A Study of Music Piracy, Its Pros, and Cons

Introduction

Some people say music piracy is bleeding the music industry to its death, others say it’s a cheap way to get the word out on new artists. Either way you look at it piracy is a big deal

Here you can see how in the united states alone, in just the first half of the year 2012 nearly 97 million tracks were illegally downloaded, and these are just the ones we can track. I can only emagine that number has gone up.

I’m going to tell you guys about the positives of music piracy, the negatives in pirating music, and finally what exactly people are pirating, what genre of music is getting the most attention.

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Positives in music piracy

Sudip Bhattacharjee, after interviewing about 500 college students gets this information “Research indicates increasing music prices increases piracy. Also, the more value a consumer places on an item, the more likely he is to purchase rather than pirate.” (Bhattacharjee). This means that because record companies are charging so much for their songs its leading people to pirate them, it also shows the more you like the song the more likely you are to purchase it. Basically if the record companies didn’t charge so much or they helped to produce better music their wouldn’t be as much piracy.

According to Scott Griegs, a music scout, the man who “signs” people, new bands get big from the internet, its more popular than the radio and TV. A website he advocates for, purevolume.com has helped a lot of bands get “big”, such as Taking Back Sunday and My Chemical Romance, Brand New and Fall Out Boy.

Going back to Sudip, the professor from Alabama A and M, he talks about how the internet provides effective advertising. It also benefits recording companies by helping new artists to become known at little cost to the themselves. If it wasn’t for music piracy you may never have heard of Fall Out Boy at all.

Not to mention the most obvious of all advantages. It’s free and saves consumers a lot of money. For myself it has saved me over 1,000$.

It’s undeniably hard to really get a feel for a song or an album when you’re only able to listen to the 30 to 90 seconds per track available for sampling on most legal sites like Amazon and iTunes

Negatives in Music Piracy

Sudip Bhattacharjee got this information from multiple record companies, “Online music sharing has been estimated to result in annual sales losses of $3.1 billion dollars a year for the music industry” meaning that the artists we know and love, and the record companies which produce their music are losing a lot of money because of the piracy epidemic. An estimated 70,000 jobs have been lost, from piracy.

Another negative in pirating music, is getting caught! You may think it’s cheap to download things off the internet, but it could have a steep price tag attached. Mickey Borchardt was a University of Maryland senior tells her story. She got an email that detected copyrighted material was being downloaded through her IP address. The RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America had already been tracked her IP address. Later, she also received a letter from the RIAA threatening to sue her. She paid a 3,000$ settlement.

Another one of my sources, the U.S. Government, says it’s illegal.

According to Rajev Sinha, Professor at Penn State, The average length of time between a film’s USA release and its first appearance online is 12 days.

What’s new, the things people are pirating.

Joanna Davis, a reporter with works published by the University of Miami among other various magazines, describes punk music like this, she says: “Punk and rock music, is traditionally conceived of as a youth subcultural phenomenon. As one of many ways to rebel, kids might choose or find in punk rock an anti-authoritarian, destructive, or anarchistic ideology that helps them manage the tumult of adolescence.” In English, that means it’s a way to revolt against society, prove your independence and be your own person.

Alternative Rock/Screamo music are definitely the newest trend.

Andrew Carew, interesting name, a writer for the Rolling Stone, going by consumer ratings enlightens us with the top new thirty bands of 2012. Of the thirty 22 of them are of the genre.

Shows how rock music is on top and it was also on top in 2011.

Conclusion

Piracy is definitely a big deal in the United States, it’s putting people out of jobs and giving people lots of awesome music to enjoy.

I told you guys about why people pirate music, because iTunes charges 1.29$ a song! But don’t forget it’s dangerous, I told you guys about how Mickey is out three grand, and finally I let you guys know about the next big thing, what genre of music to look out for you everyone can stay hip.

Piracy is an epidemic and should be treated as such, maybe next time think before going to mediafire.com, a file sharing website, would you steal a CD from someone’s house?