In the 20th century artists music could only be stolen one way, from a record store. Now days every .006 seconds someone is illegally downloading artists music. Although this may seem alarming it must also be known that every 3.5 minutes, someone is caught for committing this crime. Think about it in your own life, you would rather download some song you love for free than having to go through the strenuous process of iTunes. The 21st century is a time period of endless possibilities and resources at the click of a button. Technology almost seems to run my younger brothers world and the cool “stuff” he can get his hands on. Not only can he download explicit music, he can also watch the music video where women are half dressed or worse. My mom finally gave up on trying to delete all of his explicit music because it wouldn’t just take a day to do so but he could download it again. He has every mix-tape, album, single, collaboration, etc. a young teenager would ever want. This brought me to my thesis. How is technology shifts impacting artists and their value and availability of content now days. From the viewpoint of a civilian it doesn’t seem that much is being done when a person is caught. I can count on one hand the number of cases I’ve read about where people get convicted when getting caught doing this. This fact hasn’t shied people away from continuing on with their actions of breaking the law. Technology hasn’t just made more information readily accessible rather it’s made anything available on the Internet. Artists now days are at the forefront of this shift musicians are having their work downloaded free of charge. There are websites popping up all over the internet with downloads of all sorts of free things. On one hand it seems somewhat acceptable given that although they aren’t getting paid for their work, they’re name is still getting out there. This does entice people to buy concert tickets, or the written edition of a book but no matter how you look at it there are still large amounts of revenue being lost. Websites such as SoundCloud have tried to give the artists the exposure they deserve without letting users freely download the content. An artist can choose whether or not they want to attach a link to have it downloaded or not. This has proven to be very effective because they know no one wants to buy a single song. Rather this empowers them to get the notoriety they deserve without being ripped off. A great example of this is Diplo, an electronic artist whose claim to fame was using SoundCloud to grow his fan base while controlling the content users could download. In an interview by Philly World, Diplo was asked what he gives the most of his credit to his fan base size. He said “SoundCloud allowed me to grow my fan base by releasing music that was enjoyed by my audience. I always put a download link but I look at that as lost revenue but rather another way for my fan base to grow”(Diplo, Diplo's SoundCloud World). Although this shows that one website has worked for an artist, not every artist can say that free downloads have positively affected their career.
Artists have decided to get more creative in ways that they can use the Internet to make money. Five years ago, a musician could post their songs or albums to YouTube and from the average views they receive companies would pay to have ads posted next to their video. Despite the fact that this may not be as fulfilling, they still receive money for their work. Musicians have used the Internet to attract attention from record labels within their genre of music. A prime example of a person that was exposed through YouTube is Justin Bieber. His mom decided to video tape him playing guitar and singing on the streets of Ontario, Canada. This one video caught the attention of pop star Usher who was blow away by the voice this kid had and the rest is history. Yes Bieber is rich and famous but he doesn’t receive all of the revenue he bring in. Usher gets