Question

Briefly discuss how the Internet and popular music have encroached into Russian culture since the late 1990s. Have these changes been received equally well by all of the Russian people? If not, who is more resistant to change, and why?

Answer 1

Briefly discuss how the Internet and popular music have encroached into Russian culture since the late 1990s.

Answer-

Twenty-five years ago, construction began on the foundation of Russia's music industry. Up to that point, nothing resembling a proper music industry had formed under communist rule; music is ideology, and there was no room for competition on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Today, as Russia's particular form of capitalism reigns, ideology has returned to the entertainment industry, and has begun to play a major role in the country's music business and culture. The same is true for the popularity and free access to the internet in Russia.

The music industry was spared this cronyist privatization simply because there was nothing of much interest -- value -- for the country's burgeoning oligarch class to grab.

Under communism, the country had just one record label, Melodiya, which was strictly controlled by the government, which made sure that only "safe" records and artists were released and promoted. FM radio simply didn't exist. Concerts were managed by state-run agencies, and rock musicians were mostly barred from touring. It would be charitable to characterize the last century of the Russian music industry as barebones. The use of internet was also very limited with a lot of restrictions.

That top-down, ideologically driven control of the culture industry in Russia began to change towards the end of the '80s, as the country began to open up its borders -- literally and figuratively -- in the wake of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika reforms, which looked to introduce components of democracy without shedding too much of its entrenched communist ideology.

Bands and artists -- until then relegated to underground shows in private apartments -- were eventually allowed to tour. Around the time of the country's dramatic shift, shows were normally promoted by officials of the youth communist organization, Komsomol, who had access to venues that organizers of underground shows lacked. Everything was controlled by the government, and no one from outside of Komsomol was allowed to organize events. In a miniature version of the country's privatization deals, Komsomol officials saw their access as a way to cash in, as elements of a market economy were gradually introduced.

In April 1990, the country's first privately held radio station, Europa Plus, went on the air. Around the same time, the first independent labels, such as SNC Records, were launched.

By the time of the Soviet Union's collapse in late 1991, all that remained of the state-run music industry was a few vinyl pressing plants, businesses that would imminently become obsolete as the CD rose in popularity.

Over the next two decades, a music industry was allowed to mature with little or no government involvement, eventually growing to be worth $2 billion annually by the early '10s, and which faced the same challenges as other, more mature markets, such as the continuing decline in physical sales and the question of growing streaming revenues.

The persistent issue of piracy -- which is still, 14 years after the original Napster's closure, a focus for the American industry -- was more acute in Russia than in some other markets. This was, most notably, due to VKontakte, the "Cyrillic Facebook" and Russia's largest social networking website, considered by the industry at large to be a global-scale threat.

Just a few years ago, after years of maturation in the live industry, Moscow and St. Petersburg were among the regular tour dates of just about any Western artist touring Europe, while some were also able to score lucrative gigs at private and corporate parties.

Have these changes been received equally well by all of the Russian people? If not, who is more resistant to change, and why?

Answer-

However there was a resistance for these changes Since the mid-1990s, the lion's share of Russia's pop and rock artists have either been apolitical or shown loyalty to the Kremlin.

Orthodox activists' protests resulted in cancelations and disruptions of shows during Cannibal Corpse's Russian tour -- so long as they were focused on a heavy metal band virtually unknown to the general public, Orthodox Christian activists did not have an outsized impact.

But this past summer, producer Vladimir Kiselyov boldly stated that aging pop stars are not loyal enough and there is a need for a new media group that would foster younger "patriotic" artists as opposed to "ideologically wrong" Western acts, an initiative which redolent of the Communist era.

Kiselyov, a former member of the pop act Zemlyane, came to the limelight again a few years ago when he organized a charity event attended by Sharon Stone, Kevin Costner and President Vladimir Putin, who crooned Fats Domino hit "Blueberry Hill."

Curiously, despite attacks from those defending "traditional values" and the overall anti-Western rhetoric from the authorities, some Western acts continue to play in the country, even at official government-funded events.

As of 2015 Internet access in Russia is available to businesses and to home users in various forms, including dial-up, cable, DSL, FTTH, mobile, wireless and satellite. As of July 2016 108,772,470 people (76.4% of the country's total population) were Internet users.