Looks at the rise and decline of the popularity of and demand for Latin American music.
This paper first outlines the cultural, business, and technological changes that contributed to the rise in popularity of Latin American music. The paper then analyzes the demographic, cultural, and technological influences that contributed to a decline in demand for Latin American music.
“The music industry is undergoing a global technological revolution which has been induced by the introduction of Peer to Peer (P2P) file sharing services, and the proliferation of recordable CD equipment which his now within the financial reach of the average consumer. Any one of these three influences alone could have been absorbed by the recording industry. The presence of a P2P service which was limited only to sharing files between computers would have been convenient and fun. If consumers could only put personal music tracks on portable music devices, the convenience would have expanded the reach of the individual’s music collection, much the same way that personal cassette recorders did in the 1970’s. Although the music industry was worried about personal cassette recording abilities of the past decades, the inherent poor quality of personal recordings meant that the demand for studio recordings remained high.”