Do you remember those days when you had to go to your nearest library and search through their books and archives to find out data about your favorite celebrity?
Or how about when you had to wait until your favorite artis''s new album arrived at the music store?
Those days are long gone because today YouTube, iTunes, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter -- and other social media outlets -- have revolutionized the entertainment business.
Thanks to social media you can:
Download or buy a song or an entire album in an instant;
Learn about your favorite celebrity's thoughts or worries. In fact, celebrities are no longer waiting for you to go searching for them -- they will willingly expose and public tidbits about their lives -- sometimes, more information than what you were hoping to know!;
And, you can watch videos or photos of something that happened just minutes ago on the other side of the world!
Who doesn't remember when Ricky Martin used his Twitter account to tell the entire world about his homosexuality?
Genius!
During a television interview, international superstar Gloria Estefan shared her thoughts about social media. "I love it because if they want to write an article about me, they can find my comments somewhere online and I don't have to do the interview anymore!"
Mexican singer Larry Hernández acknowledged that if it wasn't for social media, he would not be famous.
"I am very open with my people because I share everything with them on the internet, I record everything. I think that if MySpace or YouTube didn't exist, I would not be taking to you right now," said Hernández during a 2010 interview with Vida en el Valle. "I am part of the technology growth."
But not everyone loves the way technology has shaped the music industry.
"Somewhere along the way, the record companies didn't stay on top of the technological changes so there's a culture now of being able to transfer music from one source to another without accounting for it," said music producer Desmond Child. "The modernization of digital music has to happen because it's completely unfair how our business went from a 7 billion dollar business to a 1 billion dollar business in the course of 10 years."