Essay about Downloadable Music Factor

After the period elapses, any person can use, print, publish, and distribute the original work. The music industry has been in dispute for many years in respect to music piracy. It went after software and website developers, as well as consumers in the courts (Easley, 2005, p.163). As a result, this may be why governing the expansion of the music industry towards later benefits for the industry; however, not toward those who pirate from them (Easley, 2005, p.163). There is clear evidence of a willingness to pay for online music in general through legal download services such as iTunes (Easley, 2005, p.163). It is clear that some new markets are emerging; for example, services such as 4G LTE combine music with other services. These markets may provide both better margins and better copyright protection to the music industry. Nevertheless, some forms of music piracy may ultimately come to be seen as an effective marketing channel for those services (Easley, 2005, p.163). Clearly the industry is adapting piracy issues.

The internet has made it easier for music to be sold online. On our smartphones, we have the apple store and the play store where music is purchased and downloaded daily. It has also made it easier for people to download and share music files without paying for it. The Maverick Recording Co. v. Harper case highlights this issue.

I also believe that if you are a true fan of a certain music artist, then you should want to pay the money for their music and help support them in their music career. Downloading songs for free is disrespectful to music artists and takes away the meaning of hard work they put into all of their musical work. I would tell any friend of mine who supported illegal downloading that it’s illegal and if they really wanted to support that music artist, then they would buy the music and prove their support and passion for music by paying for it.

Although the action of retrieving music illegally can be easily accessed as group three states, “majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals...would not have been purchased if illegal websites were not available to them” it provides a weak point because either way people see it music is available to them with purchase and if that is the only option than that process will occur. The society that illegally downloaded music created can be seen in one huge source known as, “Napster” in an article, by Stephen Seigel he states, “ Napster allows its users to "share" songs with other users, completely bypassing the traditional forms of music distribution” (“Nipping at Napster”). Napster allows people to share all types of

It is believed that illegal downloading does not affect the music industry and that recording artists are rich, so there is nothing wrong with grabbing a

The music industry has undergone radical changes since the end of the 1990’s, largely a function of the internet and its effects on sales and copyright. Besides placing artists and their music on the world stage, the internet also permitted the downloading of music from free-file- exchange networks. A parallel and equally worrisome, phenomenon is record pirating, a practice made easier by the proliferation of CD burners and access to high speed internet. Unauthorized downloading and pirating circumvent intellectual property laws and result in reduced sales. “In Atlantic Canada, average annual household expenditures on CDs and audio cassettes dropped by 27 percent between 1996 and 2001, from $96.00 to $70.00.”

In “The Music Industry Has Been Revolutionized,” Greg Kot explains musicians in the music industry are experiencing unwanted change around the world from technology since the popularity of file-sharing websites available online. Consumers of music don’t want to pay for music because of the increased availability, although not doing so prevents revenue for musicians. Explained in Kot’s article, increased popularity of file-sharing has made access to music so convenient to the point where the music industry is confused about how to respond to the lack of revenue while still keeping music readily available for consumer use. New technology has allowed the music industry more opportunities in being efficient with producing music. Furthermore, it

The article “Stealing Music: Is It Wrong Or Isn’t It?”, by Michael Arrington, presents the difference in the term “stealing music” as applied to the older decades and nowadays, in the 2000’s. It also presents the situations where sharing music is a good thing, and where it is not. Finally, it explains the abandonment of copyright infringement, due to the increasing lack of record labels. The article begins by discussing what the term “stealing music” really means. The article also explains the websites, such as MySpace Music, where streaming music can be done without any trouble. Furthermore, it discusses that in the country of China, you can listen to music free from Google websites.

