Effect of the Internet on the Music Media

Effect of the Internet on the Music Media

The rise of the internet drastically changed the way that the music media had to operate in order to stay relevant. Before the internet, music magazines were the best way to find information on bands that you were interested in, as well as find new music and see the music charts. The internet made this information easily available to people, so music magazines had to adapt to survive. Many music magazines have changed their format in a bid to stay relevant. For example, NME is now a free magazine to incentivise more readers and many magazines such as Metal Hammer and Rolling Stone publish their articles in a print magazine, and then online a few weeks later, meaning those who are eager for the information will still buy the magazine, but those less interested will read the online piece and generate income through things like ad revenue. 

Social media and video sharing platforms mean that new artists have a much easier time being discovered than before the internet, two modern examples of this being Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran. This means that music media moved from covering new artists that were playing in their area, to finding people sharing their music online and introducing people to them. Additionally, the ease of communication between like-minded people over the internet means that people can find artist recommendations more easily than before, making the media’s recommendations less meaningful.

However, the rise of the internet has also helped the music media. Having almost every song available to listen to on the internet means that the media no longer have to describe the sound of a band, they can simply show their audience. This also gives the consumers of music media instant gratification, they can immediately see whether or not they like a band with little effort required, instead of having to buy or hunt down an album or recording as they did before the internet.

Before magazines embraced using the internet, many sites dedicated to bands were run by fans, and were therefore sometimes inaccurate or not kept up-to-date. The convergence of technology means that magazines can now be produced digitally and look exactly the same as their print versions, creating synergy between them that allows for the target audience to access the content more easily than ever before. This also created the need to increase the quality of the journalism in music magazines, as digital magazines can be distributed much more easily than print magazines, so they rely more heavily on fans, so unique selling points are more important.