The current music market is changing in terms of recorded content; entry into the digital age has given access to the common user to generate high quality recordings at home that would otherwise have been impossible to produce during the pre-digital era. If we were to compare and contrast the differences between the commercial music world and the independent music world  Randy Johnson Jersey , ultimately the research would support the advent of a new resurgence that is being dubbed as a time stamped event known as the democratization of the recording studio.

Since there is no statistical data available to directly measure how much content has been produced as a result of the democratization of the recording studio, a valuable reference comes from Zack Greenburgs article in Forbes titled; The Worlds Highest-Paid Musicians 2012″. Interestingly enough Dr. Dre is ranked #1 with $110 million in pretax earnings. Ironically Dr. Dre hasn\t recorded or released an album in a decade. Dre\s revenue was amassed by live performances and his new headphone line called \Beats\. Some of the top money makers on the list include: Roger Waters $88 million, U2 $78 million, and British Boy Band; Take That ($69 million). Approximately 2 out of the top 25 money makers were post digital age musicians (Taylor Swift, Justin Beiber). Almost all the artists generated their revenue outside of record sales. An inference can be made through Greenburgs article on a disparity of the recorded digital sales market due to the alternate revenue streams that have been adopted by the industry.

The current state of the market could be viewed as a growing pain in the innovation cycle with the introduction of the first peer to peer (Napster) more than a decade ago. Legal restructuring in terms of asset management and licensing to subscription services like Spotify has left the industry and its artists with more litigation than streamline economics. One could assume this is the result from the shift from tangible (CD) to intangible (ownership free) music that is rented through user subscription. A key word that makes all the difference in terms of the business model, but this key phrase; ownership-free is the cornerstone of the economic discrepancies that lurk within the industry.

Los Angeles Times Nathan Olivarez-Giles reports:

Although nobody officially tracks the number of recording studios  Paul Goldschmidt Jersey , the consensus among industry experts is that the big commercial facilities have taken a major hit. They estimate that as many as half of the L.A. areas commercial studios have closed or been sold to artists for private use.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is an organization that represents the recording industry worldwide. Currently the IFPI has approximately 1400 members in 66 countries. The mission of the IFPI is as follows:

To promote the value of recorded music, safeguard the rights of record producers and expand the commercial uses of recorded music and its services to members including; legal policy advice (lobbying), anti-piracy enforcement, litigation and regulatory affairs, market research and communications support.

The IFPI issues various reports every year reporting various statistics that pertain to record sales, listening behavior  Patrick Corbin Jersey , music downloading and various other trends concerning commercially recorded music. Data is represented in various charts and studies alluding to the present economic state of the global music market. A relevant IFPI generated report depicts a data graph that measures recorded music shipments in correlation to musician employment from the dates between 1999-2009; the findings support the theory of a possible contraction in the music market, other compelling data shows that the global value of recorded music is down -31% (IFPI, 2011).

Unfortunately, there doesnt seem to be any hard data available that concretely illustrates the number of home recordists; this is due in part for reasons of classification. One cant discredit the avid pro who is prevalent in the music scene and who quite often is involved with independent projects on top of being up to date with the latest and greatest plugins available. Similarly, one cant discredit the novice who by mere happenstance is inspired to create an audio recording through a user friendly interface such as Garageband. Recordists, pro and novice could realistically be working with the same quality standard and thus a distinction of quality wouldnt separate them and so categorization of the two is nearly impossible and thus trying to decipher how many people record at home would be like trying to figure out how many people draw pictures.

The technology has successfully integrated itself into mass technological consumption  Luis Gonzalez Jersey , turning the question into how many people do not have audio recording capabilities in their home? Now, anyone can always make inferences based on supporting data. Soundcloud is touted as being the leading archiving service for independent music makers. Based on their user base, there are 40 million independent music makers globally. This number is a stark contrast in comparison to its commercial counterpart of roughly about 35,000. These figures illustrate a huge propensity for those taking advantage of home recording. Aside from the lob-sided numbers pertaining to the independents and the commercial music maker, independents generated an exorbitant amount of musical content within the last several years.

According to Cd Baby, independent music makers released a total of 61  Jean Segura Jersey ,339 albums and 29,477 single