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Negative effects of piracy on the music industry
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There are six key new market disruptions concerning the digital distribution of music: the creation of a new and broad customer base, the possibility of an annuity versus a per-unit revenue model, the gatekeeper advantage for a record company having proprietary access to a new digital distribution infrastructure, understanding of a technology that could be applied to other digital content, need for balance between physical and digital distribution strategies, the strategy the incumbent should adopt with respect to the evolving war over digital distribution standards. Was there a disruption or an evolution?
The story really begins with Napster and its free software that allowed users to swap music across the Internet for free using peer-to-peer networks. While Shawn Fanning was attending Northeastern University in Boston, he wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching IRC or Lycos. John Fanning of Hull, Massachusetts, who is Shawn's uncle, struck an agreement which gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. Napster began to build an office and executive team in San Mateo, California, in September of 1999. Napster was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems, although it was not fully peer-to-peer since it used central servers to maintain lists of connected systems and the files they provideddirectories, effectivelywhile actual transactions were conducted directly between machines. Although there were already media which facilitated the sharing of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface. The result was a system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download. Napster became the launching pad for the explosive growth of the MP3 format and the proliferation of unlicensed copyrights.
Peer-to-peer is a communications model in which each party has the same capabilities and either party can initiate a communication session. Other models with which it might be contrasted include the client/server model and the master/slave model. In some cases, peer-to-peer communications is implemented by giving each communication node both server and client capabilities. In recent usage, peer-to-peer has come to describe applications in which users can use the Internet to exchange files with each other directly or through a mediating server.
On the Internet, peer-to-peer (referred to as P2P) is a type of transient Internet network that allows a group of computer users with the same networking program to connect with each other and directly access files from one another's hard drives.
According to the text A Gift of Fire, Napster “opened on the Web in 1999 as a service that allowed its users to copy songs in MP3 files from the hard disks of other users” (Baase, 2013, p. 192, Section 4.1.6 Sharing Music: The Napster Case). Napster was, however, “copying and distributing most of the songs they traded without authorization” (A Gift of Fire, Section 4.1.6 Sharing Music: The Napster Case). This unauthorized file sharing resulted in a lawsuit - “eighteen record companies sued for contributory infringement claiming that Napster users were blatantly infringing copyrights by digitally reproducing and distributing music without a license” (Communications Law: Liberties, Restraints and the Modern Media, 2011, p. 359).
Before the 1990’s, if people want to listen to music, they just visit a music store and pick up a CD and then put it into a stereo equipment. However, the development of MP3 file format gradually changed the way people listen to music. This format lets everyone download music easily and it can be converted to CD as well. But, there is still a problem: searching MP3 files on the internet is maddening and people seldom can find the music they want. Therefore, the birth of Napster solved this problem, creating a virtual music community in which music fans could use the Web as a “swap meet” for music files. More importantly, Napster is easy to use and it’s free, which expands the range of audience in age. Bandwidth also contributed to Napster’s success. The greater the bandwidth, the faster the file can be transferred. So, Napster really changed the way people listen to music, discover music and interact with music.
Our first step in uncovering the problem which Sony must focus on was to gain background information on Sony Music Entertainment and the current music industry as a whole. Through a search of current events and press releases we discovered that one of Sony Music Entertainment’s main goals is to “transform its business to include significant and growing digital sales”, as stated in the most current financial report (Sony Corporation, 2009). We found this problem important to Sony as the company does focus large efforts on being at the forefront of technology and being viewed as an innovator. If Sony were to fall behind on the emerging industry trend of digital distribution, their foothold as an entertainment industry giant and innovator may be jeopardized.
One important change that has occurred is the distribution of music digitally. Music now in our society is purchased through the Internet. The simplicity of having an entire library of music on one device has been adopted versus having stacks of CD’s or tapes. The emergence of the Mp3 file has changed how we listen to music. Mp3 are digital songs that are portable, provide high quality sound, and are less expensive. Essentially by eliminating middlemen, digital music took control of music away from the major record companies and put the power in the listener’s hands. Major companies such as Apple’s iTunes created the distribution of digital music. CNNMoney mentions, “iTunes is currently responsible for 63% of all digital music sales” (CNNMoney). They set the standard of 99 cents for a single song, which was quickly adopted by major music companies. Selling songs by singles provided more control ...
2.What should peer-to-peer (P2P) networks do to grow their business? P2P providers should look for new ways to legalize file-sharing. P2P companies should convince the music industry by presenting feasible solutions that economically can benefit the music industry, like charging users fees to access files. Placing a system to assist file-sharing users to open retail accounts, whereas retailers allow other P2P fans to download songs for small fees, then a percentage of this money is handed in to copyright owners. Applying a filtering system to prevent sharing the music that is a subject to copyright law. Offering the music labels flat fees to get music licences.
