Remember the days of music stores like Peaches Music, Disc Jockey and Virgin Megastore? How about trying to cue your tape recorder at just the right time, to record your favorite song off the radio? Do adolescents these days even realize what a CD is and how it’s used? The entertainment landscape has come a long way in a short amount of time and today more then ever before, our means of acquiring music is dominated by the internet and electronic media.
The evolution of electronic media has been fast and swift and it’s impacted everything from how we get our music to the impact on local radio stations. Today, Apple iTunes is the #1 way to get music and videos. Everything can be purchased from individual songs, to albums to music videos. Long gone are portable CD players. Now everyone downloads thousands of songs and can utilize them all from a device (MP3 player) as small as a quarter. Today we can take hundreds of CD’s and transfer them to one convenient device!
What about the impact on local and national radio? Nowadays, you can access your favorite radio station from any city, at any time through the internet or applications on your smartphone or iPod. Local radio also has to compete with applications like Pandora and iHeart radio, which allow the user to listen to music broken up by genres or artists and many times can listen nearly commercial free. What about if you miss your favorite radio program? No problem, because today you can visit a stations website and listen to podcasts from shows as far back as two months.
The evolution of electronic media is endless. From YouTube video streaming to Shazam music identifier, everything you need is at the touch of your finger. The questions is : What’s next?