The Music Industry and File Sharing

In today's technological age, music is readily available for anyone who wants it over the Internet. Peer-to-Peer file sharing programs such as Kazaa, Limewire, or Gnutella offer free music downloads. As technology increases, record sales decrease; the cause being internet file sharing. This wave of internet music downloading began with Napster in 1999. Since then, the file sharing network grew and grew and many people, particularly teenagers, stopped buying CD's altogether. This caused some problems with the recording industry, claiming they lose billions of dollars annually from potential record sales lost due to internet file sharing. File sharing, although convenient, fast, free, and easy, is still considered stealing and is therefore illegal.

How come then, people don't think of the illegality of downloading music when they're doing it? Simply put, there's no reason to. There's virtually no way of getting caught, and it's much faster than going to a store and buying the music. Also, people have this mentality that the record executives and producers have enough money already, that they really aren't losing anything when they download music, and that they can get over losing a couple bucks. Carey Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), however, does not accept that as a reason. "Tell that to the thousands of people who have been laid off, tell that to the thousands of records stores that have been closed, tell that to the artists who aren't getting signed", says Sherman in the Chronical.

The creation of iTunes, Apple's online music store, in April 2003, was one answer from the music industry to the influx of online file sharing. Charging 99 cents a song, iTunes gives users a cheaper alternative to buying CD's. Why buy a whole album if there are only one or two songs worthwhile? This is one reason for iTunes success, which, after only its first summer, sold over three million songs.