We are currently in the Digital Era of music. Music recording has been transformed from music stored on vinyl records and audio cassettes to the first introduction of the Compact Disc. The Compact Disc was a huge shift in how music would be recorded, distributed and heard. Following the Compact Disk (CD), technology continued to advance with more inventions to aid our listening enjoyment. Among those inventions were the MP3 player, iPod, iPad, smartphone and the current ultimate digital music store, iTunes. Each of these digital advancements in music have intertwined their ability to offer consumers music that is handheld, portable and digitally store hundreds to thousands of music files into an electronic music library. However, all that glitters is not gold. The ability to download music from the Internet has created a piracy frenzy. Online file sharing sites, such as the now out-of-use Napster, have given consumers a way to steal music from the artists. “Napster opened us up to a world where we had the luxury of sharing music files amongst a massive community of nearly 80 million users (at its peak) without ever spending one penny” (Alex Bracetti, 2013). The history of music is not the only element that has been affected by digital technology. Digital technology has also

Record companies decided to embrace the profitable possibilities of using the internet and began working on legal pay services. These sites attracted customers by offering legal downloads of individual tracks for very low prices. As a result, millions of music lovers today enjoy downloading 99 cent tracks off of online merchants such as iTunes and Amazon. The music industry is also pleased with these legal pay services, because revenue is increasing again due to the ease, cost-effectiveness, and widespread popularity of buying and selling music digitally. While Fanning’s invention caused a lot of financial damage to the music industry, it also forced them to look towards the future and contemplate how it could adapt to the emerging internet age. Unfortunately, while the recording industry does make plenty of money from legal music downloads, Fanning and his legendary website have become the model for the dozens of illegal music file-sharing sites that have emerged over the past 16 years since Napster’s launch. The educational eMagazine, SchoolVideoNews, states that, “Software such as Gnutella, Limewire, Kazaa…and other free, open-source software used to trade any type of file…have been popular networks for pirating music since Napster” (Britt). These types of companies, and their users, are constantly discovered and sued by

The question then became “Just because we can get the music we want without paying for it, should we?” (Tyson, 2000, p.1). This issue of illegal downloads, which is also referred to as piracy, has been a hot topic ever since the introduction of Napster. According to Recording Industry Association of America “In the decade since peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing site Napster emerged in 1999, music sales in the U.S. have dropped 47 percent, from $14.6 billion to $7.7 billion” (RIAA, 2014).

In the midst of the United States’ “dot com bubble” (years 1997-2000), there was a surge in technology that brought about file sharing and digital downloads. Threatening the survival of the music industry and introducing a unique set of challenges for the industry to overcome. To remain relevant in the new global market of digital music online, the music industry would have to evolve and change with the introduction of each new facet technology had to offer. The introduction of digitally compressed music files, so easily attainable for a small fee or downloaded legally (pirated) for free, made the music industry reevaluate how to make a profit and protect copyrights. Social media created a visible opportunity for both consumers and artists to maintain digital relationships while providing a platform for consumers to follow and discover new musicians and bands, naturally, making the internet a promotional medium for artists. As the corner record shops closed to make way for virtual storefronts and instant downloads; the internet, digital downloading, and social media made an enormous impact on the music industry that has changed the way consumers purchase, source, listen to, and produce music today.

After an incredibly successful 1990s, the onset of the 21st century brought with it the dotcom revolution and it signaled a watershed for the way music was consumed and distributed. The erstwhile unshakable music record companies were exposed to a new threat, online file sharing. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), album sales grew from $24.1 billion in 1990 to $39.4 billion in 1996 and remained at a high level until 1999 after which it saw a downturn.

Though Jenny, a thirteen-year-old from Kent, thinks a little different when she responded, "I used to download music all the time, but now people are getting sued in America and I'm not brave enough to do it any more"(CBBC). So the action taken by the RIAA has changed some people's views about the downloading of songs, but there sure hasn't stopped the majority. A lot of the people do not even think of sharing music as stealing, when technically they are getting the music for free.

Ever since the start of illegal music downloading there has been an ongoing debate. As with any controversy, there are those whose positions stand at one end of the spectrum or the other and also those who are moderate or nonchalant. Many believe that downloading a song without paying for it is not only illegal, but also immoral. None-the less, people continue to download songs, rationalizing that the record companies are getting what they deserve after years of overpriced CD's or that the artists won't really miss the money. Some people are not sure what to make of the situation, sympathizing in some respects with either side. There are several proposed solutions to this problem, but it has become obvious that there is not easy or clear