Record companies are taking different approaches at stopping it. A few have gone as far as tracking down sources of pirating and suing the people they found to be behind it. For example, “The Recording Industry Association of America this month fired off 569 "pre-litigation settlement letters" to college students whom had been suspected of pirating music”(Rampell, 2008). These record companies believe that downloading music from the internet affects their music sales negatively because they consumers don’t buy the product, they aren’t making a profit. Because people are able to download music from apps or the internet for free, most likely they aren’t going to do the right thing or go the “legal” way, which is actually purchasing the music. Thus, the record sales of record companies decline and the less money the artists, producers, writers and record labels make. Though they are taking a blunter and negative approach, there are a select few who aren’t. John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association, states that “One suggested approach: getting pastors and youth-group leaders to preach against the spiritual perils of downloading” (Ordoñez). Styll states that his record company is hoping that the problem is able to be solved without taking …show more content…
Because music sales are a record company’s primary source of revenue, music piracy is seen as something that has the potential to bankrupt their company. But are their concerns a bit irrelevant and unnecessary? According to Neil Tyler, “since the late 1990s, record labels have suffered from consistently decreasing annual revenues as a result of the rampant music piracy characterizing the digital age.” Tyler also states that, “in 1999, overall music sales reached a peak of $14.6 billion in total revenue” By 2009, that number had fallen to only $6.3 billion. CD sales in the United States exceeded 785 million albums in 2000; but by 2008, total album sales had decreased by almost a third.” (2013, p.2102) He shows that music piracy had a large impact on music sales in the recording industry and that their profits have decreased dramatically, but what if the drops in sales we’re because of the rise of the digital music age? Around this time, everyone had transitioned from buying CD’s to purchasing or downloading music from online. So he can’t actually conclude that these declines were all from music piracy, but music piracy still contributed to these statistics. Tyler gives evidence that would make anyone believe music piracy is almost immoral because of the dramatic effects in has on a company’s