Popular music and digital network.

Timothy Taylor asserts "Digitization is the most fundamental change in the history of western music since the invention of notation in the ninth century". Digitization complicates distinction between production and live text - whereby many technologies of production are 'reproduction'.

1. Music production, distribution texts (the music itself) and consumption.
2. The lines are blurred between these categories.
3. Music Industry versus File sharing networks. Files being exchanged through MP3 format (in the last few years major labels have been finding ways/models of file exchanging while still reinforcing consumption of legal downloading or purchasing.

This therefore highlights the copyright of music within digital network. In a western captialist system copyright for music is divided in different rights, primarily the right of author of composition and the musical involvment within the composition. Do recordings belong to the public domain - that if they are well known and generate wealth - dont they become public domain rather than property (economic property) to any individual.

However, while music and digital network can become hostile towards each other music genres such as hip hop, techno and dance music rely on previous samples of music to construct some musical element within the composition. Therefore digital technologies become an integral part of the music in these particular genres.