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

I bought my first CD when I was nigh 10 years old. My mom had drove me to only whentocks and allowed me to purchase one CD of my choosing I chose Now 11. I washed- aside what felt comparable hours scouring the aisles of the store thinking for the 11th discrepancy of Now Thats What I Call medication and finally assemble it on the shelf. I remember being filled with excitement and outlook as we drove ingleside I was so anxious to station it into my CD gamblinger. I remember the only reason I valued it was because there was a few rap stresss my brother listened to on it. Since my tally didnt allow me to listen to his unison, I knew this was a great office to slide it past her. I will never forget that CD I listened to it for days on end. As I break awayed the CD, I poured over the insert book, reading the lyrics and singing along. Today if I treasured to own that same Now 11 CD the experience would be entirely different. A few simple searches on the Internet woul d feed me to various file- overlap websites where I could easily download the album for free.Instant gratification. I wouldnt give up to look through aisles, no waiting in line, and no money necessary. This change in technology has beginnere to a greater extent harm than good to the medicine industry and the economy. Downloading medicinal drug, whether legally or extralegally, has tout ensemble changed the figure industry. Consumers seem perfectly limit to click their computer blow a few sentences and download whatever songs they want at their leisure. It all needs perfect sense the technology world is changing and we atomic number 18 taking what we argon given. Al most(prenominal) everyone has an iPod or some other takeout medication device and the days of sitting around a stereophonic and listening to an album from start to finish seem lost forever. digital downloads are far more(prenominal) convenient than bargain foring physiologic albums. They forefathert ta ke up shelf space in your home and as long as you back up all your files, you dont need to worry about losing your favorite album. except, common euphony pi directs tend to lack the knowledge of who or how they are affecting. The transition from physical copies of medicine to digital downloads has make music a commodity in the United 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 witness it or not, society has come to take this art form for granted. harmonise to the Record Industry Association of America, global music buccaneering causes $12.5 one thousand million in economic losses every year (Who). There is no doubt it takes an affect on our $16 trillion plus discipline debt. This economic loss also affects the employees of record labels with 70,000 lost jobs (Who). With the U S unemployment rate currently at 7.9%, it definitely takes a toll on that as well (Databases). therefore 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 effect on working musicians themselves. Artists are now forced to make up a immense part of their earnings through licensing their songs to television commercials and shows, touring relentlessly, and selling merchandise. plane with these alternatives to offset the fall in record sales, artists peck still difference to make ends meet. Renting a tour bus and imparting for a driver and gas can cost a small music artist almost a $1,000 (Arnold). In 2007, the Boston base band, The Dresden Dolls, told interior(a) Public Radio (NPR) Music in an interview that their record rationalise had them receiving about $1 in royalties for every CD sold, but earlier a ban d gets to see any of that, it has to sell enough CDs to divvy up all of the labels production expenses, which can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars (Arnold). most(prenominal) artists try to dig themselves out of this hole through relentless touring, but even selling tickets comes with a price. Venue and concert 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 known for his proto(prenominal) and influential dictionary he campaigned in the 1780s for copyright laws to nourish American authors content (Paulson). He would not have been am utilize 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 published 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 focuses on technology.Those who defend the unauthorized sharing of music rank 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 pro songwriters and composers, primarily due to the impact of illegal music downloading, says Bart Herbison, decision maker director of the National Songwriters Association. Those that remain in the profession are fight to earn even a minimal income (Paulson). Most lawlessly downloaded songs come from major stars and labels, but the food chain surrounding major artists includes assay songwriters, producers, and musicians trying to get by in a damaged industry. wildcat downloading is a global issue, and no one nation will put forward a solution, but Americas origins suggest we should care m ore than most music pirates. Its not about business 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 rundown to commonplace campaigns against piracy, the record industry has prosecuted numerous people suspected and delinquent of downloading music illegally. Most recently The Boston Globe describe that a Boston University graduate 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 million dollars for 24 songs (Friend). In the midst of battling online piracy, the record industry is desperately trying to find ways to encourage consumers to buy albums again.In September of this year, Apple announced its newest version of iTunes called iTunes LP. This new course of study will include album artwork, photos, lyrics, and videos as part of an album purchase, in effect recreating the physical album experience (Apple). The company commits that by go these extra incentives to consumers, people will be more likely to overleap their money on music as opposed to sharing files with individually other. Some may wonder what caused this digital music war I say it could be blamed 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 suit persona by allowing digital music to be accessed by virtually anyone for free. However on March 5th, 2001, Fanning and Napster were sued and prevented from sharing their copyrighted music.Not long after(prenominal) that came Lim eWire, started by Mark Gorton in 2000. It was another free peer-to-peer file sharing program that expanded on what Napster created. Finally on May 12th, 2011, the record 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 foster piracy since Mr. Gorton, a former Wall Street trader with millions in personal assets, also faced liability (Sisario).Fortunately there are a few music programs like Spotify and Pandora that are doing their take up to conflict music piracy. Pandora launched in 2000 but has since become increasingly popular today. With Pandora you can creat e up to 100 personal radio stations that play the music you like with advertisements in between every couple songs. It has over 150 million registered 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 tolerate users unlimited music for little (or no) money. Pay just $10 per month the cost of a single album and you can literally play music non-stop on your computer or mobile device. Dont 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 decreas es in piracy if Spotify keeps the popularity it has today. Although Pandora and Spotify rake in millions of dollars there is one thing that 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 commence 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. Altogether the music industry will never fully be rid of music piracy. Will music piracy destroy th e economic wellbeing of the music industry?Only time will tell. People will continue to burn CDs and share music with one another, and file-sharing 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 project 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 old 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 well-favored 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 Labor Statistics Data. United States section of Labor, Oct. 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.Friend, Elianne. Woman Fined to Tune of $1.9 Million for Illegal Downloads. CNN. Cable discussion 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 Suit 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 make in Royalties. Media Decoder Blog. The New York Times, 24 Aug. 2012. Web. 01 Nov. 2012.Valencia, Milton J. Supreme Court Refuses to nail 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.