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. Certainly there are detractors to the format who charge that MP3’s steal revenues off their music.
The Internet connects so many people with so many products and, as in all industry, not all these people and products are fair and honest. The same is true in the world of the online music industry. Some artists champion the public's right to hear and record their music in an "industry-free" atmosphere. Others fear that their art is being exploited and their rights denied. In October 1999 the IFPI announced its efforts "aimed at ridding the Internet of large amounts of pirate content and paving the way for artists and record companies to deliver music electronically and legally across the world" (IFPI, 1999).
Several people also, however, admitted that they felt that the piracy of music online is unethical. These were people who also said that they download music regularly. Their response as to why they continue to compromise their integrity was based on the fact that they did not feel that the record labels or the individual artists themselves were actually being adversely affected. In their minds, their downloading and sharing of this music is only helping the music industry, especially up-and-coming bands who are trying to develop a name for themselves. Instead of handing out promo CD’s, they can simply upload their music onto the internet and circulate their music that way; a much more inexpensive and effective method.
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.
Napster: The Benefits of File Sharing Technology Napster. Never before has one word brought so much controversy and debate over technology and peoples' rights to information. Napster was co-founded by Shawn Fanning, a college student with a million dollar idea. His idea was to provide people across the world the ability to download information from other users’ computers. Although this technology was already available through local networks, Shawn envisioned a way to make this network technology possible for the average college student like himself.
They can download a song of choice, and by... ... middle of paper ... ...e has succeeded. It is my opinion such services could create enormous revenue for both the online services along with the artists themselves if a fee was charged and shared (which is a debatable topic, court March 2). Furthermore, the online users will still be able to enjoy cheap and entertaining music right from their computers. However, the current services are devastating to the music industry and immediate action must be taken to alter the way these "free music" services operate. Napster is a tool, like any other tool it may be used in a manner, which is construed to be "wrong" and in a manner that is construed to be "right".
Napster gives publicity to unsigned groups and gives people a chance to listen to their music and so possibly they may get a record deal form the record companies. But in the shops people are paying £3.99 for these singles and to some they simply can't afford it, so why not use Napster and get it fo nothing??? After all would you pay for something you could get for free? Using napster gives everyone a chance to get all their favourite music for nothing, all new bands singles are featured on the programme but not forgetting many, many old songs for the older users of the site.
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.
In 2007 also saw the recovery of those websites that play online music (web-radio) after the RIAA copyright lawsuit. This shows that respect the copyright of music is the best way to ensure long-term benefits for all three parties: the listeners, the service providers and music companies. The giant record labels also created separate social networks for fans, as well as listening to music services separately, typically as Sony-BMG's MusicBox. From now on, the big record labels have started moving from indirect form (through retail system) to direct form (directly approach to the consumers).
The search would return a lot of links that were broken, meaning that the page could not be found. In early 1999, Shawn Fanning began to develop an ideas to better this market of finding MP3s. He thought that there should be a way to crea... ... middle of paper ... ...ng payment and royalty fees for their songs being downloaded and shared. These artists should be getting money for their music being sold just like how they are given royalty money for selling CDs. The main reason for Napster being shutdown was the lawsuits for piracy.