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Influence of Technology on the Music Industry
How technology impacts the music industry
Influence of Technology on the Music Industry
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1) What trends in networking in the 1990’s and early 2000’s drove the popularity of Napster? What other technologies contributed to Napster’s success? 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. 2) What were the effects of Napster on the recording industry? In this case, there are three main effects of Napster on the recording industry. The first one is that it caused a large decline in record sales in a short time. According to this case, the spending on recorded music in U.S dropped 4.1% in 2001 and the industry’s top 10 albums also sold much less compared to the year before. The second effect is that it cased the sales of CD burners, blank CDs and digital audio players increase and nowadays, most new computers come with CD-RW drives installed, which means people can easily store downloaded music, share music with friends and take it with them anytime as well. The third effect is that it increased the cost of recorded music. Once people can download free music through peer-to-peer software services, they have less incentive to buy original editions, which will make recording industry spend more to fight against copyrights and invest more in new artists and new music. Overall, these three effects make the recording industry go through a hard time. 3) An “analyst” was quoted in the case (in 2002) as saying that “people will pay for music on the Internet, eventually.” This person was skeptical of the willingness of consumers to pay for
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).
McArdle argues that although music file-sharing is easily assessable and available in the millennium generation, free music file-sharing is causing damage to individuals involved in the music industry and in the entertainment industry. McArdle starts off the article by mentioning that record labels suffer the most financially in the year 2009. She also mentions that for the last decade, record labels business are experiencing decreases in revenues. McArdle criticizes the millennium generation for violating property rights of recording labels and the music industry. Moreover, McArdle points out that many young people in this millennium generation are the ones who are downloading music for free. She discusses how hard it was for people to look for music and to copy music in the past history compared to the present. She also points out that young people in the millennium generation do not see downloading music for free as a huge problem. She concludes her article by stating that perhaps music piracy is not such a negative trend. Although it affects individua...
Simply put; All things are good until man makes it otherwise. And by using Burke's "lens" we can look at the internet use of Napster and see how different people have found different views of it and how now some people deem Napster as bad or in a negative lens they see Napster. The Napster software, launched early in 1999, allows internet users to share and download MP3 files directly from any computer connected to the Napster network. The software is used by downloading a client program from the Napster site and then connecting to the network through this software, which allows sharing of MP3 files between all users connected to the network.
Witherbee, Amy, and Marlanda English. “Music Piracy Costs Billions.” Points of View Reference Senter. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Recently, there has been a series of copyright infringement litigations against Internet businesses that are involved with unauthorized distribution of music files. The US recording industry claims to lose three million dollars per year because of piracy. A report predicted an estimated 16 percent of all US music sales, or 985 million dollars would be lost due to online piracy by 2002 (Foege, 2000; cited from McCourt & Burkart, 2003) Even though this claim has to be taken with caution, as it is based on false assumption that if copyright laws were strictly enforced, audio pirates would become buyers, it is apparent that audio piracy grew to a worrisome level for the record industry. (Gayer & Shy, 2003)
File-sharing became big right around the time the Napster file-sharing program came out. Napster is an online service which was invented by an 18-year-old college student that allows a user to see song files residing on the hard drives of other users, and to download copies of any of those songs. (DLC.org) Napster started off at a slow pace, becoming popular at colleges and then it just exploded. Everyone was using this program within a year of its creation. (DLC.org) However, it eventually got busted and the idea of free music was shutdown, or so the music industry thought. Napster continues to be around today, but with a legal persona. After Napster was told to stop there illegal program there were many other programs in the making. Programs even more advanced then Napster.
20 days later on April 29th, Apple came up with a potential solution to music pirating on the Internet; the story covering this topic was published on Page C11, Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA). “Two years after angering the recording industry with its "Rip. Mix. Burn" ad campaign, Apple Computer Inc. has won its cooperation in creating the Internet's least restrictive commercial music service yet. The iTunes Music Store announced by Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs yesterday draws from all five major labels in offering more than 200,000 songs at 99 cents a download - and includes some big-name artists who previously shunned online distribution” (Page C11, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 29, 2003). I think the creation of Apple’s new “solution” is not really going to get a lot of customers because, say you buy 10 songs for $.99 per download the price comes out to be around the same price of an album with 10 songs on it.
Amidst the hot debate about whether or not music should be free, are ethical and moral considerations as well. The emergence of digital entertainment, whether MP3, peer-to-peer (P2P) applications, video streaming, or audio books, has caused an inevitable shift in the entertainment market (Weiss, 2006). Napster rapidly became a success when it started allowing its customers to download MP3 music free of charge. In fact, Napster’s form of file-sharing shifted the entertainment market from a commodity base to a service base by eliminating cost to the customer. This paper will discuss the major issues in this case study, who the key stakeholders are and how they have changed since Napster’s beginning, what the stakes were for the different constituencies associated with Napster’s first and second incarnation, why Napster was unable to succeed in the marketplace, and what the appropriate balance is between fair use rights of consumers and the financial interest of artists and the recording companies.
