How Did Perceptions of Music Change with the Internet?

AM radio. TV. Records. FM. Tapes. Live music. These are the ways that I experienced music up to college as part of the analog generation.

Once I became a member of society, CDs became popular and music was suddenly all digitized. CDs, MDs (MiniDiscs), iPods. I consumed a great deal of music, and it became portable. I also watched videos more often. It is not necessarily true that people have grown more distant from music or interact with it in a more shallow manner. Things have not changed so much.

Thereafter music moved to the Internet: Napster, iTunes, YouTube. Cell phone ringtones and songs. Subscription services. Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play….

How do you suppose the digital generation born in the 80’s and the Internet generation born in the 90’s came to listen to music after CDs, iPods, cell phones, and the Internet?

The social generation students, who attended my seminar, were born in the 2000’s and have not yet come of age. However, there are a great many people in the digital and Internet generation, and so I tried listening to how their relationships with music have changed.

Their experience is roughly shared. In the second half of the 90’s, rental CDs were recorded on MDs, and starting around 2000 Napster became a regular mp3 player, which was followed by iPods and iTunes. This further moved to YouTube and smartphones, and now people are trying out streaming music.

So how have attitudes changed? First, the mindset has changed from single album units to single song units. Rather, there is no such concept as an album. One also hears that there is a rapid decrease in how often and how much music people buy.

　

It seems this generation also has no instinct to listen systematically. We followed chronological trends. We learned of The Rolling Stones, moved to Led Zeppelin and glam rock, concluded in punk...it was that kind of vibe. But this generation has gotten simultaneous hold of the music of all generations and history. They aimlessly listen according to their own predilections: “this one’s good,” etc. They are different from our musically impoverished selves, who worry that they do not understand the whole picture or its interrelatedness.

　

They say that everyone has become closer with music, that musical relationships have deepened. But there are also people who say it has become casual. While some people steadily dig deeper into the works of artists they enjoy, there are those who listen for free to nothing but the same artist, or those who use radio-like streaming as a kind of “all-you-can-listen” service.

　

This is diversification. Some remain of the artist-focused CD school of thought and say subscriptions are unnecessary. People seeking large volumes of music are attracted by new services, and people who did not originally listen to music have also drawn closer to music through viral media and such. 

It seems that social networking will bring about more definite change than devices.

Opportunities to draw closer to and know musical composition and musicians have increased. Artists become widely known through being shared by friends and followers.

　There are also people who were indifferent to music in the time of CDs, MDs (MiniDiscs), and iPods, but started listening for the first time through social networking, and also began attending live performances. People are growing closer to music and becoming able to set their feet in real venues through information sharing and spreading.

　

The key is “music and communication.” That is, music is the center of a communication and community social phenomenon.

We can also say that the strengthening of bonds between artists, fans, and fellow fans has resulted in music migrating from “consumption” to “sharing.”