When purchasing music I either buy a song on iTunes or buy
an album on Amazon. How many people do you think actually do this though? I am
a avid fan of downloading my music rather than purchasing it from places like
Apple and Amazon. I know that most Athletes listen to music before a game and
have always wondered how they get their songs and often find myself asking “Do
they get it before the public since its possible they are friends with the
artists? Do they download it? Or do they do the right thing and purchase it?
“The battle
over online music in the US turned ugly in the summer of 2003 when the
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) initiated lawsuits against its
own consumers (Condry, 2004)”. Also Burkhart and McCourt (2003) state, “The
1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) extended intellectual property
protection to domains pre- viously overlooked by federal copyright law. When people
are downloading music it is technically illegal and with a copyright code
record labels can sue the people who “leak” albums and songs. This
sometimes scares people into downloading music or videos because they think
that if they get caught they can possibly get charged or sued for lots of
money.
Purchasing
music can be very expensive. On iTunes it costs $1.29 per song and as a student
who enjoys listening to music it could be very pricey in the long run. The
quality is usually better when you buy a song but if you like burning CD’s for
your car or friends downloading makes the music into a MP3 mod is better. It
allows you to put more than 19 songs and you can still enjoy the music at a
lesser quality. If I could tell people weather to download a song or purchase I
would recommend that they download. This practice conflicts with copyright
issues because I would be recommending people to break the law.
Overall, I
think that if iTunes charged a monthly fee much like Netflixs more people would
be welcome to purchasing music online. It would allow consumers to purchase a
monthly subscription with songs that they can listen to and keep on there
computers for a certain amount of time.
References
McCourt, T., P. Burkart. (2003). When Creators, Corporations and Consumers Collide: Napster and the Development of On-line Music Distribution. Media, Culture & Society. 25 (3), pg. 333-350
Condry, Ian. (2004). Cultures of Music Piracy: An Ethnographic Comparison of the US and Japan. International Journal of Cultural Studies. 7 (3), pg. 343-363
People are scared when downloading as you said, It is what i see around me, people are so worried of doing something that will entitle them for a law suit or charges. But it is the way you said it which is purchasing music is expensive. This is the main issue, to me, those copyright holders they are not realizing that people in general will keep looking for alternatives to avoid paying these unjust costs. It is just how they, consumers, feel about these costs. I could argue more about how to tackle this issue of piracy anyhow the way i see it is that the copyright holders they hold the key to the solution, not necessary the total end of piracy. It is our willingness to pay any amount for these contents which they, the copyright holders, really and clearly see. It is in their interest to keep the situation as it is and fight piracy this way, but the new technology it is really changing the format of this game.
ReplyDeleteI try to download as many songs as I can off iTunes, but it does get a bit pricey when you download a handful at once. I have just recently discovered how easy it is to illegally download. I used to think there was some sort of risk of getting sued by a large company or even the risk of viruses. It occurs to me that I've never even herd of that happening to anyone, and if it did, it would probably happen to someone who downloads way more than I do. Downloading music illegally is way too easy, and shows no treat to the users unlike previous types of prohibition. Our society does not encourage piracy, but it barely discourages it either. I haven't seen a PSA against piracy since the "You wouldn't steal a car.." campaigns. The youth culture needs to see a legitimate threat to their way of downloading, but as long as there's still people buying music, The industry will stay afloat.
ReplyDeleteI would say not many people buy from iTunes or albums from Amazon, the majority of my friends get their music illegally and only a small few by their favourite artist’s CDs mostly for the car. You bring up a good point about athletes and even other celebrities that listen to music, on where they are getting their music. I have some famous people on Twitter and have seen them post photos of iTunes charts when their singles hit #1 and can see they have purchased other songs on there as well. I agree the quality is much better when buying the songs on iTunes; louder and clearer. I agree that a monthly subscription through iTunes would be a good alternative to preventing piracy.
ReplyDeleteYou may be one of the first people I know of who purchases albums off of Amazon (I'm curious to know why you don't buy the album at HMV or Sunrise). I like downloading from iTunes these days because of the sound quality, not necessarily because I think it's wrong to steal music. I think when an artist releases their music for free download on sites like Soundcloud, it just puts their name out there even more and people will listen more. Being a musician/artist creating a fan base is way more important because those fans will support you by purchasing merchandise or concert tickets.
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