YOMAG - Music - Our Musical Ears in 40 Years

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Our Musical Ears in 40 Years

Glasgow 21. 09. 2007

Are social networking sites taking over our music industry?

Forty years ago, in the days when BBC Radio 1 was just a newborn and The Beatles were at their peak, did they really envisage Sheffield common boys Arctic Monkeys to be our top band of today? That Indie Rave was our new favourite genre of music? Or that websites such as myspace was our first stop in search of new music?

Probably not. But the question of what music will be like in forty years from now is something i've spent many bus journeys, shopping trips and classroom hours pondering over. With BBC Radio 1, the most popular radio station in the UK, celebrating its 40th birthday, I very much doubt many people will be relying on it being around for its 80th. At one point, if you listened to BBC Radio 1, you qualified for some cool points. Now it's all about websites, with MySpace music really taking its toll in the music industry. Without it, Lilly Allen's tracks would not be gracing our ears every day, which in turn, probably wouldn't have created the new 'lets-sing-in-a-London-accent' craze that seems to have sweeped our nation as of late.

MySpace creates a cheap and cheerful way of talented musicians getting their music heard by the world. No more playing in crummy bars, tirelessly posting demos to various labels or what seems as constant put downs by the posh men in suits, who lets face it, have they ever even picked an instrument up?

And this is where I, personally, see our music industry heading. The youth of tomorrow will not switch on the radio to see who's in and who's not, they will not buy the latest NME to see whats going on in new music world, but they will log on to, probably, millions of other social networking sites to follow and with the click of a button, decide who THEY think should be popular and who shouldn't.