Has music any value any more?

Has music any value any more?

This question is pertinent on our days as the sales in the music industry are coming down, illegal downloads have been increasing and record companies have been losing market share.

But this means that music has no longer any value? By value, there are two essential differences to be detailed: market value and social value.

It is necessary to understand that the value of the music as a social tool is different of its value in terms of profitability. If we mean music value taking into account its profitability, it is correct to affirm that the music industry has been losing its place among the top business, in part because of the illegal downloads or easy access to low cost music (as for example in the website legalsounds.com) as people prefer to have a digital copy of the album instead of buying the CD what cost 10 times more.

The decrease of a demand for CD’s had force the music industry to reshape and adapt to the current trends. With applications such as ITunes, Freebird or websites like Amazon.com and Play.com convenience is not an excuse for illegal downloads. The use of ITunes facilitated things to the buyer as he no longer needs to bother about going to a store and queue to have their CD, or search for the CD in store when they can stay a home and search online for the album and with a click download the album or just single tracks. CD has become a collector’s item, as the customer would only buy the CD if really admired the artist and wants to keep as a valuable memory.

It has becoming a common practice to some new bands to release their music for free in the web and simply sell the cover image of the CD. This strategy will prevent illegal downloads and will provide the band a little more knowledge about its fans, as you need to disclosure personal information before downloading the tracks. Such strategy is used by the bands to save the integrity of their music and run from the piracy but doing some times more money that would be doing with a normally release. And to the buyer they had necessary ingredients to retain a hard copy.

Now in what concerns to it artistic value I think that its value is the same or even more important as music spreads today thought diverse media channels in an incredible speed. The number of Internet downloads are increasing and new artists have been rising through Internet channels such as Mikka, Katy Perry or Justin Bieber.

Some critics say that music has lost its value, as people do not appreciate the rhythm, but rather the pyrotechnic shows and artist extravaganzas.  I am obliged to disagreed as for me the performer and the music are only one and  on top of that, there is a huge number of artists such Adele or the composer Ludovico Einaudi that have become successful using only the power of the music.

In sum is true that music in terms of commerciality had slow down but not in what concerns to its artistic value as more are accessing and enjoy the power of music even if they don’t give the same profit to the performers.