Music Piracy

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Recommended: The Effects of Piracy Upon the Music Industry

As a result of music piracy, the United States economy loses about $12.5 billion per year (RIAA). Not only do wealthy record labels and headline artists lose money, but songwriters, music publishers, music engineers, and even record store clerks suffer losses. Music pirates are people who share and download music over the Internet without paying for it. Piracy has been an ongoing issue for record companies and the artists they represent. It started all the way back in the days of cassette recorders and blank tapes. It eventually led to the compact disk, which was then used with the compact disk burner. The Internet helped produce a new and more unrestricted form of music piracy that would eventually lead to a threatening high. Consumers should not be allowed to pirate music illegally because it harms the economy, it causes financial harm to the musical artists, and it is teaching a wrong message to teenagers that they can steal and get away with it.

Long before anyone imagined free, high quality music available over the Internet, cassette tapes made free music available with only a cassette recorder, a blank tape, and a willing friend. The industry did little to challenge piracy by cassette tape, even though there were complaints from artists and record companies. When compact discs were introduced, the problem of piracy was temporarily alleviated. People traded in their cassettes for the sleek new technology. In 1998, a program that played MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 files called Winamp was offered for download on the Internet as a free music player. Soon, people all over the world were copying music files off of CDs and converting them to MP3 files, then making them available to others over the Internet.

In 1999, music piracy off...

... middle of paper ...

...stry Association of America and other sensible people continue to fight against it, piracy will always be contained at least to a diminutive degree.

Works Cited

“Fewer Than 1 in 10 Teenagers Believe that Music Piracy is Morally Wrong.” The Barna Group,

LTD. n.p. 26 April 2004.

“Global sales of recorded music down 7% in 2002.” IFPI. n.p. 9 April 2003. Web. 21

November 2011.

Lieberman, David. “Piracy pillages music industry.” USA Today. Gannet Co. Inc. 8 April 2002.

Web.21 November 2011.

“RIAA will keep on suing illegal music downloaders.” TrustSoft Inc. n.p. 1 April 2008. Web.

21 November 2011.

“Scope of the Problem.” RIAA. n.p. n.d. Web. 21 November 2011.

Sequeira, Natalie, and Lara Vacante. “iTunes Music Store Hits Five Million Downloads.” Apple.

n.p. 23 June 2003. Web. 21 November 2011.

“Who Music Theft Hurts.” RIAA. n.p. n.d. Web. 21 November 2011.

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