Source

The economic principle I’m exploring is “Institutions are the ‘rules of the game’ that influence choices.”

My research question to help me study the economic principle is “How have new incentives such as technology and business models influence music production over the past decades?”

The article published on Quora titled “Why does music (production) sound different as opposed to past decades” demonstrates this economic principle by talking about how new recording equipment has come to the surface and has allowed music to be made more efficiently, thus sounding more different. 

First, the article touched on what equipment was used back in the day and how it contributed to a different sound. For example, tracks were recorded on metal oxide. As the coating slowly sheds away after hours of recording and rewinding, the track loses its fidelity creating a more LoFi, vintage sound. Nowadays, it’s hard for bands to replicate the sound of other groups like Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith because the recording equipment used today is higher quality. Along with the recording tapes, tube based equipment was used. For example, guitar amplifiers back in the day were used with tube based technology. Having a tube amp nowadays is very expensive because the sound is so unique. This tube based equipment brought a distortion and saturation that no other recording equipment can replicate.

Second, the article discussed the equipment that is used currently in the recording process and how a rise of digital equipment has meant greater control in recording a track. Now,  every single instrument or sound can be compressed, equalized  and filtered.  While most musicians would say these advances have made music sound drowned out, it probably explains that clean sound you hear. Now that sound engineers can remove the distortion in tracks they can make the track sound clean and shiny. I concur with the statements brought forth by the article, I make beats for rap music and on all my tracks I use an equalizer, compressor, and some sort of filter to make my song sound professional

Third, the article talked about how with new technology we have a larger availability of sounds. Nowadays, music producers use DAW’s known as digital audio workspaces (The digital audio workspace I use is called FL Studio). DAW’s provide pre-installed plugins where synths or any type of sound can be produced. This allows songs to be made in the matter of an hour. Back in the day it took much longer because it was very difficult to make that one sound you needed. Back in the day, you had to have a good knowledge of sound design where as opposed today you have that done for you. That’s not to say there are people today that don’t create their own customized sound, but with new technology there is really not much of a need for that. When I make a song, it can sometimes take a few days or just an hour. It just depends on what in my head I am trying to achieve and whether or not I can make it sound like that. Some days I can completely translate the thoughts in my head on to my computer but sometimes I have a hard time doing that.

In my next blog post I will research the question: Is it easier for the ‘average Joe’ to become a music producer today than back in the day?