MUSIC AND PIRACY

Online Music Piracy

Abstract

The music industry has constantly shown its concerns over negative and destructive impacts of online music sharing. Music industry, no doubt, is facing a never ending challenge of online music piracy and coping with the problem of illegal sharing of music files. Since its beginning, online music piracy has adversely affected music companies in terms of sales. Music companies and organizations attempted to control online music piracy by taking legal actions and adopting different business strategies, but did not achieve success. This paper focuses on the impacts of online music piracy, which has damaged music industry since the evolution of online sharing technology. This paper also encounters the arguments that support the illegal act of online music piracy.

Table of Contents

Abstractii

Introduction1

Thesis Statement2

Effects of Online Music Piracy2

Effects on Music Industry3

Effects on Recording Companies3

Effects on Musicians4

Effects on Economy5

Counterarguments5

Conclusion7

References8

The Ethics & Leadership of the American Pharmaceutical Industry

Introduction

Internet piracy has emerged as a side-product of the digitalized world since the early days of personal computers. With the emergence of the internet online piracy has expanded its model incorporating illegal copies of tangible items like floppy disks, compact and digital as well as intangible items like music files, video files and computer software (Wall, 2005). Internet piracy has increased due to the fact that people involved in these activities are able to hide their identity which also makes them victimless. Internet or online piracy of music affects not just the musicians but also damages the annual sales of the music companies. Alone in the U.S., the yearly estimates of economic losses are more than $12.5 billion because of the music theft on internet (Siwek, 2007).

Further, combating online piracy through the punishment and other measures has shown to be largely unsuccessful (Higgins et al., 2009). However, all these efforts to prevent online music piracy dramatically backfire on the industry. In addition, it is also ambiguous to identify how pricing strategies affect the overall profit for the music industry and what is their role to influence the behavior of internet piracy. It has been seen that many companies including the Universal Music Group lowered their prices for music CDs to discourage online piracy as well as increase their sales. However, the strategy remained fail and companies again increased the process as internet download of the music was more than the purchase of music.

Today, online music piracy can be seen as pastime activity of youths. According to Hofmeister (2010), ninety-six percent of people between the ages of 18 and 24 have copied music through illegal means or piracy over internet. On the other hand, emergence of legal music market like iTunes and AmazonMP3also allowed consumers to download music through an online shopping mechanism because downloading music from the internet is not a crime. It is actually the way that makes a music download illegal activity. This paper defines piracy itself, explains music piracy and online music piracy, and overall effects of online piracy on music industry (Adermon, ...