Travaglini_podcast_digital music

The Sanremo Festival has changed a lot due to digitization. Music has been greatly affected, with CDs being replaced by digital methods like Napster and streaming platforms such as Spotify and Amazon Music. These platforms offer digital libraries, personalized recommendations, and different types of subscriptions. Even traditional events like Sanremo have embraced digitization, allowing fans to listen to songs before the competition ends. The festival has also gained popularity among young people through social media and streaming platforms. In the next episode, the podcast will discuss the generational difference and the funny memes associated with the festival. A few days ago, the 73rd edition of the Sanremo Festival started. Watching it, I was inspired to share with you some interesting aspects that caught my attention. Since I noticed that the festival has changed a lot compared to the past, I decided to use it in this episode as a thread to talk about digital music. And maybe, if you like the trend, in the next episode we'll talk about memes during the festival. Hello everyone, I am Simone and I want to welcome you to this new episode of my podcast. So, as I said before, the topic for today's podcast is the digitization of music and, according to many scholars, it could be defined as the conversion of analog data into digital form. Music is one of the most affected fields by digitization, but besides affecting its business model, digitalization led to an easier and cheaper way of distributing music through compression and storage. During time, the distribution of music products has changed shape. Whereas in the 80s and 90s it took place via physical media, such as CDs, the evolution led to the growth of digital methods. As mentioned earlier, CDs were very popular. Millions and millions of CDs were sold in those years. But as record sales were reached, a revolution began. In fact, the birth of P2P technology enabled the birth of the famous Napster. It was an important change in the world of music because it allowed users to have a catalogue of mp3 tracks to download. It was a revolution, however, it was not completely legal. The real revolution came with the new streaming platforms such as Spotify or Amazon Music. I believe that these platforms are really important and have changed the way we live because we give the possibility to users to have a digital library of music and podcasts to listen to whenever they want, create their lists and much more. They also have an algorithm to propose new content fitting the user's music taste. Pretty smart, right? The algorithm obviously works in a complicated way, but its functionality can be summarized in these steps. At first, it takes into account your past listens and likes, such as styles, the genre and the mood. Before, for example, the skip. I mean, the less you skip a song, the more it is suggested. And the last feature is the listening time. Of course, there aren't only Spotify or Amazon Music nowadays. Over time, many digital platforms were born. We can see that there are different types of platforms, such as premium platforms. An example can be Spotify that allows the user to have a basic free version of the application and some premium subscription. Secondly, we have ad-funded service platforms, such as YouTube, which are based on advertising, as the name also says. And the last type of platform, instead, is online physical retail stores, such as Amazon, HMV and so on. Knowing that, we can see that even a traditional music event, such as Sanremo, has changed a lot with digitization. With Spotify, Sanremo Never Ends was the slogan of the advertising campaign for the collaboration between the festival and the famous music streaming app. After the first day of the festival, it was already possible to listen to the songs in the competition thanks to the official Sanremo 2023 playlist, which allowed fans to continue to experience the emotion of the event even after it. When I was a kid, it was very different. I remember that people could only buy CDs and only after the end of the competition. A big change, for sure. Just a couple of days ago, I came across an article about the digital transformation of Sanremo, which has become increasingly present since the Covid period. Seating some data, the share of people in the 15-24 age group, according to the blog Agenda Digitale, increased by 8% between 2020 and 2021 edition. The fact that young people were very interested in the festival also reflects the way people enjoy the festival. I mean, it's still part of popular culture in Italy, but it is experienced mainly through social media and streaming platforms. This increasing social interaction allows me to add two other important aspects of this kind of events. I mean the generational difference between young people and the older one, and especially the inevitable funny meme award that characterized the week of the festival. I think that the next episode will focus on this trend, so stay tuned. I think I gave you enough information for now, and I thank you as always for listening to me. See you next time.