How has technology changed how artists get their work noticed?

The media industry as a whole is one of the biggest industries in the western world, taking many forms, from the expressive but sometimes frowned upon graffiti art of the likes of Banksy to the more conventional theatre, television, photography, advertisement and the multi billion pound film and music industries. A media text is a way artists use to show their talents, in the past to distribute these texts and allow the world to see them, would have cost a lot of money. However it is now far easier to market for free virally than it is to pay.

The advancement of technology is ever increasingly making it easier for artists to make them selves known. Not ten years ago, for an up and coming musician to have their music listened to by a lot of people they would need to get on the radio or play a live event. This wasn’t ideal as radio stations often didn’t care and only wanted to play well known tracks and live events only wanted artists that would bring a large crowd, some what of a catch 22, no crowd no gig but with out the gig, nobody knew who you were!

New York anti folk artist, Jeffrey Lewis did his best to get around this problem by recording his own tracks on cassettes, performing at open mic nights and selling his tapes to anyone that was interested. The technology of cassettes seems some what primitive now, but then was the only way of recording without a big budget. It was one of these cassettes that were handed on to Rough Trade Records and eventually got Lewis a record deal. However this process took about 4 years.

With the huge advancement of the internet, media sharing has significantly increased and now allows artists the opportunity to be heard across the world with little to no effort. This is possible with social networking sites like Myspace, on which any musician can create a free music profile. The page is able to host photos of themselves and they can upload their music. These profiles are then available to anyone online. These profiles can lead to recording contracts, gigs and feedback. This is worlds apart from only a few years ago when it took Jeffrey Lewis 4 years to get a contract, now it can happen in just 4 weeks.

As well as artists showing off their work, with the introduction of online shops and download sites like Play.com and Itunes you can now purchase music from all over the world that before now you may have never heard of before, this is all possible with out even leaving your home. This market has had a huge uptake and influence on things such as the charts.

Social networking sites can also have influenced music consumers. For example in December 2009 Rage Against the Machine's 'Killing In the Name' were Christmas number one after a Facebook campaign for them to beat the, favourite to get it, X-factor winner. This just goes to show just how much of an impact the internet can have.

More recently artists have been able to record to CD’s, however this advancement in technology wasn’t life changing for musicians. The introduction of the ability to record digitally into an MP3 file made sending music to others easier and quicker. When it comes to the advancement in technology for DJ’s, the birth of the MP3 has caused a somewhat dieing profession to explode back to life. Artists like DJ Yoda had to carry around hundreds of vinyl’s with him where as now DJ’s like DeadMau5 and PennyForTheDJ can perform with just a laptop and a hard drive full of songs running through a program like Ableton Live or using DJ controllers like the Torq Xponent.

Not only the music industry has benefited from the ever so apparent explosion in technology over the past few years. The shift from film to digital had a huge impact both the film and photographic industries. The new digital technology is far quicker to produce and with advancements in the quality of it very quickly has taken over from the old traditional film methods. The main advantage of the digital methods is work can be previewed straight after it is finished rather than have to process in chemicals first and it also allows more to be done with editing in terms of styles and techniques that just are not possible with chemicals. Films like Disney's 'Cars' would not have been possible to produce without these modern methods.

The film industry, more so short films and budding film makers have been able to exploit the progression of video editing programs like Final Cut Express and the Adobe suites. Things like The Creative Media Diploma would be a totally different course without this technology, having so much available gives us almost no boundaries allowing us to be as creative and inventive as we possibly can. On a much larger scale, full time productions like James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar is one of the most incredible visual things created, Cameron’s creativity is largely to thank however, no matter how creative he is, the film would not be any where near as impressive if it weren’t for the advancement in CGI technology. Towards the end of 2009 films also became available in 3-D in standard cinemas. Avatar was one of the films produced in this way, which just added to the stunning visuals.

Another big shift in the market is that towards portable multi media players such as Apple's Ipod. This allows people to carry vast amount of music, movies, photos and games with them in a hand held device. Very people have not heard of an Ipod these days and most will probably have their own. This makes showing a friend new music very easy, as most people now carry their whole music collection around with them everyday.