Importance of Tech: Analysis

The music industry is fickle: it follows the money, trying to capture trends before they become obsolete and using everything in its power to keep things fresh. Yet it’s hard to understand how and why the business shifts so quickly–until you look at the technology lying behind these shifts.
Connected to almost every large change in music consumption or production is a new or newly used technology. The rise of pop culture itself arguably began with the invention of the phonograph and reproducible music, while the coming of the digital age and the MP3 took music production and consumption out the hands of companies and into the home computers of consumers. Even the sound of music changes with new inventions: imagine rock n’ roll without electric guitars or amplifiers. Without this changing technology, the sound of the music America loves and has loved would be entirely different. More to the point, much of this music could never have been created or marketed as it was without the technology of the time.
Perhaps of greatest importance is the influence music has had on the culture as a whole. The rebellion of the 1960’s might have started without the musical assistance of Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, and the integrated rock of Motown, but that rebellion might have fizzled out without the cultural support of music.
Looking at the history of popular music as a whole, one can also see the evolution of individualism as we now know it. Music and the music business began locally and expanded into a nationwide conglomerate which provided coverage coast to coast. Yet as the 1950’s dawned, music became a means of rebellion, a legacy which continued into the 1960’s. In the 1990’s and the millennium, this rebellion evolved into an overthrow of the music industry’s authority through MP3’s and illegal downloads. Individualism and niche markets have come full circle, which each consumer choosing their own experience. Whether this attitude was caused by music or is simply an effect of growing individualism is hard to say. But this movement in American life, as does everything, needed a soundtrack. And the changing technology of music provided it.