The Digital Music Revolution
Every day, billions and billions of bytes of information trade hands over the Internet. Often, this data is copyrighted, thereby making its sharing illegal. Information can range from online books to computer applications, games, movies, and even cross-stitch needlework patterns. But possibly the largest percentage consists of one specific kind of media: digital music.
Programs have popped up all over the market to take part in this mass media exchange. Gnutella, Scour, iMesh, CuteMX, and the leader of the music revolution, the almighty Napster, are some popular examples, although these are just a few. Controversy over digital media is widespread, and legal action is being taken by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against many of these companies. You might ask yourself how all of this began. The digital music revolution happened because of the creation of the MP3 digital media compression standard.
MP3 is short for MPEG-1 Layer 3 (Moving Pictures Expert Group), a format for storing digital audio.
It [MP3] uses an advanced type of audio compression which reduces the filesize with little reduction in quality. MP3 is used particularly for music distribution over the Internet, but is also used for other purposes such as real-time digital audio transmissions over ISDN (used by reporters). MPEG-1 has been around since 1992, but during the last few years (1998/99) it has started to get widespread attention from regular media and ordinary users. (What is MP3)
In simple terms, this means that, using this kind of compression, digital music files can be shrunk so that they can be transferred faster over the Internet. "Without audio coding, downloading uncompressed high-quality audio files from a remote Internet server would result in unfavorably long transmission times" (FAQ).
The MP3 standard impacted the music industry almost overnight. People began "ripping" their music (extracting songs from a CD) and converting them into MP3's, then sharing their collection with other users like themselves all over the world, using the internet.
However, this doesn't explain the speed with which this revolution occurred. Just because some new technology is available on the market doesn't mean it will be put to use right away. Video phones are a good example of this. We have had the technology for video phones for many years, yet even today they are hard to find. This is because the current telephone system infrastructure has been an adequate, efficient solution. So what made MP3 technology so hot, so fast?
A major breakthrough in the way people listen to music occurred in the early 1980s when Sony introduced its compact audio disc. There was an outstanding advantage of this new digital audio format, and it has forever changed the way we listen to music—music was now portable. An analogy that compares digital to the older analog format is that it’s like claiming cars are better than trains: they both get you where you need to go, but one is just more popular than the other. As the same article also quotes, “Digital offers greater flexibility than analog and that is really the secret of its success” (Analogue run out of town by digital). Unless you’re the type of person who needs a tangible experience, with your music, you’ll go with digital, and this is how most people are. FBi Radio’s Marty Doyle explains, “A lot of people don’t care what format their music takes on as long as it’s convenient…” (Christopher).
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.
MP3 is a relatively new form of piracy, only being around for about ten years. The fact that the MP3 format takes up as little as one megabyte for a one minute clip, makes it an attractive storage factor for pirates. And with the CD-R and CD-RW drives, people can convert MP3 files to common CD format, burn to a CD, and play in any CD player, and be listening to a mix of their favorite songs within a half hour of downloading the song. With MP3 players becoming more and more popular options in cars, you can burn MP3 files directly to a CD without converting to a standard audio file and have over six hours of music on a single CD!
unrestricted version of a song. With the New Age of media there is the availability of the internet
Since 1999, the situation around music has been changed drastically. In that year, the novel software “Napster” was released. With this software, people became able to get any file they want easily, sometimes illegally. Some musicians and people in the entertainment industry have tried to exterminate that P2P “Peer to Peer” technology. But it looks as if their efforts are in vain. People are going to use P2P technology more and it might as well become the official way to handle music distribution. The music industry should rather take advantage of the technology than keep trying to exterminate it.
MP3 has made it feasible to download quality audio from the Web very quickly, causing
This paper describes various forms of DRM (Digital Rights Management), the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and methods of bypassing the afore mentioned subjects. Different forms of transmission of DRM protected material also has a direct relationship with what kind of files are protected by the DMCA and will be discussed. This paper will also discuss how law makers are attempting to halt illegal music sharing and how these attempts are in vain.
File-sharing became big right around the time the Napster file-sharing program came out. Napster is an online service which was invented by an 18-year-old college student that allows a user to see song files residing on the hard drives of other users, and to download copies of any of those songs. (DLC.org) Napster started off at a slow pace, becoming popular at colleges and then it just exploded. Everyone was using this program within a year of its creation. (DLC.org) However, it eventually got busted and the idea of free music was shutdown, or so the music industry thought. Napster continues to be around today, but with a legal persona. After Napster was told to stop there illegal program there were many other programs in the making. Programs even more advanced then Napster.
...ily journey.as of these reasons mp3 player have become part of life. Apple has dominated the market in all aspects and will continue to do so until it encounters the tight competition.
Music piracy first became an issue when cassette tapes were created. Statistics showed that piracy highly increased after the compact disc was released. A lot of individuals used the old program created by the company that Metallica sued, called Napster. Napster was a free downloadable program where users could download tracks by artists that was completely free, and over 4 million people took advantage of this
With the popularization of the MP3 format a few years back came a renewed interest into listening to music. One of the great advantages of the Internet was that it allowed for almost immediate access to information instantaneously. If a song had been recorded, then there was a good chance it could be found on the Internet. The MP3 format allowed listeners to check out new artists and allowed for people to sent songs to each other of artists they thought should be heard. This was a good way for unknown artists to be heard or forgotten artist to be re-discovered. Radio station play lists or MTV’s idea of the next big thing did not fuel this rekindled interest in music. Rather a desire to simply listen to music was all that drove this phenomenon of people downloading music.
There are six key new market disruptions concerning the digital distribution of music: the creation of a new and broad customer base, the possibility of an annuity versus a per-unit revenue model, the gatekeeper advantage for a record company having proprietary access to a new digital distribution infrastructure, understanding of a technology that could be applied to other digital content, need for balance between physical and digital distribution strategies, the strategy the incumbent should adopt with respect to the evolving war over digital distribution standards. Was there a disruption or an evolution?
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 ...
...P, 2005, p 23) Around 2005 cell phones and PDAs were referred to as Swiss army knives of gadgets due to the fact they had many functions in one device. All the big phone companies at the time were premiering phones with more mp3 storage than mp3 player, essentially foreshadowing the future. (Dempsey, P, 2005, pg. 23)An average smart phone in the year 2014 can hold around 8-16 gigabytes of data, and if storage is allotted correctly, the phone can hold thousands of mp3s. Any mp3 player trying to have a foothold in the consumer market cannot compete with a device that is an essential part of an average person’s daily life, and a music player. “Smartphones with increasingly high-quality audio and video capabilities have become popular and therefore hamper demand for products in the Audio and Video Equipment Manufacturing industry.” (Krabeepetcharat, T. 2013. p. 8)
At the dawn of the internet, many things such as books and text became obsolete, due to insufficient monitoring of internet activity and sites. Individuals were able to gain free access to books and publications that normally needed to be bought, or required a fee. This is something that has caused problems for booksellers and publishers. Now, as technology advances, it also begins the decline of music, software, and television industries—but something can be done before it’s too late. Illegal downloading is a problem that affects us all, either directly or indirectly. Many people do not take it too seriously. They have not realized that it is an epidemic; like a disease that keeps growing as people become more knowledgeable about computers and learn more about how software runs. People openly burn music CDs and download music and movies for friends who in turn give it to their friends; it’s a never-ending cycle on illegal practices. The problem started when Napster came out and should have ended when it was shutdown. Unfortunately, not enough has been done to stop the illegal transfer of files. It’s time someone takes full action and ends this detrimental offense.