Task 3- Audiences and Institutions

'Discuss the impact of digital technology on marketing within the music industry'

The widespread access to digital technology has seen an increase in the democratisation of the music industry and the marketing of some of these products have been made possible by social media. For example Alex Day is an independent artist who has had three UK Top 40 hits with ‘forever yours’ reaching number 4 after selling over 50,000 copies in one week. ‘Lady Godiva’ reached number 15 and lastly ‘stupid stupid’ reached number 25. Alex’s song ‘forever yours’ is currently top in the Guinness world records for highest-charting single by an unsigned artist; this artist has shown that success can happen without being singed to either time Warner or Sony records (oligopoly), instead Alex marketed his music through YouTube which costs nothing.

Alex reached over 5 million hits on YouTube with his well known song ‘forever yours’ this shows that using social media is effective for marketing, as people will view his music and share it on sites such as Facebook and twitter, if many people share the same link on twitter it will be recognised by twitter and it will start to trend; leading to more people seeing and knowing of Alex Day. Day has been described as ‘one of Britain’s most popular YouTubers’. In 2013 day released his third album ‘Epigrams and interludes’ he partnered with the file sharing service BitTorrent for an exclusive bundle and the package was downloaded over 1 million times in the first week of release. Digital technology has brought a whole new experience to the music industry through the way we market, hear and download music.

Yesterday I stood in the middle of Westwood cross and asked 300 random people if they have ever brought an album or song recommend by a social network such as Facebook. My results show that 80% of teenagers have, whilst only 10% of 30-40 year olds have. However anyone over 50 can’t even use social networking.

Social networking is aimed at the younger generation as they all seem to have the newest convergence and will always look at the next big thing in digital technology.