The music industry contains many elements that allows it to be a strong part of media throughout the years. The music industry being a large company generates large amounts of money for itself each year, in 2016, the music industry generated 16,6 billion US dollars in 2016, however the amount of money that was made came from very different places than from earlier years in the millennia such as 2000, which in that year generated 14 billion US dollars, what makes these figures different from each other is where the money came from. In 2004 almost all the sales came from album sales, whereas in 2016, up to 40% of the money made in the year came from digital sales, this dramatic change in where the music industry makes its sales came from the increased accessibility of computers and the internet and the ease of accessing files such as music digitally, this has popularised the streaming sites such as Spotify that the music industry has capitalised on making their money, however, the music industry did not always keep up with the times and the rise of the internet, in 2004 the music industry saw a collective 4 billion dollar loss in comparison to the previous year. The music industry making less money could be due to the stubbornness of wanting to make mostly album sales, as they usually cost a lot more money, however the attraction and ease of online distribution was clearly how modern music would be sold, piracy and illegal music downloads were also a reason for the music industries' decline that they still suffer from today, when the music industry had much less of an appearance online the easiest and most prominent way to get music online was piracy downloads, a similar method of free music distribution was people uploading MP3 files to YouTube that people would listen to for free, in early YouTube this made the music industry no money, until YouTube eventually allowed content to be claimed and then monetised with ads so the money could be made from them again, YouTube has become such a popular way to listen to music that eventually labels started to upload their own music and put ads on it so they could get revenue that way, I believe the only reason that the music industry has such an online presence now is to counteract other people taking away potential money by uploading their music themselves.  YouTube itself has now become essentially a music streaming site as well as a video streaming site, with a tab on their site named "YouTube music".

The big three conglomerates that own essentially the whole music industry are Sony, warner music, and universal. These three companies own almost all the music labels and in most cases will be out any potential successful record label. There is an issue with only three companies being the only existing and powerful bodies in an industry, mainly because of the monopoly they run that will keep them on top, this results in exploiting artists of their potential money, this is from the small amount of share they get from music plays on streaming sites, to the expenses they will enforce to keep artists in line, the extreme lengths the music industry goes to use artists for money is dangerous, Amy wine house and her mental and drug state could be an example of these extremes, that led her to a heavy use of drugs and eventual death, all the while her music career was still being pushed. The music industry has a lot of issues that need to be addressed, and their current form could lead to its downfall, even with the industry now focusing on digital sales, the industry is still suffering from less income than before, with almost no artists hitting platinum anymore.