Now That’s What I Call Music, Piracy! Essay

I bought my first CD when I was ab pop(p) 10 years old. My mom had drove me to Tar take on and exclusivelyowed me to purchase one CD of my choosing I chose Now 11. I worn-out(a) what felt comparable hours scouring the aisles of the store looking for the 11th stochastic variable of Now Thats What I Call Music and finally found it on the shelf. I hatch being filled with excitement and anticipation as we drove home I was so queasy to put it into my CD player. I remember the only reason I wanted it was because there was a hardly a(prenominal) rap lines my brother listened to on it. Since my mother didnt allow me to listen to his symphony, I knew this was a great way to slide it past her. I will never for strike that CD I listened to it for days on end. As I played the CD, I poured over the insert book, reading the lyrics and sing along. Today if I wanted to own that same Now 11 CD the experience would be entirely different. A few simple searches on the Internet would lead me t o various file-sharing websites where I could substantially download the album for forfeit.Instant gratification. I wouldnt have to look through aisles, no hold in line, and no silver necessary. This change in technology has done more than harm than well to the medicine patience and the economy. Downloading medical specialty, whether legally or illegally, has completely changed the record industry. Consumers seem perfectly content to move their computer mouse a few times and download whatever songs they want at their leisure. It all makes perfect sense the technology world is changing and we argon taking what we ar given. Almost everyone has an iPod or some other portable unison device and the days of sitting around a two-channel and listening to an album from start to finish seem lost forever. Digital downloads are far more convenient than buying physical albums. They dont take up shelf space in your home and as long as you back up all your files, you dont contract to worry about losing your favorite album.However, common harmony pirates tend to lack the knowledge of who or how they are affecting. The transition from physical copies of symphony to digital downloads has made music a commodity in the unify States. It seems that music has been completely devalued by this evolution in technology. The excitement of going out to a record store and having to look for a specific album is gone. Virtually everything is available online and whether music fans piddle it or non, society has come to take this art form for granted. According to the Record diligence knowledge of the States, global music piracy causes $12.5 billion in economic divergencees every year (Who). there is no doubt it takes an affect on our $16 trillion plus national debt. This economic loss also affects the employees of record labels with 70,000 lost jobs (Who). With the US unemployment rate currently at 7.9%, it definitely takes a chime on that as well (Databases). Consequen tly these economic downfalls music piracy is creating detracts from revenue that could be spent on finding and promoting new artists and allowing signed artists to record more albums.Losing money to piracy also has a profound case on working musicians themselves. Artists are now forced to make up a large part of their bring inings through licensing their songs to television commercials and shows, touring relentlessly, and selling merchandise. Even with these alternatives to offset the fall in record gross revenue, artists can still struggle to make ends meet. Renting a tour bus and gainful for a driver and gas can cost a small music artist nigh a $1,000 (Arnold). In 2007, the Boston based band, The Dresden Dolls, told National Public Radio (NPR) Music in an audience that their record contract had them receiving about $1 in royalties for every CD sold, further before a band gets to see any of that, it has to sell enough CDs to cover all of the labels intersection expenses, whic h can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars (Arnold).Most artists try to dig themselves out of this hole through relentless touring, but even selling tags comes with a price. Venue and contrive promoters take a share out of an artists ticket sales, they even have sound technicians and others workers to pay for too. One could look back on Noah Webster, who is primarily cognize for his early and influential dictionary he campaigned in the 1780s for copyright laws to protect the Statesn roots content (Paulson). He would not have been amused with todays copyright issues. The printers of the 1780s were not large corporations. They were small shops making their living largely by stealing the content of books produce in Europe (Paulson). Whats so different about music piracy and the music industry today? Webster wanted to make sure his work would not be published without compensation, just like the music industry is trying to do today. The debate over illegal downloading often fo cuses on technology.Those who hold in the unauthorized sharing of music understand that critics are living in the past and had better get used to the new reality. But that new reality is taking a toll. Over the past decade, America has lost a staggering number of professional songwriters and composers, primarily due to the impact of illegal music downloading, says Bart Herbison, executive director of the National Songwriters Association. Those that remain in the profession are struggling to earn even a minimal income (Paulson). Most illegally downloaded songs come from major stars and labels, but the food mountain range surrounding major artists includes struggling songwriters, producers, and musicians trying to get by in a damaged industry. unauthorized downloading is a global issue, and no one nation will provide a solution, but Americas origins suggest we should care more than most music pirates. Its not about business line models or emerging technology. Its about living up to what Webster and the first generation of Americans believed. Art should be free, but not necessarily free of charge. Consequently record labels and artists are not taking these losses lightly.In addition to public campaigns against piracy, the record industry has prosecuted numerous people suspected and guilty of downloading music illegally. Most recently The Boston Globe reported that a Boston University alumna student was fined $675,000 in damages for illegally downloading 30 