How the Popular Music Audience has changed with Time
The music industry has attracted a large number of listeners over the decades. However, the audience has evolved considerably over the years due to developments in music production and distribution technologies over time. Some of the factors that have facilitated change in music audience include music style, performance style, musical instruments, as well as rhythm and pitch that have changed with technological revolution (Mauch, MacCallum, Levy, & Leroi, 2015).
As the technologies in the music instrumentation and production transformed over time, the melody and rhythm of music artifacts changed as well; making it more appealing to a particular group of listeners. For instance, the kind of music that were created 70 years ago were done using standard instruments; thus had slower rhythm suitable for all groups of people. With the invention of the computer enabled instrumentation, it became possible to produce high tempo music that has sidelined the older group of audience who cannot keep up with the pace. Also, technology has enabled diversity in music production that has divided the audience according to their taste. For instance, "If you will never see me" by Alicia Keys is one of the fresh music that has attracted a lot of youthful audiences.
How the Music Culture has reflected on the Audience Change
The music culture has evolved over the decades to keep up with the changing audience preferences. As the evolution of technology and the internet changed the fans’ attitude towards music collection also changed. The music industry has also transformed to keep up with the trend; from the conventional vinyl to cassette, CD, and the current digital format that is more portable for the audience.
The content of music has changed as the society, and the audience's ways of life evolved over the decades. It is unfortunate that crime rates and immorality have drastically increased among the communities over the decades. Conversely, the content of music transformed from useful and educative materials and focused on sex, gluttony, and drugs to reflect on the society’s behavior. The fingerprint of every audience generation is visible in the sound and the lyrics of the music artifact created during their period.
The changes of audience behavior over the centuries have been reflected in the transformation of music performance. For example, the 1950’s audience was chatty spectators with a sense of attentive silence that enabled smooth and organized music performance. As the behavior of the audience modernized alongside the technology and exposure, the mode of music performance also changed; becoming more hyper, loud, and with a high cadence.
The New Music Audience
For decades, the audience of music artifacts has shifted more and more towards the younger generation; with the current majority of music listeners being the youth and children. The audience transformation has been stimulated by the changes in music production and content. A greater part of the modern music artifacts has muddled sound composition that the old group audiences cannot grasp. Modern technology has facilitated symphonies in music composition that are perplexing the listener’s brain especially the old (Koelsch, 2014). For the old audience used to the traditional sound patterns of ancient classical music, the modern types of music artifacts may be difficult to take in.
The diverse genre of music that has come up over time has also divided the audience according to gender, age, ethnicity, and race. For instance, the classical music draws attention to the elderly, hip-hop music to the young generation, and cool blues attract the female audience. Different groups of people are loyal to various types of music depending on their ages, and originality of the music. However, it is importance to note that the audience diversity does not extend to class.
References
Koelsch, S. (2014). Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(3), 170-180.
Mauch, M., MacCallum, R. M., Levy, M., & Leroi, A. M. (2015). The evolution of popular music: USA 1960–2010. Royal Society open science, 2(5), 150081.
