Saturday, August 20, 2011

Social Media And Music

By Takara Alexis


The internet has negatively affected the music industry through the increase in piracy using programs such as BitTorrent. While this has lead to a decrease in album sales the rise of social media on the internet has had a positive impact on the music industry.

Social media allows users to communicate about their favorite bands and have more access to bands than ever before. Social media had lead to the rise of several bands in recent years which is a sure sign that social media has an effect of how bands are being discovered. The Arctic Monkeys, a UK band, rose to fame because of the popularity of their MySpace page. As more and more people clicked on the band's website their songs became more and more popular and word of the band spread. This type of success story is not a lone case. Social media and music work together in a special way.

Last.fm is a popular music site that encourages users to find new music. You can type in the name of your favorite band and find other bands with a similar style of music. Last.fm also keeps track of what you have been listening to and makes recommendations based on that information. The groups feature on Last.fm allows users to get together and talk about a certain band or musical style that interests them. This fosters a sense of community and people with similar musical tastes are able to communicate with each other and make recommendations to each other.

A recent music-focused social media program that is becoming more and more popular is Spotify. Spotify allows users to stream music and create playlists that can then be shared with other users. The service is free and in between every few songs there is a short commercial. The playlist share feature allows users to discover new music as well as share their favorite "hidden gems" with the rest of the world. Spotify recently integrated itself with Facebook and users can now share their favorite playlists on their Facebook profiles. Included on Spotify is a "buy" link so if you happen to like a certain track on a playlist you can be the proud owner of it within seconds. Spotify is gaining steam and will become more and more prominent as time goes by.

Social media and music are becoming more and more intertwined. People are typically very passionate about their favorite bands or artists and love the chance to express their feelings about a certain song or album with others. Social media is the perfect outlet for music fans and will keep evolving and helping the music industry create new stars.




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