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Whether record companies like it or not the music industry is changing. They can try and ignore it, perhaps even directly fight the change, or maybe they can embrace it and actually benefit from the changes brought about by our new digital age.

Currently much of the music industries’ efforts have focused on the option of resistance. It appears that many people want the model to stay the same, and will fight against change. In response to file-sharing the majority of activity has focused on short term action to solve the problem. Such action might appear so show some success, but when you look at the bigger picture a policy of resistance is destined to fail. Remember Napster? The music industry managed to shut down their illegal activity, but as soon as this happened people just moved on to different technology such as torrents. Now it appears they have been able to shut down torrent search engine The Pirate Bay, but chances are this will do little to help, people will just use something else.

All resistance appears to do is speed up the rate of technological progress and actually worsen piracy issues. Shutting Napster, inspired people to use torrents which enabled them to get much more content in much less time, closing The Pirate Bay could easily do similar. Recently as a response to the forced closure of The Pirate Bay someone actually uploaded a copy of the entire Pirate Bay site for people to download and in theory run their very own version of The Pirate bay. Closing down The Pirate Bay could actually result in hundreds more versions, which when closed down can simply be restarted somewhere else.

It’s not hard to see how future technology can only make it easier for users to get hold of digital content. As more and more people start to store the majority of their data online in the ‘cloud’, placing restrictions on how and when people can share this content will become increasingly difficult.

The consumer of the future expects to get a large amount of content for free, however there are plenty of things they are happy to pay for and they are not adverse to being exposed to advertising as a form of payment. Research actually suggests that people who source content for free online actually spend more on paid content online than those that do not. The policy of resistance could simply alienate their audience in a time where it is more important than ever that they make use of the technology available in order to engage their audience.

However, not all efforts have been directed towards resistance, some musicians are making the most of all things digital to help engage their fans and spread their music.

1. Radiohead – Pay what you want

In 2007 Radiohead decided to launch their album online, with users able to download the whole album from their site for whatever price they chose. More recently they’ve decided to release the latest single from their forthcoming album as a free download.

2. Muse – Let fans piece together the song

This year Muse released their single ‘United States of Eurasia’ by planting USB sticks all across the world containing 5 second bits of the track. It was then up to the fans to go out and physically find them, work together to upload them onto the web and piece it together to create the final track.

3. P Diddy – To succeed you’re going to need a great Facebook page

This year P Diddy launched the latest MTV star finder programme, and this year he was keen to point out the important role the Internet and specifically social media now plays in the industry. He stated “You have to understand how to be able to brand yourself,” he said. “Before, it was just at live shows, now you have to be able to do a great live show, you have to be able to do a great online interview, you need to have a great Facebook page, you have to have a great television performance.” He practices what he preaches and you can find P diddy all over social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

4. Coldplay – iPhone app

Recently Coldplay have released their very own iPhone application to help promote their latest single. Created by Babelgum the free mobile application includes the brand new Strawberry Swing video along with the Coldplay video catalogue, a Coldplay news feed and a videogame.

5. Mos Def – The album on a t-shirt

For his last album ‘The Ecstatic’ Mos Def decided to release it as a T-shirt. The T-shirt contained a tag on which was a unique Mp3 download code for album, furthermore the t-shirt had the Ecstatic Killer of Sheep-interpolating cover art printed on the front, and the song titles on the back.

6. No Doubt – Watch them live, get free music

No Doubt are letting people who buy top tier priced tickets for their latest tour download the entire No Doubt back catalogue for free. A great example of encouraging fans to buy experiences they can’t just download as well as rewarding their biggest fans.

7. Bloc Party – Crowd-sourced music video

For their music video to their single ‘Ares’ Bloc Party asked fans to send them their own video clips of the band performing live. These clips were then simply stitched together into a great music video, made for the fans by the fans. This is a great way to engage fans that makes great use of the material available thanks to the ease of video recording via mobile phones, and the ease that this material can be brought together through the power of the Internet.

8. Nine Inch Nails – Band uploads to torrent sites

Back in 2008 Nine Inch Nails put the first volume of their album ‘Ghosts’ onto torrent sites under a creative commons licence. Fans could enjoy this basic version for free and if they wanted more they could go to the official Nine Inch Nails website to download the extended version or go out and buy the standard CD or a variety of special limited edition box sets in store if fans wanted a physical product. A great example of freemium, giving away the basics for free and making the money on the upgraded versions.

9. Simian Mobile Disco – Augmented Reality mixer

Simian Mobile Disco have recently been promoting the release of their new album ‘Temporary Pleasure’ by creating the “first ever-human augmented reality music and visuals mixer”.  The piece was installed at the ‘Temporary Pleasure’ shop on Carnaby Street, London. The installation was an interactive augmented reality experience, which let people interact in a totally unique way with a never-heard-before content.

10. Grum (UK Dance music producer) – QR code posters

Grum has been making use of QR Codes technology as a way to promote his music. He has put up QR code posters up round the UK that people can scan to instantly hear his music on their phone or listen to it with the radio function on the phone. As well as promoting his music the campaign can also generate revenue, as people can then buy full version of the tracks directly from their mobile phone.