songs and sharing them online (Valencia). Thats a far cry from the $30 he would have paid had he simply bought the songs on iTunes. Yet shockingly some say this graduate student got off lucky. In June of 2009, CNN reported that a 32-year-old Minnesota woman was found guilty of downloading music illegally and ordered to pay $1.9 zillion dollars for 24 songs (Friend). In the midst of battling online piracy, the record industry is urgently trying to find ways to encourage consumers to buy albums again.In S eptember of this year, Apple announced its newest recital of iTunes called iTunes LP. This new program will include album artwork, photos, lyrics, and videos as part of an album purchase, in effect recreating the physical album experience (Apple). The company hopes that by expanding these extra incentives to consumers, people will be more likely to spend their money on music as opposed to sharing files with each other. Some may wonder what caused this digital music war I say it could be darned on Napster, invented by Shawn Fanning in 1999. Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing program that bas let the cat out of the bag by allowing digital music to be accessed by virtually anyone for free. However on butt on 5th, 2001, Fanning and Napster were sued and prevented from sharing their copyrighted music.Not long after that came LimeWire, started by Mark Gorton in 2000. It was another free peer-to-peer file sharing program that expanded on what Napster created. Finally on whitethorn 12th, 2011, the Recording Industry Association of America announced its $105 million case settlement with major recording companies (Sisario). In the lawsuit, the labels identified more than 9,000 recordings made since 1972 that had been traded on LimeWire without permission and sought damages of up to $150,000 for each song (Sisario). Although the $105 million settlement is far from the $1.4 billion the labels had sought as a maximum penalty, the companies are hoping that the case will restrain further piracy since Mr. Gorton, a former Wall Street bargainer with millions in personal assets, also faced liability (Sisario).Fortunately there are a few music programs like Spotify and Pandora that are doing their best to combat music piracy. Pandora launched in 2000 but has since become increasingly popular today. With Pandora you can create up to 100 personal radio stations that play the music you like with advertisements in between every couple songs. It has over 150 million registe red users today (Sasario). Spotify is a music-based streaming service that is based out of Sweden since 2009. It just opened in the US in July 2012. They offer users unlimited music for little (or no) money. Pay just $10 per month the cost of a individual(a) album and you can literally play music non-stop on your computer or mobile device. move intot want to pay? No problem. Spotify has various options (depending on whether youre in the US or Europe) for getting at least some music for free (Couts). Not only that, but you get to choose from Spotifys catalog of 15 million songs (Couts).In Sweden, since 2009 when Spotify debuted, music piracy has dropped 25 percent. Including 9 percent alone this last year (Couts). There is no actual way to tell if itll do the same in the US, only time will tell. Its hard to argue that we wont see similar decreases in piracy if Spotify keeps the popularity it has today. Although Pandora and Spotify rake in millions of dollars there is one thing th at keeps them from gaining money the cost of music royalties. Pandora, who just went public last summer, has never had a profitable year, and in its most recently reported quarter lost $20 million on $81 million in revenue. Spotifys accounts for the last year, recently filed in Luxembourg, show that it lost $57 million in 2011, despite a big increase in revenue, to $236 million (Sasario).With artists and labels hit hard by declining sales over the last decade, its hard to argue for lower royalty rates. Its fair to say that the graveyard of failed digital services, and the financial struggles of Pandora and Spotify show that the music industry hasnt yet figured out the balance between licensing costs and how much money a digital service can make. totally the music industry will never fully be rid of music piracy. Will music piracy destroy the economic wellbeing of the music industry?Only time will tell. pack will continue to burn CDs and share music with one another, and file-shari ng websites will probably always exist. I believe the best way to combat piracy is to keep consumers informed about the consequences of downloading music illegally, not only for the record companies but for everyone working in the music industry. The next time you consider downloading music from a file sharing website or giving a CD of yours to a friend, consider this is 99 cents per song really too much to ask for all the months of labor musicians, producers, engineers, and record labels put into creating an album for you? If you still feel it is, I hope you plan on spending $40 on concert tickets sometime soon.Works CitedApple ITunes ITunes LP and ITunes Extras. Apple ITunes ITunes LP and ITunes Extras. Apple Inc., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2012.Arnold, Chris. Band Tries to Make It Big Without Going Broke. NPR. NPR, 17 Jan. 2007. Web. 01 Nov. 2012.Couts, Andrew. Spotify Linked to Major Decline in Music Piracy. Digital Trends. N.p., 29 Sept. 2011. Web. 01 Nov. 2012.Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject. Bureau of compass Statistics Data. United States Department of Labor, Oct. 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.Friend, Elianne. Woman Fined to Tune of $1.9 Million for Illegal Downloads. CNN. Cable News Network, 18 June 2009. Web. 01 Nov. 2012.Paulson, Ken. First Amendment Center. Real Cost of free Downloads. USA Today, 21 Aug. 2012. Web. 08 Nov. 2012.Sisario, Ben. Major Record Labels Settle outfit With LimeWire. Media Decoder Blog. The New York Times, 12 May 2011. Web. 01 Nov. 2012.Sisario, Ben. Pandora and Spotify Rake In the Money and Then Send It away in Royalties. Media Decoder Blog. The New York Times, 24 Aug. 2012. Web. 01 Nov. 2012.Valencia, Milton J. Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Music Downloading Appeal. BostonGlobe.com. N.p., 22 May 2012. Web. 01 Nov. 2012.Who Music Theft Hurts. Http//www.riaa.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2012.