Music - Past future and Present

To many of us music has always been a big part of our lives. Over the last few years I have found myself sort of re-evaulating my musical tastes and also how I come to obtain music. For anyone who grew up in the 1980s we were all familiar with the Vinyl era ehere 12' and 7' inch records ruled the media outlets. In about 1987/88 the cd era took off which in turn drove the price of Vinyl down. In 1991 a couple of record shops tried to introduce the cassette single as a viable format but that then failed and over the last few years(well 20) cd has rules the roost until now.

Downloading which was once frowned upon and classed as highly illegal has now been emraced by the record companies, artists and media alike.

I saw a artcile on a documentry on Rough Trade records a while back where they classed music as a cottage industry, where people with limited means and a bit of motivation could get there music to a larger audience. Thats what is happening with IT and the use of social networking, bands can be promoted through driven advertising campaigns on all social sites(namely artic monkeys and Pixie Lott are example's of this).

At the time in the 80s I was very much into this era, where bands were spread by word of mouth. Then it was all fanzines and mostly music papers ruled the roost.At that time there were so many artists avaible and breaking through that you had discard alot just because there was to much out there. With the advent of the MP3 revolution I still discover the new artist I like, but mostly my music taste has gone full circle and I find myself rediscovering artists that perhaps I didnt like about say 10 years ago.