For this blog post, I will discuss how technological advances impacted society – specifically music and how we listen to it. I will reference my week 7 discussion post on this topic. While it seems like a lifetime ago, I remember cassette tapes and CDs. I was also a teenager during Napster and Lime wire days, so I remember the first “streaming” music well. Now, streaming services allow us to get our favorite music, audio books and even movies, right to our phones instantly. On one hand services like Spotify are a great way for upcoming artists to get their work out there and it’s accessible to anyone, on the other hand, many artists are not paid fairly by these streaming companies and the consumer also has to listen to advertisements for organizations they don’t support.
The article “How apple music changed the world” the authors discussed the technical advancements and how streaming came to be. Music can now be streamed instantly and “apple has played a major role in this shift, not only through apple music, but through earlier innovations such as iTunes and the iPod, which helped redefine how music is accessed, shared and experienced” (Bomzer, 2025).
I was reflecting on my own revelation of music and my middle school days. I had a bright pink ipod nano and still remember using the computer room for hours at a time uploading my music. This technological advance had a massive impact on my life and I’m sure many others. The other article “iPod RIP” spoke to how the ipod impacted not just the music industry but society as a whole. Buying songs for .99 was a great solution to Napster and pirating music (I’m also guilty of this from my middle school downloading playlist days) and “was the first legal model for digital music” (Boyle and Bonnard, 2022). Now, music has shifted to streaming services. Easier to access and a great way or new artists to gain visibility on platforms like SoundCloud and Spotify.
With this technological change, came a change in how companies profited and treated artists and creators. I used Spotify for quite some time. It was convenient, cheap, and I loved my playlists. However, I always kind of knew that Spotify did not pay their artists fairly. “By 2020, the number of recording artists whose catalogs generated $50k or more on Spotify was just 13k. That’s out of ~8 mil. creators” (Dent, 2022). Those aren’t very good stats for fair pay. Like using Napster in my middle school days, I knew that using the platform wasn’t fair to the musicians I loved, but it was so convenient! I knew, technically, downloading songs illegally was stealing – but everyone was doing it! I also remember it being so cool to have downloaded something myself instead of paying the .99.
You may remember the old iPod and iTunes ad campaign. Here’s a fun trip down memory lane. listening to your iPod was fun, cool and again, convenient.
I used Spotify in the same way up until recently, justifying to myself that it was ok to dance to this song even though the artist didn’t make much from it, but Beyonce has enough money anyway, right?! Like many other platforms, Spotify makes the majority of its income through advertisements. Yes, it’s a billion-dollar industry, paying even the best musicians pennies for each stream, but again, the convenience! I recently learned that Spotify was using this space to air advertisements for ICE recruitments. This was horrifying to me, as I detest what is happening and how ICE is treating people in this country right now. This was the final straw for me. Two months ago, in learning this, I finally cancelled my Spotify subscription. Should I have cancelled this years ago when I learned how little artists make, yes of course. But standing up for something late is better than never. I changed to apple music, which is fine. The formatting is different, but I’m still able to stream artists I like at the gym or driving without annoying advertisements. I think my biggest takeaway from the shift is knowing that unfortunately, the movie industry and music industry have changed because of technology, favoring convenience over paying artists a fair wage from streaming.
References:
Apple iPod ad campaign from 2004-2008. (2016, October 24). [Video]. Youtube. Retrieved January 4, 2026, from https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=old+ipod+commercial&&mid=DAACF0E4BF2E58E740D4DAACF0E4BF2E58E740D4&FORM=VAMGZC
Bomzer, R. (2025, December 18). How Apple Music changed the world. Carved Culture. https://www.carvedculture.com/blogs/articles/how-apple-music-changed-the-world
Boyle, J., & Bonnard, J. (2022, May 11). iPod RIP: How Apple’s music player transformed an industry. Tech Explore. https://techxplore.com/news/2022-05-ipod-rip-apple-music-player.html
Dent, M. (2022, February 5). The economics of Spotify. The Hustle. https://thehustle.co/the-economics-of-spotify/
Erin A Clark 