Interview in review: Interview 4

My fourth interview was with Dr. Steven Maxwell, a K-State music professor who teaches the History of Rock and Roll class, and Dr. Maxwell was very helpful in giving me a musical perspective of how the Internet has changed the music industry. Here are a few things I got from the interview.

1. Rock and Roll radio was the biggest mass medium to have a major impact on the music industry until the Internet came along. 
2. ITunes was instrumental in the music industry's adaptation to the digital age after Napster debacles in 1999 that caused many people to think the Internet would ruin the music industry. 
3. ITunes made it very easy for anyone to be able to buy music legally in a cheap fashion. iTunes was modeled after by many other companies. 
4. Certain musicians like Korn, Kid Rock, Pete Segar and Garth Brooks have been hesitant to join the Internet craze. The Beatles just recently got onto iTunes and a reason a number of these artists refuse to do so is because their music was built on albums and not on the sale of singles. They feel like it destroys the artistic idea they are creating. 
5. Another reason artists were hesitant to get involved with iTunes is that it takes a large cut of sales on top of the huge cut that their label takes anyway. But once iTunes became the main platform for music sales, artists started to give in and take the larger cut for the larger sales. 
6. Its hard to tell what kind of impact, positive or negative, the Internet has had on the music industry. It has definitely gone back to the focus on singles and not albums. 
7. The Internet has really helped artists get noticed, like Wiz Khalifa, but its becoming harder as more and more artists turn to the Internet and water down the talent online. 
8. The Internet has really benefited artists who use websites to get information out there as well as free songs to lure them into their music and hopefully bring them out to concerts. 
9. The Internet has helped reemerge pop music with the easier ability to create songs with technological advances.