Key Changes: The Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry

Howie Singer · Bill Rosenblatt

May 2024 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Asa Siegel

Audiobook

19 hr 32 min

Unabridged

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About this audiobook

In recent years, narratives about the music industry tend to hew to a common theme: it was humming along for decades until the Internet and Napster came along and disrupted it. Key Changes shows that this view is incorrect: the industry was actually shaken up not once in the 1990s, but ten times over more than 100 years. These ten disruptions came with the introduction of new formats for enjoying recorded music: starting with the cylinders and discs played on early phonographs; then moving through radio, LPs, tapes, CDs, television, digital downloads, streaming, and streaming video; and then into Artificial Intelligence (AI), which enables a wide range of new capabilities with profound impacts upon the business. Each of the technological innovations covered in this book not only disrupted the music business, but also fundamentally altered the industry's character. Veteran music industry professionals and music technology experts Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt illuminate this pattern through a framework they term "the 6 Cs": cutting edge technology, channels of distribution, creators, consumers, cash, copyright. Extensively researched and supplemented by interviews with Grammy-winning artists, producers, and executives, the book provides an insightful perspective on the ways technology has fundamentally altered the music industry.

About the author

Howie Singer is an expert on music industry technologies who played a leading role in the transition to digital music delivery. At Warner Music Group, he served as SVP and chief strategic technologist analyzing new business models and services. He cofounded a2b music, an early digital music start-up.

Bill Rosenblatt is a leading independent expert on technologies related to copyright in the digital age. As president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, the firm he founded in 2000, he has consulted to leading media and technology companies as well as public policy entities worldwide.

Asa Siegel is a classically trained actor with extensive professional stage experience. He is also a highly skilled voice actor across the spectrum, with work including audiobooks, narration, video games, animated television series, promos and trailers, and national television and radio commercials.

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