Imagine that you are sitting at a bar with a nice cold beer in front of you. Before you take the first sip though, I run over and chug the whole thing. You'd be mad because I stole your beer, right? What about this? Imagine that instead of stealing your beer, I came over to you and replicated it instead; I didn't steal it, I just copied it. Would that be wrong? You’d still have your beer, is there anything to be mad at me about besides the fact that I didn’t have to pay for mine?
“Sharing files is largely non-rivalrous because the original owner retains his copy of a downloaded file” (Strumpf & Oberholzer-Gee, 2005). Most people who pirate music think this way, and therefore don't believe they are stealing it. That’s why they do it. Although it would be impossible to stop everyone from downloading music files, it would be possible to encourage those people to return into the legal realm of buying music from a store or online.
For example, iTunes was a good idea to fix the problem of making downloading music online legal as well as being cheap. “Version 4 of iTunes introduced the iTunes Music Store from which iTunes users can buy and download songs for use on a limited number of computers and an unlimited number of iPods. Songs purchased from the iTunes Store are copy protected with Apple's FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) system. As of January 09, 2006 over 2 billion have been downloaded since the service first launched on April 08, 2003” (Wikipedia contributors, 2007). But, it’s inexpensive only if you don’t want a lot of music. Buying 89 songs on iTunes could cost around 89 dollars, while downloading 89 songs on a downloading website would be free and just take up some computer space. However what about all of the music stores? If you want to buy the actual music CD it’s a lot more expensive. The best alternative would be to make CDs cheaper in the store, and to sell them with something that you can’t download.
“A song that is eight minutes long would earn $.124 for each recording sold” (Obringer, 2006). Since that is all of the money an artist makes for an 8-minute song, most artists today are making so much money from other things that the little money doesn’t really matter. Restaurants, clothing lines, concerts, perfumes, colognes, and shoe designs are what these celebrities are really banking on to make the big bucks. I think, that since it seems impossible to stop pirating music all together, artists should let people download their music for free. It would benefit the fans by letting them hear the songs they want to hear, and make them interested in spending money towards the artist. The artists could charge more for concert tickets, and then bribe people to buy their actual CD by putting something in the CD, such as a coupon for a percentage off of one item in their clothing line. Even though it would seem like they are making less money, they would really be making more. You can’t download a pair of J-Lo pants.
I believe that nothing can be done to stop piracy of music. There have been threats, and laws passed to stop this crime, but I feel there will always be someone who will be able to break down the system and illegally download files. Though it may seem that we are hurting the business of an artist because we aren’t paying for their music, The artists are getting a lot more savvy in the industry with their money, and their investments, concerts, and clothing lines, that I think they don’t have anything to be worrying about.
ITunes. (2007, February 1). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 00:42, February 2, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ITunes&oldid=104933250
Oberholzer-Gee, Felix & Strumpf, Koleman. 2005. The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales An Empirical Analysis (pg 2).
Obringer, Lee Ann. 2006. How Music Royalties Work. How Stuff Works. February 1, 2007. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/music-royalties6.htm
2 comments:
Good post! You do a great job of showing how the music industry may be (or should be) adapting to new technologies and economic environments.
Your reference list is really close to being correct -- it just needs a few minor tweaks. Look at your style guide again (wherever you found it), and remember that the reference will include enough information for anyone to locate it again.
Hi! I think this is a really neat idea. It's interesting how no one has thought of this before when we already have a pretty good parallel - free online games. The people who create and maintain the games don't get revenue from the players, but from ads and merchandise, and it works for them! Well, sort of. I don't know much. I'm really just talking out the back of my head... but I wanted to let you know that I think this is a cool idea. (:
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