Business Aspect of the Music Business

What is called the music business today is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.

What is music?
First, a definition of terms. What is it we’re talking about here? What exactly is being bought and sold? In the past, music was something you heard and experienced, Nana Kwame Ampadu, Teacher and his band etc it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context because what ever these legends talk about in their music those days reflects the realities of the society then. Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, do we still do that? Or we listen for free.
Technology changed all that in the 20th century.

Music or its recorded artifact, at least became a product, a thing that could be bought, sold, traded, and replayed endlessly in any context. This upended the economics of music, but our human instincts remained intact.
We’ll always want to use music as part of our social fabric: to congregate at concerts and in bars, even if the sound sucks; we Bluetooth music to our friends sometimes burn them unto CD’s so we can play them in our cars but we all pretend as if we don’t know that, by doing that we killing the business aspect of the music.

to be continued...