Consumption

Consumption is when people buy CD's, cassettes, vinyls, download music, pay for live and recorded concerts, and also purchase any relate products. Due to the digital revolution, consuming now no longer just means buying music, it can also be watching and listening to music on YouTube or Spotify.
          Before the technical revolution consumption used to be going to the shops and actually physically buying a physical copy of the music, or paying to see the Artists perform live concerts or gigs. However, this has changed now as one no longer has to leave the comfort of their own home to actually consume music. This can all come down to the digital revolution. What is the digital revolution you may ask? Well, the digital revolution is the change from analog, mechanical and electronic technology to digital technology that has taken place since the 1980's and continues to til now. This means that people can now download music from their laptops, computers, phones, iPods, iPads etc. whether it be by legally downloading it, but actually paying for it from the distributor or illegally obtaining the music via file sharing, where you spend no money and nothing goes towards the artists and those who help with the production and distribution of the music. 
          File sharing is a main topic now a days when discussing the music industry. File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include manual sharing utilizing removable media, centralized servers on computer networks, World Wide Web-based hyper-linked documents, and the use of distributed peer-to-peer networking.
          Due to the increasing popularity of consuming music online it has become common for artists to use the internet now to make their money. An example of this would be U2 who recently used the website YouTube to post a live stream of their concert where you would simply pay a smaller fee than what you would if you actually went to the concert. You can also pay to see concerts from your house on Sky Box Office. A new thing some artists are doing is that after you actually go to their concert you can buy the footage from that exact concert on a USB memory stick, so that you don't have to go out and buy a DVD of another concert, also this works very affectively due to impulse buying at concerts. 
          Although the digital revolution has meant that more people are consuming their music online through, file sharing, legal downloads, YouTube and other methods, it has also been statically shown that some people still consume music physically as the rising sales of vinyls has actually increased. Also, due to the internet and the constant advertising on websites, concert tickets sales have increased and therefore so too have the prices, meaning the artists etc. receive their fair share through concert sales also.