Digital Media and Music

Digital media has had a profound impact on the music industry. All popular music today must be accompanied by some kind of music video, it's a standard now. Generally, these music videos help to set the tone of the song and they can make or break the artist. This is both a positive and a negative. It's good because it allows music to become an even more complex art form, combining two different elements together. Personally, I think the negative aspects far outweigh the positives.

While it's great that music has become such a great art-form, what has happened is that music is now judged more heavily based on the performer rather than the actual song. For example, a great looking artist with terrible skills could become much more successful than a talented artist who does not look as great on camera. Because of this, it's not difficult to find horrible artist that top the charts in this day and age. In a sense, because of digital media's influence, the music industry is now heavily based upon superficial aspects; in other words, looks are, for the most part, more important than actual talent. It's unfortunate that this is the reality of things in the music industry.

While digital media has allowed music to evolve, at the same time, it has allowed the standard of the music itself to fall. It's unlikely that anything will change in the future, as technology grows and digital media becomes much more influential. But who knows, things can change in a heartbeat and maybe music will yet again evolve into something even more complex; not just involving visual and audio components, but other factors as well.