Digital Revolution on the Brink of a huge breakthrough

Recently I wrote a paper on the digital music revolution, starting with how, a few years ago, ipods and mp3 players completely changed the music game and how we are moving to the next phase of the digital music movement, which I believe will be occurring sometime in the near future.  The main focus of this paper was on the concept of "cloud storage", a new idea generated by the internet, first sampled by pandora, and finally being fully utilized by both Spotify and iCloud.

You're probably wondering, what exactly this "cloud storage" concept is, so let me tell you.  Until recently, if you wanted a song, you went to the record/tape/CD store and purchased the album with the song you wanted.  You then put that physical copy of music into a device that read it and played it.  Recently, with the invention of the mp3, physical copies have become much less popular, but if you want to have a song on your mp3 player, you had to download it from somewhere (itunes, the internet, or rip it from a physical CD) to your computer, and then sync your mp3 player with your computer.  The "cloud storage" concept demotes the role of the computer to that of the mp3 device, so that when you buy a song from any device (be it your phone, computer, or ipad), it gets "bumped" or loaded into the cloud, and then "pushed" to all of your devices. This means that all your music is stored in the cloud, and copies of everything you listen to are put on all your devices.  This also opens up the door for subscription music.  What this means is that, for what was formally the price of an album, you can pay a company-like Spotify- and then tap into their music database of billions of songs, download the ones you want to your devices, and stream the rest, all for one low monthly price.

So what does all that mean?  Well, for starters, the way music is made is going to change.  For decades the constant form of music has been the album.  A band goes to the studio, records ~12 songs, and puts them out for sale.  Now with subscription music, people are only going to listen to the 1 or 2 songs they want to from the album, making the remaining 10 songs obsolete.  How are artists going to deal with this?  Most likely, we are witnessing the end of the album era.  In 2008, the band Smashing Pumpkins announced that they were done with making albums and were going to only be releasing singles from now on.  They have since announced a new album release date, but the idea is out there, and once subscription music-only recently introduced to the US-become the norm, I don't expect albums to last.  Many of the "music purists" hate the invention of cloud storage, saying it's bad for the music and ruins the experience, but when the internet  was first invented, many people were against it and tried to shut various aspects of it down.  When that ultimately failed, Justin Hall had these words to say, "you can't make people shut up.  they will wind a way to say what they want to, if they really need to.  that's what's wonderful about the internet.  they can say it, and you don't have to read it." (29, Say Everything).  Similary, even if you believe that the cloud storage, subscription based music experience is inferior to the traditional album experience, the majority of the population will prefer to spend less money for more music, so your attempts to shut down streaming are futile.  Instead, just keep buying physical albums, as long as they are being made (you still have some time), and let those of us who are happy to get many billion songs for free to enjoy our music.

Huge Development in Digital Music

I recently watched the apple keynote presentation on Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud.  The presentation on iCloud is extremely impressive (it starts at 79:00.00) and part of it discusses the future of itunes (its one of the later things discussed. I highly recommend watching it; Apple has once again taken the bar, thrown it out, and created an entirely new standard for digital music.
http://www.apple.com/apple-events/wwdc-2011/

Music has been called the universal language of the world, the ultimate form of expression, the strongest form of mind control, and many other extravagant things.  This has not been my experience.  To me, music has always been a thing in the background.  As a small child, I learned how to play the piano, and then the saxophone.  I took mandatory music and chorus classes through middle school, but dropped everything I could once I entered junior high, and sports became more demanding.  I continued to play in the school band to complete my art credit, but my saxophone entered the school building on the first day of classes and didn't leave until summer break.  I've always been interested in music, from the way it makes one feel to the enjoyment of playing it, to remixing it and "distributing" it to others, but I've never really had the opportunity to pursue it.  Needless to say, I'm no virtuoso. Yet.

I've grown up listening to music, whether it's my mother practicing for a concert, driving in the car, or a pump up mix before a game. I've experienced the power of second hand music, and I'm excited to finally take the plunge and fully immerse myself in music.  I've talked to friends who are very intensive musicians, and the say the feeling they experience from playing music is like nothing else in the world.  I hope to finally reach this level and record it.  Second hand stories are great, but nothing is like experiencing something for yourself.  Athletes get old and retire, actors and actresses mature and start to do fewer and fewer films.  Only musicians regularly continue to perform and perfect their craft until they are physically unable to continue, or they pass on.

I now have the opportunity to explore various branches of music that previously I couldn't even think about trying.   This blog will follow my journey through the world of music, attempting to discover what music has to offer and experience the true power it has.  Like professional bands who sample their music on "Second Life," I will be sampling all forms of music that interest me, and accepting any comments, critiques, and suggestions you have to offer.