May 2022, Year XIV, n. 5
Enzo Mazza
Are they just Songs?
Telos: As CEO of the Italian Music Industry Federation since time immemorial, you have first-hand experience of all the changes the market has undergone. Could you describe the main turning points of the last 30 years and how the industry has dealt with them?
Enzo Mazza: The recording industry has always been on the frontlines of innovation, if we think about the advent of records, CDs and the various digital formats. Yet it was totally unprepared for the mp3 revolution and the technologies that quickly developed around this compression algorithm. In 1999 Napster was born, the first illegal music sharing platform that rose to over 60 million users in just a few months.
The response of the industry and the artists was very slow and complex, and in just a few years digital piracy dealt a significant blow to the sector’s balance sheets. With Steve Job’s intuition about the iPod alone and the subsequent founding of iTunes, the industry saw huge potential in this segment.
This was the first big turning point in the sector and put a massive music library at fans’ fingertips anywhere and anytime. However, it was streaming and Spotify that triggered the real transformation in this sector.
Over the last 10 years, this sector has undergone a true digital transition, which has led to deep changes in companies’ business, creative and consumption models ...more
Editorial
Music is one of the arts that moves us the most. It is the first and only universal language. However, it is also feeling. It’s rage, pain, sadness, joy, happiness, and it can become whatever else we want it to.
Music is there in the background of most of our lives. It triggers memories and allows us to share emotions. However, something that seems to be the simplest and most common thing in the world is actually the result of complex, surprising mechanisms. So complex and surprising that music is even used to improve, maintain or recover cognitive, emotional and social functions and to slow the progression of certain diseases.
More simply put, we all have a song that reminds us of someone, of a special moment, our childhood, our adolescence, or even just a song we like to sing ...more
SocialTelos