Music Piracy

1597 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The Effects of Piracy Upon the Music Industry

As a result of music piracy, the United States economy loses about $12.5 billion per year (RIAA). Not only do wealthy record labels and headline artists lose money, but songwriters, music publishers, music engineers, and even record store clerks suffer losses. Music pirates are people who share and download music over the Internet without paying for it. Piracy has been an ongoing issue for record companies and the artists they represent. It started all the way back in the days of cassette recorders and blank tapes. It eventually led to the compact disk, which was then used with the compact disk burner. The Internet helped produce a new and more unrestricted form of music piracy that would eventually lead to a threatening high. Consumers should not be allowed to pirate music illegally because it harms the economy, it causes financial harm to the musical artists, and it is teaching a wrong message to teenagers that they can steal and get away with it.

Long before anyone imagined free, high quality music available over the Internet, cassette tapes made free music available with only a cassette recorder, a blank tape, and a willing friend. The industry did little to challenge piracy by cassette tape, even though there were complaints from artists and record companies. When compact discs were introduced, the problem of piracy was temporarily alleviated. People traded in their cassettes for the sleek new technology. In 1998, a program that played MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 files called Winamp was offered for download on the Internet as a free music player. Soon, people all over the world were copying music files off of CDs and converting them to MP3 files, then making them available to others over the Internet.

In 1999, music piracy off...

... middle of paper ...

...stry Association of America and other sensible people continue to fight against it, piracy will always be contained at least to a diminutive degree.

Works Cited

“Fewer Than 1 in 10 Teenagers Believe that Music Piracy is Morally Wrong.” The Barna Group,

LTD. n.p. 26 April 2004.

“Global sales of recorded music down 7% in 2002.” IFPI. n.p. 9 April 2003. Web. 21

November 2011.

Lieberman, David. “Piracy pillages music industry.” USA Today. Gannet Co. Inc. 8 April 2002.

Web.21 November 2011.

“RIAA will keep on suing illegal music downloaders.” TrustSoft Inc. n.p. 1 April 2008. Web.

21 November 2011.

“Scope of the Problem.” RIAA. n.p. n.d. Web. 21 November 2011.

Sequeira, Natalie, and Lara Vacante. “iTunes Music Store Hits Five Million Downloads.” Apple.

n.p. 23 June 2003. Web. 21 November 2011.

“Who Music Theft Hurts.” RIAA. n.p. n.d. Web. 21 November 2011.

Show More
Related

  • Illegal P2P File Sharing

    875 Words  | 2 Pages

    Singers and songwriters need to make a living somehow. They know that downloading music is a way to get their voice heard, but they also know that it is significantly hurting the business. "When your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action," said RIAA president Cary Sherman (RIAA 1). There are a lot of people involved in the music scheme when it comes to who needs to get paid by the revenue. From the sale of one CD, singers get one small fraction of the cost, another fraction goes to song writers, musicians also get some of the profit along with retailers, engineers, technicians, warehouse working, and ever...

    Read More

  • The Bussnies Side of the Music Industry

    1374 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The Law”. http://www.riaa.com - http://www.riaa.com. RIAA, Oct. 2011 -. Web. The Web.

    Read More

  • Teen Music Piracy: Innocent or Guilty

    1302 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout time, people have resorted to stealing in order to obtain items instead of buying them. It became a problem so consequences were made. Even dating back to the Ten Commandments there were laws against stealing. Recently, theft has become a problem over the internet. Musicians and music companies have lost millions in revenue. Websites such as Napster, The Pirate Bay, and Pandora have made it extremely easy for people, specifically teens, to illegally download and or listen to music for free. Pirating music has become a problem especially because “91 percent of all new music was downloaded illegally over the Internet instead of purchased,” says Logan Lynn from Huffington Post (Lynn). Many, such as the RIAA claim that music piracy is “an ongoing and evolving challenge,” (Who) while others suggest that it is “keeping the music industry alive,” (Issacson).

    Read More

  • Peer to Peer Technology and Copyright

    6523 Words  | 14 Pages

    Recently, there has been a series of copyright infringement litigations against Internet businesses that are involved with unauthorized distribution of music files. The US recording industry claims to lose three million dollars per year because of piracy. A report predicted an estimated 16 percent of all US music sales, or 985 million dollars would be lost due to online piracy by 2002 (Foege, 2000; cited from McCourt & Burkart, 2003) Even though this claim has to be taken with caution, as it is based on false assumption that if copyright laws were strictly enforced, audio pirates would become buyers, it is apparent that audio piracy grew to a worrisome level for the record industry. (Gayer & Shy, 2003)

