(Clarence). Even though I could tell he was joking,
Clarence Turner makes a very good point about the way that music follows patterns and it flows
with whatever is trending. Since technology has overtaken globally, music is following a path
that was paved by the advancements made in the industry.
In order to grasp how drastic the change was between the quality of music then and now,
I went down to a local Rasputin store, where vinyl records, cd’s, and cassettes are sold. I bolted
straight for the Heavy Metal/ Rock section of the store, and picked out my favorite album,
Master of Puppets, by Metallica. Then I proceeded to pick out one of each recording of the
album. I rushed back home and listened to each separate version. The differences between each
was drastic, vinyls had a richer sound compared to anything I’ve ever heard digitally. This
experience made me realize that today, music isn’t enjoyed as much as it was back in the day. I
came to this decision largely because of how music is used today; no one just sits down to listen
to music. But instead it is used as an extra stimulant for the brain, so the activity you are doing
isn't so mundane. For example, driving, dishes, chores, washing a car, walking a dog are just
some of the activities that I caught myself using music to make the activity not so boring. This
leads to music being passively heard by our brain, which means you aren’t hearing seeing what
the artist intended it to be.

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Apart from finding out how to enjoy music more, I changed my mind about the trends in
popular music. Music will continue evolving into something that reflects the society at that time.
This will mean more and more digital influence, because of the exponential growth in the
technological fields. Technology will turn popular music into something totally different than
what it is now. Musical talent remains the same, it’s just the platforms it’s on that are changing.
It is truly amazing how much influence technology can have over little things in our life. It can
change something, and you will not realize what the difference is unless you experience what it
was before the alteration. This research made me realize that the digital age isn’t coming, but is
already here. It is changing things that people enjoy the most, and it is not necessarily for the
better.
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Bibliography
BOOKS
Byrne, David. How Music Works. Three Rivers Press, an Imprint of the Crown Publishing
Group, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2017.
Eisentraut, Jochen. The Accessibility of Music: Participation, Reception and Contact.

Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Witt, Stephen. How Music Got Free. Penguin USA, 2016.
ELECTRONIC SOURCES
www.blabbermouth.net/news/metallica-manager-explains-how-band-tripled-ticket-prices/
Econsultancy, Nikki Gilliland @. “The Impact of Technology and Social Media on the Music
Industry.” Econsultancy, 14 Nov. 2016,
econsultancy.com/blog/68522-the-impact-of-technology-and-social-media-on-the-music-industr
y
Fox, Christopher. “The Art of Noise: How Music Recording Has Changed over the Decades.”
The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 16 May 2014,
www.theguardian.com/music/2014/may/16/music-recording-science-museum-christopher-fox.
Making Music in the Digital Age: How Technology Transforms the Music Industry,
www.sheffieldav.com/education/how-technology-transformed-music-industry.
“METALLICA Manager Explains How Band Tripled Ticket Prices.” BLABBERMOUTH.NET,

www.blabbermouth.net/news/metallica-manager-explains-how-band-tripled-ticket-prices/
“Music in the Digital Age.” Phys.org - News and Articles on Science and Technology,
phys.org/news/2012-09-music-digital-age.html.
“The Napster Controversy.” Case Studies | Case Study in Business, Management, Operations,
Strategy, Case Studies,
www.icmrindia.org/free%20resources/casestudies/napster-controversy-1.htm.
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Suskind, Alex. “15 Years After Napster: How the Music Service Changed the Industry.” The
Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 6 June 2014,
www.thedailybeast.com/15-years-after-napster-how-the-music-service-changed-the-industry.
INTERVIEWS
Clarence Turner. Personal interview. 27 Feb. 2018
Dylan Davis. Email interview. 3 Feb. 2018

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Ostapenko 1

The Volatile Industry

probably somewhere in between $100,000- $500,000.” (Dylan) Basically the process of

bigger value on live performances.

that was paved by the advancements made in the industry.

the artist intended it to be.

Eisentraut, Jochen. The Accessibility of Music: Participation, Reception and Contact.

“METALLICA Manager Explains How Band Tripled Ticket Prices.” BLABBERMOUTH.NET,

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Senior Project Essay

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Copyright

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Senior Project Essay

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Ostapenko 1

The Volatile Industry

probably somewhere in between $100​,​000- $500​,​000​.​” (Dylan) Basically the process of

bigger value on live performances​.

that was paved by the advancements made in the industry​.

the artist intended it to be​.

Eisentraut​,​ Jochen​.​ ​The Accessibility of Music: Participation​,​ Reception and Contact​.

“METALLICA Manager Explains How Band Tripled Ticket Prices​.​” ​BLABBERMOUTH​.​NET​,

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probably somewhere in between $100,000- $500,000.” (Dylan) Basically the process of

bigger value on live performances.

that was paved by the advancements made in the industry.

the artist intended it to be.

Eisentraut, Jochen. The Accessibility of Music: Participation, Reception and Contact.

“METALLICA Manager Explains How Band Tripled Ticket Prices.” BLABBERMOUTH.NET,