Returning volunteer Meg Jocson Ong brings you another piece, this time on how technology has revolutionised the music industry.
With Apple Music hitting 50 million subscribers and Spotify reporting a massive 87 million, how have streaming services changed the way we listen to music? And do you have any predictions for the future?
As part of a very musical family, I grew up listening to music on a variety of platforms, including my great grandfather’s collection of vinyl records from the 1970s, a hand-me-down portable CD player from my dad, right down to my first iPod. Fast forward to today, technology has allowed us to keep thousands of songs, both old and new, in our mobile devices and now, whenever I need a song to keep me going on a slow day, I easily use the Spotify application on my phone or laptop and choose from a wide variety of playlists created by users worldwide.
Being someone who grew up with music in every corner of the house, it was hard to not fall into the trap of becoming a music geek. Everything from electronic music scores to low cost music streaming on SoundCloud or Spotify, technology has definitely revolutionised the music industry and has made an impact on the way I go about my daily grind.
Instead of carrying a ridiculous amount of music books to class, I only have to take an iPad that holds more music scores than my bag could ever possibly hold in paper form. In addition to that, I’ve also been listening to my favourite playlists on Spotify, made and shared by my family and friends. I’d like to think I’m finding new songs faster and easier than I would have before online music streaming was a thing.
The future of music is looking bright. There are clever applications that will help you find the name of the song stuck in your head like Shazam, or using AI to play a song through vocal command such as Alexa or Siri. Who knows, maybe in the future, technology will help us find the song that’s stuck in our heads that we can’t find the lyrics to simply by just thinking about it. I’m certain that it can only go uphill from here. Whatever the future of music may be, my inner music geek can’t wait to discover it.
Featured image by: Omeiza Haruna