    Read More

  • Should People Be Prosecuted

    669 Words  | 2 Pages

    Big time record companies and artist are losing billions of dollars due to people illegally downloading music files. The

    Read More

  • Essay On Music Piracy

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    Since early in the 1990's, software publishers have been concerned about their losses from software piracy. The music recording industry now faces a much larger threat than the software industry. Its very existence is in question as music is extensively pirated through internet downloads and copying CD's. The total cost of pirating music is estimated at $12.5 billion annually, of which $5 billion is a direct cost to the recording industry. The recording industry has experienced dropping profits and has lowered employment because of the effects of music piracy (Blyth, 2008). Many argue that as a result of music piracy, the structure of the industry must change and the era of both big record labels and superstar bands is ending (Dvorak, 2003). Nevertheless, many people, especially college students, do not seem to regard music piracy as unethical. Understanding consumer attitudes may be an important step in developing a solution to the economic problem of music piracy. This study develops a model based on the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) to promote further understanding of attitudes toward music piracy and how those attitudes influence music piracy behavior.

    Read More

  • Music Piracy Essay

    1211 Words  | 3 Pages

    Though many people do think that music piracy is a bad thing, there are some pro arguments, which are very valid. Some say that artists don't feel affected by file sharing and support the fact that piracy creates a bigger fan base for them. Many unsigned artist have produced free records so copyright wasn't an issue. Which could be a new and upcoming thing for artist to d...

    Read More

  • Online Music Distribution In A Post-Napster World

    994 Words  | 2 Pages

    An “analyst” was quoted in the case (in 2002) as saying that “people will pay for music on the Internet, eventually.” This person was skeptical of the willingness of consumers to pay for

    Read More

  • Technology And Change: The Effects On Music And The Artists Who Create It

    1660 Words  | 4 Pages

    Introduction: In the past, music has been a costly business, where only people with a lot of money could enter and be successful in the industry. Changes in the music industry, coupled with new computer technology, have made it much easier for people without a lot of money to compose, produce, and distribute their creations. In order to get a better understanding of the music industry in comparison to 2014, one has to look at its history. There were many things that happened from the 1980’s onward, and they brought on a significant impact towards the music industry.

    Read More

  • Internet Piracy: Theft of Intellectual Property

    1757 Words  | 4 Pages

    Although online file sharing debuted in 1999, lawmakers and copyright industries are just beginning to address the myriad questions the practice has generated. In At Issue: Internet Piracy, authors attempt to answer some of those questions.

    Read More

  • The Most Overlooked Crime: Piracy

    868 Words  | 2 Pages

    Online piracy is a huge problem, one which costs the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 billion per year, and is responsible for the loss of 750,000 American jobs. These numbers seem huge: $250 billion per year loss would be almost $800 for every man, woman, and child in America. And 750,000 jobs – that’s twice the number of those employed in the entire motion picture industry in 2010 (Freakonomics). In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “can be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which in English means these figures are legitimate and that piracy really does hurt our economy.

    Read More

  • Media Piracy

    1327 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to the book “Pirate’s Dilemma,” “Are Pirates have to scupper us? Are they a threat to be battled or innovators we should compete with and learn from?” (Matt Mason 4). Piracy has and will always be a threat to the whole media industry and of course the economy. As long as people can download for free or buy never been released movies in a cheaper price, there is no way media industries can compete with that.

    Read More

  • Digital Piracy

    369 Words  | 1 Pages

    Moreover, hackers came up with new ways to remove the digital copyrights so the same as before one downloads music and distributes them around. The industry gets its revenue from selling this content, whether it’s online or in stores, this funds new projects and allows for better products in the future. The public should be aware of this, downloading the content for free, and not buying it will decrease revenue for the companies, stopping them from undertaking future projects. “Production companies should lower the price on their products, I can’t buy music for at least 20$ per album and DVDs for 30$, I only make 200$ per month,” said George Issa, a music fan who spends most of his nights downloading music from the internet, “when there is an album or movie that I really like, I try to buy it legally, I don’t think I am doing anything wrong, they are wrong making money off our backs,” he added.

    Read More

  • Piracy Essay

    1136 Words  | 3 Pages

    It's important to understand the different software piracy channels, not just to comply with the law but also to protect against bigger economic problems like lost revenue...and lost jobs.

    Read More

  • The Effects of Piracy on the Music Industry

    1131 Words  | 3 Pages

    Music piracy is a developing problem that it affects the music industry in many different ways including being responsible for the unemployment of 750,000 workers, as well as a loss of $2,5 billion; therefore, I want to explore ‘To what extent has music piracy affected the music industry market in the United States over the last 10 years?’

    Read More

More about Music Piracy

Open Document