Abstract:
The rise in popularity of the Internet has affected the music industry in many ways and the increased use of the Internet on a daily basis has been proven to affect the sales of physical copies of CDs over the years. It is easier for fans to access music through the Internet then go through the hassle of finding a store that will sell the new CD that they want to purchase. This ease of access has also increased the amount of illegal downloads that are occurring throughout the Internet. After researching the affects of the Internet on the rise of music piracy and the decline of physical sales, it is obvious that some type of action must be taken in order for the music industry to survive. It appears that some type of incentive is needed for fans to buy physical copies of music and support the artists that they enjoy, instead of downloading the music where the artists get little to no profit depending on whether the music was bought off a music site or illegally downloaded.
Literature Review:
The Internet was introduced into the world in 1991 and by 2001 nearly 66% of all
adults were online (iMediaConnection). This rise in popularity is only accounted for with adults, age 18 to over 65 years old and does not appear to include those under the age of 18. This increase in the popularity of the Internet has continued to increase over the last decade and this increase is beginning to affect many aspects of popular culture. The one aspect of popular culture that this rise has begun to affect is the increase in music piracy and the decrease in physical album sales and its overall affect on the music industry.
In the piece “The Music Industry on (the) Line? Surviving Music Piracy in a Digital Era” by Jelle Janssens and her fellow researchers state how “the music industry mainly puts the blame on physical and digital piracy, more specific on CD and Internet piracy” (77). Piracy has been around for some time and increased with the introduction of cassette recorders but has now grown more popular with the increase in new technological possibilities. The increase in accessibility of MP3s have made burning of full CDs and individual songs much more popular. Piracy has now been linked with full-scale commercial piracy as the music industry struggles with entrepreneurs trying to make some money by making their own CDs of already produced music (78).
“Digital piracy is seen as the biggest threat to the music industry due to its ability to be found in many different forms, the most popular being file sharing through peer-to-peer networks” (Janssens, 78). It has been noted that throughout the years global CD sales have been dropping at a crucial rate since the “sale of CDs is still a crucial part of music sales” (Janssens, 79). The increase in the price of one CD is partially to blame for the increase in digital piracy, but the music industry only states physical and digital piracy as being the only culprit for this decline (81). It appears that the product the music industry is trying to sell is very vulnerable for criminal activity due to the fact that the song itself is an intangible good, unlike the physical CD and since music can be copied so easily it is hard to protect (Janssens, 86). File sharing not only allows the person to listen to the music, they are also allowed to download the music free of charge.
The increase of music available to buy over the Internet also made it easier for others to copy the music and share it with others. MP3s are smaller files and they also allow listeners to not be affected by company restrictions or time when it comes to downloading and transferring music through the Internet (Janssens, 90). The music industry is being forced to change their business plan in order to combat the increase in digital piracy and this has opened up the idea of online music stores where people can choose what music they would like to buy. The idea is based on the idea that people do not want to spend the full market price for a full length physical CD when they can download it for free (Janssens, 91). It appears that “in order to survive the threats of the digital era, the music business has to go online” (Janssens, 96) and while this may decrease the risks a little bit, there appears to be no 100’% guarantee that digital piracy will disappear over time.
Despite an increase in lawsuits, the music industry is still going to suffer financial losses due to the advanced technology of the Internet bandwidth and other technologies (Morton, 491). It’s much easier for someone to download something onto your computer within minutes then to sit and wait for it do download for what seems like hours (The Economist). It appears that music labels might begin to embrace this increase in digital distribution, but it continues to create its risks.
The increased tendency to pirate music is based on positive incentives, negative incentives and the characteristics of the consumer (Sinha, 1). Music sales have decreased with the introduction of Napster in 1999, but people seem to tend to pirate more when they are not worried about the risks associated with the download. If a person is worried about the possibility of getting caught or the punishment they will face, then there should be a decrease in piracy (Sinha, 2). Also a decrease in piracy could be associated with the amount that fans are being forced to pay for CDs in order to legally download them, and online retailers have created a cheap world where fans can buy one song or another and not have to worry about buying the full CD. The industry is appearing to be focusing on college students as the most popular pirates since technology is a key component in our culture and technology is the most important strategy to combat piracy throughout the years (Sinha, 40). It is easy to look at digital rights management and estimate this impact on the consumers of music and the demand for music downloads. A comic shown in Sinha’s article “Don’t think twice, it’s all right…” shows how DRM can affect the purchase of music versus the pirating of it. The message is given that “if you want a collection you can count on, pirate it” (Sinha, 42). Digital rights management is the restrictions on songs that were talked about earlier and can stop you from taking this music with you wherever you want.
The creation of Napster introduced a larger picture of digital music piracy in 1998 and since the music industries and artists were not compensated in any way, so the term “free music” was coined (Bender, 157). Consumers are able to obtain music without physical transactions and use this to help commercially detect piracy. The increase in digital technology allows for fire sharing and peer-to-peer networks to flourish and grow as they continued in the wake of Napster’s demolition. The idea of sampling theory is shown where someone “tests” the CD through downloading before intending to buy the CD or not (Bender, 158). Stan Liebowitz feels that sampling allows for the music industry to become a more self-sufficient market because consumers are allowed to “learn about new artists while sampling digital media and subsequently purchase the recordings of these artists” (Bender, 158).
It appears that the topic of digital piracy and its affects on the music industry have been spoken about on numerous occasions. After studying trends over time, Liebowitz is able to conclude that MP3 downloads do decrease sales in recorded music because the decline in album sales was the largest between 1999-2002 when the Internet became more popular (Bender, 159). Global data can also examine data found across countries that show the economic perspective of digital piracy and its affect on the music industry (Bender, 160). When examining statistical analysis, it has been proven that a 1% increase in the piracy rate would result in a 0.6% decrease in music sales. After many years, this difference can become significant and it can affect the overall copyright issues of that song (Bender, 165).
As the increase in popularity of the Internet continues to grow at an alarming pace, something must be done in order to protect the music industry from the grips of music piracy. Stricter enforcement can be taken in order to stop piracy from happening because fans will be more worried about the punishment then about saving a few dollars by downloading the CD instead of buying it. It appears that fans do not understand how much musical artists rely on the sales of CDs in order to make a profit. Not much money is made from online stores as the supporting company takes out a major chunk of the profits before a little percentage goes to the band (Gillen, 3-4). Young technology users have made it easier to reach the pirated copies of music through sites such as Mediafire, Mega Upload, and converter sites where you can change your favorite YouTube video into an MP3 file. The increase in the number of music downloads is soon going to overtake the amount of physical CDs sold, and eventually CDs will be as rare as vinyl records are now. This increased amount of technology killed the album, and the increased usage of the Internet has made this technology readily accessible to anyone using the Internet. This decrease in physical sale creates problems for your favorite musical artists as well, and without these physical sales, they cannot afford to survive and do what they love. Digital downloads affect everyone involved with the music industry, including yourself, so don’t hurt yourself by downloading a song illegally, take the time to purchase it legally and it might make enjoying it a little bit better.
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