The Distribution of Electronic Music

The distribution of electronic music has gone through a substantial change over the years.  Vinyl originally dominated the market.  Vinyl would only be able to have a few tracks on each disk, due to the fact that most electronic music producers did not release full albums, only EPs.  Once cassettes became popular electronic music adopted the use of them.  Full albums were able to be put on the cassettes, even if they were two part albums because if you flipped the cassette over it would play the other part of the album.  After the CD was developed the cassette tape faded away.  The digital age of music began after the internet was used more often for shopping.

Apple launched their music player iTunes, which is a big hit in music distribution today.  With being able to download music online brought sharing websites where people post music that they bought to be able to share with their friends.  Sharing music with your friends has changed to sharing it with the world, and this has brought the problem of piracy to the music industry.  Many websites are very popular in the electronic music scene such as Beatport, Trackitdown, and Hardstyle.com.  Music is also being shared on a massive scale through the use of Soundcloud, YouTube, and social media. The way music will be distributed will always evolve and I am interested on how it continues to change in the future.