Online Music Sharing

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Online Music Sharing

Will cds and cassettes soon become extinct like the 8 track and vinyl records? Well, that very well may become the case due to online music sharing. Music sharing has become the hottest, most popular thing now-a-days for teens and college students across the nation. This innovative idea is now caught in between a war of advocates and anti-advocates, courts have now become involved, which side are you on?
I don’t know about you but I’m all for the online music sharing. I’m for it simply because I am one who doesn’t have a lot of time to go review and listen to cd’s to hear their potential. I am a very busy person, and I am always on the run so I don’t have the time to go to the record store and buy whole cd’s or the singles which is one of the pros of online music sharing.
Online sharing is an excellent way to preview music before one would decide to buy it because if there aren’t any songs that aren’t liked by the listener then they would decide to buy the single and not waste money buying a whole album of an artist that they wouldn’t like. But that factor is frowned upon by the music industry. Why? One may ask. Because of online music sharing services such as Napster.
Napster was started by accident by a college student trying to find a faster way to load and copy songs off of the internet. He some way found out how to load songs really fast. After finding out this information he put it on the internet so that other college students like himself who wanted to sample music could find it faster and easier just like he did.
The Napster website is simply a free way of obtaining the songs wanted and to make mixed cd’s for themselves and others. There are other sites (i.e. Morpheus, Aimster, Audio Galaxy) that offer their free music and sites to listen to any song of their choice. “Currently the post-Napster tool of choice is Aimster. The name Aimster was cobbled from America Online Instant Messenger and Napster. Developed by John Deep of Troy, New York, Aimster software allows AIM users to offer other AIM users a way to locate and copy files on one another’s computers. Unlike Napster, AIM users are on one another’s buddy lists. The index of files exists on each AIM user’s personal computer. When one AIM user wants to c...

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...er.” (Internet Magazine 1). It’s their fault and they should have to live with the mistakes they made. Don’t go blaming the innocent people that have found a new way to get around their system before they did and now they’re upset. They’ve had control for years, they control the prices of the cds (many of which are just plain ridiculous), how many quantities are produced, what will be soon out of print, and so many other things.
It’s about time that we the people took control of a small aspect of it and since we developed it, we should be allowed to use it and not be punished for it. And the online music sharing companies should go unpunished as well. Did they really do anything wrong? They’re honestly giving the people what they want, none of those artists are truly losing a great heap of money, they’re just money hungry and want more of it. Well, we’re not rich, we’re regular Joe’s and we buy, get, and take what we can afford and free…everyone can afford.

Works Cited

Arnold, Steve. “Peer-to-Peer Computing and Contents Control.” Oct. 2001. pg.1

“Bad News for Online Music.” Internet Magazine. 24 Sep. 2001: pg. 1

Park, Lark. “Keeping the Napster Faith.” 16 Oct. 2000: pg.1

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