Is the DRM the best way to save the music industry?

DRM is in many ways a very successful device of trying to prevent some forms of copyright through various technologies but I don’t believe that it will every truly stop all forms of piracy. Piracy will continue to exist however much we try to stop it, people will still go on several downloading websites if it means not having to pay to listen to their favourite music. In fact I don’t even think that it is particularly harming the music industry too much. Yes record sales are falling but being able to download any artist’s songs/albums still promotes them and in the long run aids their success. People will still go out and buy albums and support the artists which they love. Being able to download music off the Internet allows people to download music that may not be accessible in the shops. For example music from other countries and artists which are unheard of.

Can popular music ever really be unplugged?

I think that to some extent music can be unplugged but not as much so in the case of popular music. The development of technology over the last one hundred years has made it very hard for any genre of music to be unplugged. Technology benefits many genres of music and some genres would not be the same without the aid of technology. Such inventions as the amplifier helped with the development of the rock and roll genre and maybe without this particular invention it may not have had such an impact or had such great success.
All technologies in their own way help make music – whether it is an individual singing or a band and make them sound significantly better. Amplification is needed in many genres such as hip hop and dance music as they cannot survive without feedback sound. All these factors contribute to the fact that music can’t really ever be unplugged
In some cases yes popular music can be unplugged but only to some extent. Buskers sing unplugged most of the time, yes this may not seem like popular music but they may sing popular songs which we all know and love. Also tribal music is performed unplugged and this type of music is seen as ‘popular’ music to many.

What is world music and why does it exist?

There are many ways in which we can define world music. www.wikipedia.com defines world music as a term “that covers all music that is not part of mainstream popular music and has some kind of ‘ethnic’ component.”
I don’t think there is a definite answer to what world music is but I generally think that music is music which is all over the world not just local music in different geographical locations. However to narrow it down I do think that it is music which is predominantly mainstream and attracts the most global attention. It could also be defined as music which can be accessed easily through different forms of technology such as the Internet, through my space for example. World music could also be said to be music which isn’t British, just all other foreign music produced elsewhere in a different language. The same could be said in other countries such as France for example where they would probably categorize British music as ‘world music.’
World music exists as it shows the individuality of different cultures and societies all over the world. The collaboration of these different sounds and styles results in mass global attention which i have mentioned before.

Is popular music art?

Some would say that art, “in its broadest meaning, is the expression of creativity or imagination, or both” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art) I agree with this statement and would say that popular music is in fact a huge expression of an individual’s creativity. Popular music I believe is a number of different genres of music and each genre and each song within a genre expresses an individual/s own creativity, therefore producing different art forms. Popular music can be seen as art because art is usually seen as something which can be enjoyed by others and popular music is a form of art which also serves this purpose. We can read other forms of art such as paintings for example the same way that we can popular music. We can look at paintings and draw up different interpretations about what the artist is trying to say or portray in the same way that we would with any given piece of music. In popular music the singer or songwriter tries to achieve this.