Digital Music and Piracy

Okay, be honest. How many of you have illegally downloaded music or movies? Yes, I’m raising my hand too. I may, on one or two occasions, possibly perhaps kind of downloaded an album or two. I’m not proud of it, but let’s look at music downloads objectively: No need to leave the house, all you need is a computer and a mouse. No need to battle the mall in order to hit FYE in hopes that the CD you want is there. No need to pay big money every time you want to hear a new CD. No need to buy the whole CD when all you want is that one catchy track. Music piracy is a pretty awesome deal, right?

Digital media has made it incredibly easy to gain access to an almost limitless amount of music and movies, and it’s completely changed the way that consumers access entertainment. In order for the artists and production companies to keep up with the shift, they've had to change the way they distribute. The first popular legal alternative to enter the scene was iTunes, which allows users to download a single track or an entire CD for a set price. Now, some artists are even allowing music downloads directly from their websites, allowing for the convenience of online shopping without the legal issues.

The effects of music piracy are widespread. On the cons side, pirates are often facing legal action because of their downloads. Consumers who still go out and purchase hard copy CDs find themselves facing higher prices because of these illegal downloads. Artists lose out on royalties and their reputations when low-quality downloads are spread. Record companies are losing big time, maybe even more than the artists are. They make all of their money off of these sales, and when people don’t pay, record companies don’t profit. And I know we all hate the man, and record companies are widely well known for being manipulative money grabbers, but someone has to get these artists’ music out there.

On the other hand, artists are still making good money, according to Cribs (I’ll admit, in the past I’ve used this show as justification for piracy. Now you may lynch me). Concert sales are up, lesser artists are getting popular faster, and greater musical diversity is becoming the norm for most listeners. Even with the high number of illegal album downloads any artist has, often the exposure itself- illegal or not- is enough to bring sales up in the long run, even for hard copy albums.

Just as CDs killed the cassette, and cassettes killed the 8 track, and 8 tracks killed that funny black disc thingy my generation uses to make a statement (or arts & crafts), so digital music and MP3s are killing CDs. It’s not a secret. Everyone knows it, and consumers are embracing it. So now it’s time for record labels and artists to embrace it too, but spending millions of dollars fighting the shift isn’t going to change the fact that it’s still shifting. Time to rethink the system, guys! Hop on the bandwagon and legally offer more albums digitally, more singles for free, and understand that America’s love affair with music isn’t ending any time soon, which means the money will keep coming in.