Recent news of the governmental shutdown of The Pirate Bay, a file-sharing website, has me curious about the volatility of the music industry. It is widely known about free file sharing of music, especially in the younger generation, as hardworking musicians scrape by. If there is a will there’s a way for tech savvy millennials, and sharing of this copyright material will forever be prevalent. A decent medium to dismiss file-sharing is currently Spotify, but how long will that last? Are the artists being paid sufficiently? Artists are transitioning to seeing these mediums as simply ways to promote, since not much money is in actual music sales. However, I think effective self-promotion can lead to a successful “business” for these artists: attracting their fans on their website and actually converting sales on their merchandise, tickets, and special insider deals for the biggest of fans. Social media outlets are incredibly useful for this, and will continue to grow in the use of successful branding of artists. As sales drop, business relevancy for artists grows.
