Issues and Debates within the music industry: SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

Social networking sites overthrow the popularity of albums because the ability to download music off social networking sites is becoming more available to consumers. They are a threat to paper downloading music industries and cause industries to lose out on money. For example iTunes is losing out on sales because of social media networks where you can get the music for free.

There is a symbiotic relationship between social networking sites and other businesses because sites such as Yahoo have recently created Yahoo Music where music content is available to Yahoo users. Yahoo relies on businesses to bring the music to them to increase the popularity of their site, and businesses rely on social networking sites in order to promote the music from a particular record label for example.

Yahoo Music Website: http://new.music.yahoo.com/

Social networking sites are an example of ‘convergence’ because they now go beyond just socialising and communicating with friends and other people around you. You have the ability to upload videos, music and other content which can be viewed by a big community. From this, word-of-mouth takes place, where consumers recommend a song that they really like to their friends, then share it to them, and that friend does the same, and so on and ultimately promoting the artist to many people. This is also an example of when an artist or song goes ‘viral’ where they have been seen/heard of everywhere through the use of social networking sites.