Music Consumption

Clarify definition - what do we mean by music consumption?

Music consumption is ultimately the way in which we consume music. How do we listen, deal with, buy, share music. 

Before the technological revolution so to speak, how was music consumed?

I suspect this is before stage would be referring to the generation before me. I spoke to my parents about this and they said that when they were teenagers, there was no such thing as cds, dvds, internet etc. They listened to their music by buying a record, a cassette or listening to the radio. Even the radio, which isn't as big today, wasn't widely available, in the 1960's in the UK there was still no UK-based commercial radio. IT seems records were the common form of music consumption, my dad can still recall the first record he bought. I think also attending concerts was a bigger deal back then too because now people don't actually need to attend a concert to see it, they can watch it online, with many services offering live broadcasts/repeats and DVD's. 

What is the digital revolution?

The exact definition of the digital revolution is: "the advancement of technology from analog, electronic and mechanical devices to the digital devices available today." The era started during the 1980's and is ongoing today.

How has this transformed the ways in which audiences consume music? Consider both legal and non legal methods ie file sharing; streaming of live concerts (U2 on youtube example, buying concerts on Sky etc); putting live concert on USBs after the show etc. 

This has definitely changed the way in which we now consume music, as previously mentioned, people before bought records, went to concerts to get the full experience of an artist/band. Now-a-days, people can get that same experience sitting in the comfort of their own living room.

Audiences more than ever today are making use of the different media available to them, I would consider myself also part of this audience. Why should someone pay sometimes more than £100 to view a concert, when they can stream it free online, watch it later on youtube, or buy it off their television provider. Well that is a personal opinion. 

With platforms such as youtube, lovefilm, nowtv etc. the prospect of buying films on dvd or bluray seems a bit silly, why should a person pay up to £20 for a HD dvd, when they could just as easily get the same quality for £5 a month from subscription services such as lovefilm and now tv. And with the growth of illegal sites such as 1channel, solarmovie and motionempire, people are more and more leaving the legal options behind and opting for these free streaming services. In 2011, it was reported by the bbc that illegal download figures in the UK were up by 30%, and there has been no report of these figures falling. This same perspective could be applied to music, with services such as tubidy, songlover and musicskull all offering the free download of songs and/or their music videos, people are less likely to be spending money buying a song or album. The digital revolution introduced the use of the internet, and the internet is what is providing all of these sites allowing for this sort of activity. 

With the use of torrents significantly on the increase, people are able to download films directly from the internet, compressed, then decompress them, burn them to a disk, and play them in the same quality which they would get with a normal dvd. These free services are well known to civil authorities and law enforcement, yet because it is so widespread, and the majority of downloads are for personal use and entertainment ( not illegal films like snuff,child porn etc) action isn't taken. I can't see either any time when action will be taken. As i previously mentioned, government news bodies, like the BBC are reporting on this sort of crime, but in reality, I think you could go as far to suggest that they just don't care. 

I would like to do further research in this area. 

Along with digital consumption, what other ways do people still consume music and it's related products today? CD sales? Concert tickets?

I'm going to contradict myself here and say that concert tickets are still widely sold. Figures released by many news websites revealed that tickets for Glastonbury 2013, sold out in 100 minutes,a record for the festival, and considering that this first round comprised of 140,000 tickets, it would be difficult to argue that people don't still attend concerts. We hear even of small festivals such as belsonic, or tours by bands/artists selling out in under an hour and this again is proof for us of the ever present interest in concerts. CD's as a piece of hardware, I would have to argue are falling. We can see through large retail chains such as HMV that this is true. I'm not saying people are necessarily opting for the illegal option, but with online sites like itunes, they now have the option to buy and download a whole album to their computer from these stores. According to the guardian, a total of only 163.4 million albums were sold in the UK in 2012, when we compare this to the 100 million sold by only one band in 1982, we can see a strong difference to today. I think the main methods of consumption for people today is either download straight from internet - illegally or legally and attending concerts. I'm glad that attending concerts is still a big one because I think that everyone deserves to experience that atmosphere.