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Stephen Covell

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Is this the best time in history to be a musician?

We live in a time when the opportunity to share and interact with musicians around the world has never been easier. The old model of distribution is fading away and people who enjoy music can pick and choose to their hearts content without anyone telling them whats hot right now.

On the other hand, making a living as a musician has in some ways become more difficult. Many of this generations consumers expect pretty much everything to be free and there's more competition than ever to capture their attention.

The opportunities for creativity are only as limited as today's musician's imaginations, but has the loss of monetary value of music as a commodity created an environment that discourages artists from making music their main focus?

Topics: music musicians performance
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    Erin Ashley

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    Sep 24 2011: Good question, I don't think it's either a good or bad thing to be a musician at this time because I guess, I can see it both ways. As a freelance music critic for The Examiner, as well as a music blogger on my own site, I see that through blogs a lot of really good artist get exposure. I have got to hear music from artists down the street from me and some overseas which is a really good thing, and at times it seems like music listeners are really eager to get new music. However, on the other side, since music is free no one wants to pay for anything, so if you're doing music for the love and not for the bills it's a great time I guess. Also, with so many artists coming out and essentially doing the same thing as 100 other artist, it could be quite difficult to be an artist if you do not do anything to set yourself out in the crowd.

    Also, I don't know if I'm the only one who notices this, but it seems like since there's such an easy access to music these days, a lot of artists find comfort in the digital platform as far as online so they don't excel to do more than that which you can tell in the quality of their music. Sorry, I kind of rambled.

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