Peer-to-peer networking has existed for years. The IP routing structure of the Internet is still peer-to-peer, albeit with several layers of hierarchy, and individual routers act as peers in finding the best route from one point on the net to another[4]. However, it is only recently, with the development applications that utilize P2P to create vast stores of media files, that it has become immensely popular. While these applications only account for a fraction of peer-to-peer networking's uses, they have received the majority of the attention.
One of the most interesting arguments that supported Napster, was that it actually helped many artist, for example the band Radiohead - who had never previously reached near the Top 20 in the US, released their album Kid A, which was available on Napster for 3 months prior to its actual release. When it was officially released, the album reached at the top of the Billboard Top 200, and greatly helped the band show their work off as a huge success. However, the industry realized the large threat that Napster was, well-known artists Metallica and Dr.Dre both filed lawsuits, and disclosed the usernames of thousands of users to federal courts (nerdist), however both lawsuits were eventually settled, but that did not mean that Napster would be left alone. In 2000, the Recording Industry Association of America also sued Napster under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act for “contributory and vicarious copyright infringement”. Further, in 2001 the US Supreme Court ruled that free music downloading (from programs like Napster) was illegal and violated the musicians and labels
A network can be based on either a peer-to-peer level or server-based, also referred to as domain-based. To distinguish the difference, a peer-to-peer network, also known as a workgroup, is a network in which a group of computers are connected together to share resources, such as files, applications, or peripherals. The computers in a peer-to-peer network are peers to one another, meaning no single computer has control over one another. There is also no central location for users to access resources, which means that each individual computer must share their files in order for other computers to have access (Muller, 2003, p.411). “In a peer-to-peer environment, access rights are governed by setting sharing permissions on individual machines.” (Cope, 2002) On the other hand, in a domain-based network, the computers connected together are either servers or clients. All of the other computers connected to the network are called client computers. The server is a dedicated machine that acts as a central location for users to share and access resources. The server controls the level of authority each user has to the shared resources. When logging on to the network, users on client machines are authenticated by the server, based on a user name and password (Lowe, 2004, p.13).
The music industry impacts the lives of people from around the world. With the implementation of technology, the influence of the music industry has spread to affect anyone with access to technology. Streaming services have contributed to the increased popularity of music. While there are positive effects to being able to stream music and have multiple ways of listening to it, the music industry suffers from the lack of revenue and illegal activity associated with technology. Technology has had both positive and negative effects on the music industry by affecting how people access music and how music is produced
Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a substitute network design to the conventional client-server architecture. P2P networks utilize a decentralised model in which each system, act as a peer, and serve as a client with its own layer of server functionality. A companion plays the role of a client and a server in the meantime. That is, the node can send calls to other nodes, and at the same time respond to approaching calls from other companions in the system. It is different from the traditional client-server model where a client can just send requests to a server and then wait for the server’s response.
P2P computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application. They are said to form a peer-to-peer network of nodes. Each node is a computer on the network which acts and communicates with other Peers to make a portion of their resources, such as processing power, disk storage or network bandwidth, directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination by servers or stable hosts.
Structured P2P overlay network have tightly controlled topologies and content is placed at specified locations to efficiently solve queries. Some well-known examples are Content Addressable Network (CAN) [44], Chord [15] and Pastry [45]. Such overlays use a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) as substrate, where data objects (or values) are placed deterministically at the peers whose identifiers correspond to the data object’s unique key. In DHT-based systems, node identifiers are uniform-randomly assigned to the peers from a large space of identifiers. Similarly, unique identifiers, chosen from the same identifier space and called keys, are computed from data objects by means of a hash function. Keys are then mapped by the overlay network protocol to a unique live peer in the overlay network. The structured P2P overlay network support scalable storage and retrieval of {key,value} pairs. Given a key, operations like put(key,value) and get(key) can be invoked respectively to store and retrieve the data object corresponding to the key, which involves routing requests to the peer corresponding to the key. However, they only supports exact matching and are strongly affected by peer churn [31].
When musicians produce albums, they want people to listen to the albums. There is not one specific way for a band or single musician to gain an audience and promote their music. Musicians use many different kinds of media to promote their music. They use visual media as well as strictly listening media. The radio, television, and the internet are all different types of media musicians use to promote their music.
Music piracy is a developing problem that it affects the music industry in many different ways including being responsible for the unemployment of 750,000 workers, as well as a loss of $2,5 billion; therefore, I want to explore ‘To what extent has music piracy affected the music industry market in the United States over the last 10 years?’
Peer-to-peer (P2P) is an substitute, network model to that provided by traditional client-server architecture. P2P networks use a decentralised model in which each machine, referred to as a peer, functions as a client with its own layer of server functionality. A peer plays act as of a client and a server at the same time. That is, the peer can begin requests to other peers, and at the same time answer to incoming requests from other peers on the network. It differs from the traditional client-server model where a client can only send requests to a server and then wait for the server’s response. With a client-server approach, the performance