How the Internet Changed the Music Industry
COM/156
September 11, 2011

Large music labels have made statements since the late 1990s regarding the Internet’s damage to music sales through piracy by showing the decline of CDs sold year over year. However, the music labels themselves did not realize the sales opportunities that could be provided by the Internet and only saw a damaging environment. The same music labels also neglected to take advantage of the Internet as a new venue to find popular music artists. As with all types of modernization, understanding takes time, and the music industry is beginning to come around by offering portions of their libraries for sale through sanctioned distributers like Amazon and iTunes as well as taking notice of new artists found through sites like YouTube. The Internet has helped the music industry by providing new methods of music distribution as well as a global arena for self-promotion by new artists. The Amazon MP3 store has provided a place for music lovers to find new music as well as provide a digital storage space for all new purchases. One of the best features is “Customers can now store all of their Amazon MP3 purchases for free in Cloud Drive,” (Amazon.com, Inc., 2011). The Cloud Drive helps to ensure safety of purchases as well as the continued availability of the MP3 regardless of any hardware malfunction. By allowing access to the Cloud Drive in a native application for both Android and Apple products over 35 million Americans can buy new music and stream it anywhere there is an Internet connection. Amazon’s MP3 store also inclu...

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