Web 2.0 has affected the music industry in several ways. It allows artists to promote themselves on social media sites like MySpace and YouTube to reach a large audience without spending money. It also lets people easily download and share music files, which has reduced CD sales. While file sharing has hurt sales, legal download services like iTunes have been successfully adopted as they are cheaper and more convenient for users while still providing some revenue to artists. The music industry must now adapt to digital music distribution online rather than trying to prevent file sharing through restrictions.

1. Affects of Web 2.0 on the Music Industry

2. What is web 2.0 ‘ Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.’

3. Music Industry Web 2.0 can: Gets artists/bands name out there; Easy access to millions of people Get their music out there without spending their own money

4. Artists can get onto My Space & FaceBook and YouTube Some record labels search for new artists/ bands. opens up big market for artists to get their music out there. Youtube promotes videos/upcoming shows 24/7 access around the world

5. My Space for new artist Cassie created her own my space to promote her self and to allow people to hear her music. It was a success and her single ‘me n u’ reached no1 in the charts.

6. File sharing The music industry has suffered declining sales, and very often, this is due to the internet based-peer2peer-file sharing programmes. E.g Napster (before being shutdown) was the first to allow files to be shared without any limits.

7. Music Download People would rather download music than buying from stores The growth of digital downloads has affected the sales of CDs. People would rather subscribe to itunes and download as much music as they want to, then buy a C.D, simply because its much cheaper for them.

8. People would have to buy an album, even if they just wanted a few songs from it. itunes is established and legalised for downloading and 80% of music is downloaded through I tunes.

9. itunes was very clever, because it actually gives some money back to the artists. The costs associated with selling digital music downloads are much lower than that of physical media

10. Record labeLs will either have to: Prevent/reduce music sharing, would be through various digital rights management (DRM) technologieS. OR Adapt with online music distributors like iTunes. (at this moment this is exactly what they don’t want to do)

11. “ Promising new business models such as iTunes show that it is possible to make money on the Inter- net, and that users can be offered a service that is not overly restrictive but still effective enough to avoid large-scale exploitation. While we cannot present a business model that will successfully move the music industry into the area of the Internet, we are confident that the current complaints will disappear once the thinking has moved from protecting the old ways to discovering and using the new ways” http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:2pejMKqO0AQJ:dret.net/netdret/docs/wilde-music-icete2004.pdf+disadvantages+of+web+2+on+music+industry&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=uk

12. The End