In 2000, one of the biggest news stories was the rise of Napster and similar file-sharing programs. With these programs, you could get an MP3 version of just about any song you want without shelling out a dime. The record companies were fairly upset over this turn of events, and understandably so: They weren't making any money off the distribution of their product to millions of people.
People pay low subscription fees to streaming services, and as a result of this, listeners can be exposed to new artists and help these artists become popular (“Music Industry”). New artists are exposed to more people as streaming services often increase the amount of artists that people listen to. While streaming services do result in more exposure for an artist, that’s where the benefits stop. One of the issues with streaming services is payment issues. "Public relations missteps in the early 2000s kept many musicians from speaking out about economic issues, artists and executives said... But the shift toward streaming in recent years has prompted many musicians to investigate the changes in the business and comment online (Sisario)." Artists are not being paid much for providing their music to streaming services, but these issues and artist protests are being ignored by executives of the services until a high-profile artist makes the wage disparity public. "Streaming services pay a lot less than downloads, with the artists receiving a fraction of a cent per play on the service. Newer artists could struggle with the level of payments offered by the services, opponents have argued (O’Brien).” Hardworking artists are not receiving as much money from streaming services as they did from people purchasing their albums. This
Every adult, over the age of 18, has seen the changes the music industry has gone through since the introduction of the internet, digital downloading, and online streaming. These adults have heard that Tapes, CDs, MP3s, and the internet was going to destroy the industry. Have they destroyed it yet? According to Ian Morris, Author of the article, "Technology is Destroying the Music Industry, Which is Great for the Next Taylor Swift," music is changing, but the only thing the internet is destroying are the record labels. He explains that this change in music is a good thing for the industry. Morris talks about the roles the record label plays and why it 's on the way out. The biggest change in music since the internet was the development of Napster. 2014 marked fifteen years after the rise and fall of this online file sharing platform. The article "15 years After Napster: How the Music Service Changed the Industry", by Alex Suskind, talks about the failed program and why the biggest change in the music industry made record labels scared. So what does this all mean and why should people care? Well, for starters when it comes to musicians and record labels, the company makes most of the money, as well as most of the decisions. Music was never meant to be something that was used for money. Music is made for enjoyment and should be shared without extensive rules and regulations. Music existed before man and will exist after. It is not something that should be governed by big companies looking to make money. The internet has changed the music industry for the better in many ways, by allowing digital downloading, by contributing to the record labels fizzling out, and by helping musicians become indepen...
The music industry started in the mid 18th century with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Through the decades there has been a great increase in this industry; however, the revenues for this industry have declined by half in the last 10 years. This has been caused by music piracy, which “is the copying and distributing of copies of a piece of music for which the composer, recording artist, or copyright-holding record company did not give consent” . After 1980’s, when the Internet was released to public, people started to develop programs and websites in which they could share music, videos, and information with...
Napster is a company that developed the so-called peer-to-peer technology that lets people search and retrieve music files directly from one another's personal computers. When Napster first came out, millions of internet users worldwide were illegally downloading and distributing copyrighted music, videos, images, and software for free. After being vilified by the entertainment industry, which claims that Napster and any similar programs could make piracy of almost any digital work unstoppable, and many court battles, Napster was ordered by court to be shutdown in 2000. The technology has been praised as a revolutionary development for the Internet—unaware of the problems that would arise from such practices. However, the termination of Napster was not enough, months later, dozens of new, like programs were being developed and used. And since Napster, not much has been done to stop these latest downloading programs.
Moreover, hackers came up with new ways to remove the digital copyrights so the same as before one downloads music and distributes them around. The industry gets its revenue from selling this content, whether it’s online or in stores, this funds new projects and allows for better products in the future. The public should be aware of this, downloading the content for free, and not buying it will decrease revenue for the companies, stopping them from undertaking future projects. “Production companies should lower the price on their products, I can’t buy music for at least 20$ per album and DVDs for 30$, I only make 200$ per month,” said George Issa, a music fan who spends most of his nights downloading music from the internet, “when there is an album or movie that I really like, I try to buy it legally, I don’t think I am doing anything wrong, they are wrong making money off our backs,” he added.
The first reason why downloading and uploading copyrighted materials from the Internet should be legal is that downloading copyrighted materials positively affects the economy. The European Commission Joint Research Center reported that the profits of music companies would be 2% lower if uploading and downloading copyrighted materials were banned. However, music companies are able to acquire more profits despite illegal downloading because many people tend to purchase CDs or DVDs after watching or listening to copyrighted materials for free. Moreover, the research showed that people who download music illegally spent more money to buy music than people who did not download illegally. In addition, research conducted by the Swiss government informed that one-third of Swiss people downloaded copyrighted materials from the Internet because personal use of copyrighted materials is legal in Switzerland. Even though there is a fact that many people can download copyrighted materials from the Internet legally in Switzerland, the amount of money that people spend to buy copyrighted materials is not f...