The Real Reason for Pirating?
I was reading a music based entertainment magazine the other day and it was talking about music leaking before it is released, and how its pretty much impossible to stop it from leaking early (as of now). One of the artist went on to say that leaking is only a bad thing if your album sucks.
If you think pirating is a problem, then these days, it is a really big problem. Last December, The New York Times revealed that there is an average of 22 iTunes songs per iPod.
The price in music has always had a downward trend, so why today when music is so cheap, and you only need travel to your computer chair to obtain it, is piracy so high. Maybe that’s just it, obtainability. What if piracy is so high because people want it in the most convenient matter, cost aside? Then you say “Keith, once you put your information in on iTunes it could actually be easier to pay for music then steal it.” June 1st, 1999 Sean Fanning created the first way to obtain music on the internet. Sean Fanning created the easiest way to obtain music. Sean Fanning created Napster, and it wasn’t legal. Napster spawned an entire generation who at first, were geared towards accessibility. Now millions of people have it hardwired in their brains to pirate music. Whether they don’t think it’s wrong, or they know it’s wrong, the first time they downloaded a song on the internet, was illegally. So The Shins new album is leaked 3 months before release date, cost aside, we resort back to our instinct, our first, our built nature of obtaining music through our favorite p2p client. If there would have been an iTunes released on the same day Napster was, the ratio of stolen music on the internet to bought music on the internet today, would be at least the same, most likely lower. Because we didn’t punch in our information on iTunes the first time we bought a song, for our generation it will never be instinct.
I also think that people steal music, because it’s easier to obtain higher quality music. ITunes will sell songs with a bitrate of at most 192kbps, which isn’t even CD quality. I’ll post later about how we should have higher quality music.
Loading …August 28 2007 11:26 pm | Thoughts
Leroy Biggums on 29 Aug 2007 at 12:29 am #
Its like paying for water
Keath on 29 Aug 2007 at 6:40 am #
I think you meant the ratio of stolen music to purchased music would be lower, not higher.
Will E UMM on 19 Sep 2007 at 11:29 pm #
Well I did a 20 page report on it in school, and while people may pirate music, it isn’t hurting the music industry and if anything there is some evidence to suggest that it is actually helping it. The main reason piracy isn’t as big a problem as the RIAA says it is, is that a lot of what people download isn’t necessarily what they would essentially buy. Kinda like a song you pirated because you heard it once and kinda thought it was good but would never buy the whole album. A big reason piracy is so prevalent other than availability, is the fact that it is still quite expensive relatively to the cost of producing. It can cost 10-20 bucks for a new CD, about the same as a DVD. Yet on average it only costs 500 thousand to record an album while it costs a few to muli million dollar budgets to produce a movie thats DVD is priced the same. In 2003 the RIAA was found to be guilty of price fixing, and sued I believe. But the fact is music is a part of our culture and we will always listen to it, like Leroy said its like paying for water. It for the most part costs very little to produce, so the fact that Record Industries are whining over piracy is ridiculous. Besides, while i’m not sure how much they make, concerts and tours make a fair bundle, and piracy or availability of music could be a great marketing strategy if harnessed correctly.