Music Piracy Effects

Improved Essays
Throughout the history of popular music culture, common experiences among people of different cultures were shared by way of music, dating all the way back to the early 1920s from wax cylinders to vinyl records to cassette tapes. With rapid improvements in technology over the past three decades, the audio encoding format, the mp3, which would become one of the most innovative inventions of the 20th century, has led to many unforeseen problems and changes to the way popular nusic culture interacts, posse, and store music. This easy accessibility has led to the rise of music piracy. Music piracy is the copying and distribution of copies, of music, which the author(s) or copyright-holder does not give permission. Many did not see the detriment …show more content…
Based off of Witt’s forensic analysis, I vividly understand that there an excess of supporters, mainly teenagers and college students, that would argue that illegal downloading didn’t cause the music industry and the record companies to plunge in sales. Many would argue that simply being young, wild, and broke was reasoning to piracy with the intent of not causing harm. But, to truly understand the impact of music piracy, one must really understand the levels during the process of recording and promoting music. For the sale of each album there are 20+ plus parties that share a profit before the artist themselves see any income. Thus, music pirate can have a negative affect on the profit-margin of those contributing. This chain consists of individuals from audio engineers, marketing specialist to the top executives of record labels. According to the book, some industry observers saw piracy as helping, while others saw it as hurting. As a result, a lot of the in between parties, middle-man companies, merged with big corporations, for instance, when parent company Seagram purchased …show more content…
This idea of trading or sharing has put top music executives and artist, along with other music business partners, in a tough holding. Illegal downloading has categorized music as a commodity and not an art, thus creating this difficult way of life for the creators of it. New technology means new laws, at least I think. Many try to give justifiable reasons to why they can download illegally, but these actions have left the music industry with less funds and opportunities for artist development and new talent. Starting in the late 1990s till now, consumers of music have become very cost-effective. They believe music should be a convenience. As an aspiring artist/producer, I do believe illegal downloading is essentially stealing. Morally, it is wrong. All I can think of is taking money away from what somebody has worked so hard to release for my entertainment. Like many other artists, we chose to make a career out of this. You can find many other products, like movies, software, and games, on sites such as Pirates Bay, Bit Torrent Kazaa etc. I do believe, illegal downloading is one of the most overlooked crimes in the United States of

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