The Effects Of Illegally Downloading Music On The Music Industry

880 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: How music piracy affects the music industry

In 1999, a new file sharing service was introduced. This was called Napster. A peer to peer file sharing service where people could go on and download any song or album they wanted for free. That started a revolution; the download revolution. It has an effect on more than what most people think. It affects the record companies, the record stores, and the recording artists themselves. People need to not do it as much if they want to continue to have new music in their life. One thing illegally downloading music has an affect on is the record companies that produce the music. The record companies have to pay for the studio time and pay for the album to be made. If they don’t get any money in return from the people buying the album, then they have to cut back on employees. Michael Poth, in his article “Illegally Downloading Music”, he quotes Amy Adkins in her online article “How does illegally downloading music affect the music industry”. She writes that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has reported over seventy one thousand people have lost their jobs due to illegally downloading (“Michael”). They have to take away peoples jobs to recover from the loss of the billions of dollars due to illegal downloading. The RIAA tries to catch the hosts of the sites that have illegal music download available, such as Pirate Bay and Mediafire. The RIAA caught one student at Boston University and charged him $675,000 for downloading music (Lavoie). According to the RIAA, online piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses each year. With losing all that money they can not pay the employees to work. Because they have a low amount of employees, they can’t do as much work which cuts back on recruiting new artists. That is a big... ... middle of paper ... ...r of Oasis. He stated “Downloading is the same as I did: I used to tape-record the songs, the successes that I liked on the radio. I do not care. I hate seeing all these rock stars complaining. At least they are downloading your music and they are paying attention to you. Do you know? You should appreciate that. What are you complaining? You have 5 huge houses, so just shut up,” (top). The download revolution has changed the way everyone gets their music. They can either be good people and go out and buy a physical copy, or they can be stealers and illegally download it. Eventually downloading music will be the main thing because no one can stop it. You would have to completely shut down the internet to stop it and that won’t work because we all know how we rely on the internet for most things. The download revolution changed America and changed us as human beings.

Show More
Related

  • Illegal P2P File Sharing

    875 Words  | 2 Pages

    Singers and songwriters need to make a living somehow. They know that downloading music is a way to get their voice heard, but they also know that it is significantly hurting the business. "When your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action," said RIAA president Cary Sherman (RIAA 1). There are a lot of people involved in the music scheme when it comes to who needs to get paid by the revenue. From the sale of one CD, singers get one small fraction of the cost, another fraction goes to song writers, musicians also get some of the profit along with retailers, engineers, technicians, warehouse working, and ever...

    Read More

  • Should People Be Prosecuted

    669 Words  | 2 Pages

    Big time record companies and artist are losing billions of dollars due to people illegally downloading music files. The

    Read More

  • The Bussnies Side of the Music Industry

    1374 Words  | 3 Pages

    The music industry has changed in more ways than we could imagine. At first we started with artists just selling singles, then it transformed over to people buying albums, and then on iTunes started to sell songs for just cents. In the year 2005, Pandora was launched on the Internet and later they created a mobile app. Most of the artist’s music can be found on YouTube. Free downloads have affected this industry as well.

    Read More

  • Online Music Distribution In A Post-Napster World

    994 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • MP3 File Sharing Hurts America

    930 Words  | 2 Pages

    “It is estimated that such illegal product costs the music industry more than 300 million dollars a year domestically.” This is why the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is taking a strong stance against MP3 piracy. The damage done to the recording industry in lost profits, increased prices, and lost jobs is overwhelming. In an attempt to put a damper on file swapping, and recapture lost revenue the RIAA has been suing people ...

    Read More

  • The Change in the Music Industry

    929 Words  | 2 Pages

    The limitless access to music makes it easy to forget that people's careers rely on the profit behind every song. A profit that is continually shrinking, something that is forcing companies to re-think the way they get music to us, the fans. This will affect everyone who has the slightest interest in music. Some for the worse, but many for the better.

    Read More

  • MP3 Piracy

    1695 Words  | 4 Pages

    piracy issues over the Internet would cost record companies more money than what they are

    Read More

  • Teen Music Piracy: Innocent or Guilty

    1302 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout time, people have resorted to stealing in order to obtain items instead of buying them. It became a problem so consequences were made. Even dating back to the Ten Commandments there were laws against stealing. Recently, theft has become a problem over the internet. Musicians and music companies have lost millions in revenue. Websites such as Napster, The Pirate Bay, and Pandora have made it extremely easy for people, specifically teens, to illegally download and or listen to music for free. Pirating music has become a problem especially because “91 percent of all new music was downloaded illegally over the Internet instead of purchased,” says Logan Lynn from Huffington Post (Lynn). Many, such as the RIAA claim that music piracy is “an ongoing and evolving challenge,” (Who) while others suggest that it is “keeping the music industry alive,” (Issacson).

    Read More

  • Essay On Music Piracy

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    People have been finding alternative ways to access their music since technology evolved, whether it was recording songs off the radio onto a cassette tape or borrowing your friend’s CD in order to ‘burn’ it, No one played by the rules, legally. This piece will discuss illegally downloading music and the political theories and concepts it represents. What are the social norms and attitudes that drive this behaviour? and what is the solution, if there is one?

    Read More

  • Changes in the Music Industry

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    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 ...

    Read More

  • Digital Distribution And Music Industry

    1441 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 provided—directories, effectively—while 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.

    Read More

  • Technology's Negative Effects On The Music Industry

    1168 Words  | 3 Pages

    "The mass production of free, high-quality re-recorded music became a serious threat to the music industry" ("Music Industry"). This mass production is costing artists and producers money that they would have made from people buying their music. Listeners have turned to streaming services as a cheaper alternative to purchasing to songs they love. Streaming services have increased the availability of music, which one may think is a good thing but is in fact a fulmination to the music industry because artists are not making as much money as they would have if songs were being purchased individually. People who worked in the music industry had showered praise on to streaming services, considering them a savior that would help the music industry and increase revenue, but they instead had an adverse effect on music sales and artist salary (O’Brien). Streaming services have led to protests from artists on many different levels due to the amount of payment that artists are receiving. "Prince, Neil Young and Ms. Swift have withdrawn their music from some streaming outlets, and various musicians have called for greater transparency in how the music industry operates (Sisario).” While the protests have been successful, it is only when famous high-level artists bring attention to the issues. This controversy is one of the negatives of streaming services because

    Read More

  • Internet Piracy: Theft of Intellectual Property

    1757 Words  | 4 Pages

    Physical piracy-the copying and illegal sale of hard-copy CDs, videotapes, and DVDs-costs the music industry over $4 billion a year worldwide and the movie industry more than $3.5 billion. These numbers do not factor in the growing (and difficult to measure) problem of Internet piracy, in which music and movies are transferred to digital format and copies are made of the resulting computer file. Journalist Charles C. Mann explains why Internet piracy has the potential to be vastly more damaging to copyright industr...

    Read More

  • The Effects of Piracy on the Music Industry

    1131 Words  | 3 Pages

    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?’

    Read More

  • The Pros and Cons of Free Music

    914 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...uld emphasize the negative aspects of downloading music for free, research shows that the benefits will greatly conquer the drawbacks. By letting people download music for free, the artist will have a better chance to have his music out faster and have his music gain popularity quicker. The local bands can be heard by having free songs. Also, you’ll have your favorite song in the palm of your and. Now it’s up to the record labels and artist to not be greedy and let the music be free.

    Read More

More about The Effects Of Illegally Downloading Music On The Music Industry

Open Document