Do you think that the internet has helped musicians or made their life more difficult ?
For the past ten years, musicians have used various platforms on the internet to develop their art. Has it been a success or did it only make it harder to work ? I believe that it is all about balance.
Above all, I think that the main advantage for musicians to use the internet is to grow an audience and promote their music to a new public. For example, dodie is a singer/songwriter who started making music on Youtube and developed a strong fan base there.
The Internet is also extremely useful to promote tours, concerts and new albums. Because it is a worldwide network, artists can now reach people from all over the world with a simple tweet or picture. It allows to maintain a connection with their fans even when they are not touring, and thus keep the audience entertained and loyal.
Lastly, the internet enables musicians to sell their work throughout the world, without having them to worry about how many physical copies they would have to order, and which country couldn’t be able to buy them.
However, one of the major problems with the Internet is copyrights. Online, everyone can possibly steal a musician’s work, and because the web is such a large network, it can be hard to keep track of who uses your music illegally.
Finally, there are misconceptions in the music world about artists building their audience on the internet. They can be perceived as “fake musicians” with less merit compared to those who had to work without the web, and it can be hard to part with the reputation of, for instance, being a “Youtuber” and not a “musician” (which I find quite stupid but anyway).
In conclusion, I believe that using the internet has made the musician’s work easier by allowing them to spread their work further and faster, but it also introduced new issues such as art theft.
