How Has Technology Changed Music Over The Last 20 Years?

musictech

During my research on this topic, I focused on three main areas.  How our methods of listening to music have changed, how producers methods of creating music have changed, and how our experiences at concerts have changed.  In the past 20 years, technology has had such a great affect on every aspect of music.  From how the song gets written, to how it gets recorded, to how it gets put out for people to enjoy, technology has affected every step of this process.  Not to mention the incredible visual stimulation that many artists add into their concerts.  Every single light pattern, color, and blast of fire that you see up on stage was programmed by a team of people behind a computer.  Not to mention the animations that many artists have playing on a giant screen behind them throughout their entire show.  The technology created in the past twenty years has been instrumental to the evolution of music production, and every aspect of the music creation process.  After seeing what has happened just in my lifetime, I am very excited to see what is going to happen in the music world in the next 20-30 years.

How Has Technology Changed The Way We Experience Live Music?

Live 365

The economic principle that I am researching is that people generally respond to incentives in predictable ways, and how technology has changed our methods of listening to music.

My research question to help me study this topic is how technology has changed the way we experience live music.

With the development of more powerful technology, the lighting and other visuals that are shown during concerts have became incredibly better.  For example, in the picture above, there are lights of all different colors arranged in incredible patterns all being controlled by some guys sitting on a computer. Additionally, there is smoke and fire that can shoot up from points in the stage.  None if this would have been able to happen in the past.  Additionally, technology has made it possible to design much more complex stages which are very popular at music festivals.  Engineers are able to model what they want the stage to look like on a computer and now have the technology and machines to build it exactly how they want to.  These are the sort of behind the scenes things that we as concert listeners take for granted.  Lots of hard work goes into the technological aspect of a concert, and 90% of the things we see at concerts today probably couldn't have been done at a concert 20 years ago.  

How Has Technology Changed The Style Of Music Being Produced?

Ableton

The economic principle that I am researching is that people generally respond to incentives in predictable ways, and how technology has changed our methods of listening to music.

My research question to help me study this topic is how technology has changed the style of music that producers can create.

First, as I have briefly talked about before, producers can potentially create music without any real instruments.  If they have a computer with a few applications and plugins downloaded, they can play synth leads, make drum beats, create guitar riffs, or essentially play any instrument you could imagine using only the keyboard.  This has made it possible for producers to be able to make music on instruments that they can't really play in real life.  For example, many producers wouldn't be able to sit down and play a song on the drums or piano which are two of the most important instruments in electronic music.  However, using plugins on an audio software, they can turn their computer keyboard into a drum kit or a piano and put together complex melodies much easier.  This has caused electronic dance music (EDM) to become much more complex gain tons of popularity.  

Next, if you buy an audio interface, you can plug in a guitar, or microphone to record music and vocals.  This has made it exponentially easier to record any instrument onto different applications.  Once on these applications, there are millions of different effects that can be added to the recording to make it sound completely different than it originally did.  This can be used to make guitars sound like an instrument you have never even heard in your life, and gives producers more tools to expand their arsenal of creativity.

In my next post, I will discuss how technology has changed the way we experience live music.  

How Has Technology Influenced People's Music Tastes?

Mercury News

The economic principle that I am researching is that people generally respond to incentives in predictable ways, and how technology has changed our methods of listening to music.

My research question to help me study the economic principle is how technology has changed our methods of listening to music.

First and most obviously, with the world becoming more and more digital, our methods of listening to  music have evolved as well.  Now that everyone has a cell phone, it is very easy to download and app on them and listen to just about any song that you want.  If you can't find it on any of the various streaming platforms, you can turn to Youtube or other websites and find any song you could imagine.  The ability to listen to any song you would like with just a few clicks of your finger has been imperative in keeping music from the past very relevant.  I know that many people, myself included, take advantage of these music streaming apps by listening to a lot of music from the 1960s-1980s and even some from before then.  Before this was the case, people could only listen to the CD's or records that they had.  Of course this didn't stop them from creating an extensive collection of CD's so they could listen to all of their favorite songs.

Next, as I stated in my last post, music producers have the ability to make a song with almost any instrument they can imagine with just a laptop and a pair of headphones.  This has been imperative in evolution of the genres that people listen to.  As technology has improved over the years, producers have clearly been able to make electronic songs and beats for artists to sing or rap over much more advanced and intricate.  On top of that, with producers being able to post their music to multiple streaming sources immediately after they finish, we as listeners have new music much more readily available to us.

In my next post I will be discussing how technology has influenced the style of music that can be produced.

Producers Are Doing Much More Than Just Producing

AudioMentor

The economic principal I am researching is that people generally respond to incentives in predictable ways, and how producers have responded to changes in technology.

My research question to help me study the economic principal is how technology has changed the role of a producer in the music industry over the years.  

First, producers obviously have much more technology available to them today which has caused their role in the music making process to change.  In the past, the main role of a producer was to almost have a managerial role in the studio.  The recording audio engineers, mix engineers, session musicians, and many other roles were filled by different people that the producer was in charge of.  They were to make sure that all of these people didn't go over their budget and also got everything done by the deadline.  Nowadays, the role of a producer includes many of these jobs such as mixing the music that artists make, creating beats/background music for artists and in general have a much bigger role in the music business.  

Second, with laptops and small midi keyboards and a few other small instruments, producers are able to make and mix music much more easily on the go.  Because of this, producers have much more time to spend either creating songs or mixing/editing songs made by other artists or even themselves.  This is very important because producers can put out music for listeners to appreciate much more frequently.

Third, with producers making more and more beats for artists to make music on top of, many rap artists in particular will write lyrics over a beat that was made by a producer, not themselves.  This also helps make new music much more readily available to listeners because the producer and the artist are sort of splitting the work of making a song.  Additionally, it helps some producers such as Metro Boomin and many more make a name for themselves because they would probably not be very well known otherwise.  

In my next blog post, I will research how the styles of music that people prefer has changed over time and what effect technology has had on this change.  

• • The Economic Principal I will explore is people generally respond to incentives in predictable ways.
  • The overall question I will research to help explore the economic principle is (the question should contain 1-2 keywords from the economic principle):  How has technology changed the music industry over the past 50 years?
  • 3-4 subquestions that will help me answer my overall research question are: 
    •  How has the role of a producer changed?
    •  How has the style of music changed?
    •  How have methods of listening to music changed?

• Links to 3-4 reliable resources that can help answer the research question:
  • Tech.Co
  • LA Times
  • Business Insider

Picture from Music Tech Musician