How much has music industry changed though time

There was a time musicians and bands were only promoted by themselves, playing their music from tabern to tabern, mainly for food and a place to sleep, trying to survive, for example the Rhapsodes, Minstrels, Bards, Tunos, Goliardos, among others, now everything is so different.

This article may have some inaccuracies, this will not be a detailed history line, it's more like an oversimplified conversation that may have some mistakes.

To understand how much music industry has changed, we have to look back to the beggining of it.

Music at first was used as a way to let know the other hunters the prey was in their location through whistle, imitating the sound of birds, to making sure the prey won't escape. This rudimentary way of using music developes the actual human language. We must not forget, practicing music, even in it's rudimentary state, helps to develope Logic thinking, emotional intelligence, among other skills that we usually give for granted, so take that in consideration. Music helped to develope part of the actual culture, including interpersonal relations, tastes, sensibility, empathy, spread religious beliefs, etc.

Then the explosion of culture was so big that it is impossible for me to cover it all here, but i'll jump to the Age of art.

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Music stopped to be a "play to survive" to become a "Thing to aspire to", The virtuous were admired, and even sabotage to be in the highest pedestal was almost normal in those times, a lot of disputes to be recognized as the best happened -this haven't change through time though- just because to get the honour to be remembered as the best.

Then, big money comes out, and everything goes nuts.

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When radio stations appeared, musicians aspired to be in them, because that means fame, money, success. Big contracts with Record Labels that makes you rich.

Everything was going great, right? Wrong.

The fame, and the transformation from being a poor musician to be new rich created a generation of over egocentric and arrogant people, who didn't know how to handle that amount of money. And that happens until this day. Good thing psychologists step in and help lots of them to learn how to emotionally handle that.

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We are now in the last years for record labels. they are starting to become obsolete, now musicians can create their own record studios, hire acoustic engineers to handle the mixes and promote their own music thanks to social media, so they won't need the intermediary anymore, the circle is starting to close, going back to be independent.

What will be the future of music's monetization?

The answer: Copyright.

I hate that word, but if it's used properly, it may be a good thing. Over this couple of years, we have seen how companies misuse the copyright to strike youtube videos, and new voices, but now, a new idea was born: NFT (Non Fungible Tokens).

NFT we can be usually seen in the visual arts, people selling their art, gaining from royalties thanks to minting.

Now, there's another way to use NFT, but in music, and that is, copyright. Imagine you + hundreds of fans been co-owners of the copyright of your favourite artist's song, that would be an gigantic slap to the companies that loves to take money from content creators, because you can't claim something that is his. the copyright issues would be over, because you directly support the creator, no intermediaries, and gives you the right to use the music you bough in your streams/videos/etc.

The future seems to be more independent and decentralized.

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Thank you for reading my really boring article. What do you think? what's NFTs' potential in the music industry? Let me know in the comments.

See you in the next article.