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Get
Involved: Debate on Peer to Peer Music Sharing (by Mark Cavdar)
In
less than a decade, youth culture has shifted into a collective
reliance on the endless wellspring of information provided by the
internet. The arrival of the internet has changed the way we view
information. On par with the socio-cultural shifts ushered in by the
dawn of communicative catalysts such as the television and the
telephone, the internet allows us to converse, research, and learn at
lightning fast speeds. The internet’s rapid growth has brought about
many changes in our modern youth culture; the shortening of our
attention spans, the sudden predilection for multiple chat partners,
the never-ending flow of information ingested through our computer
screens. Through all these changes, though, one aspect of our youth
culture seems to have been impacted most profoundly:
the way teenagers and young adults obtain the music they listen
to.
Music has
always been a defining tool of youth culture. It is used as a tool by
youth to express their personal individualism, whether it encompasses
a departure from the standard or a perfect conformity to the masses.
With the advent of the internet, coupled with its blistering speed and
simple utilization, teenagers are now capable of consuming, trading,
sampling, and downloading music with the ease of a few clicks of a
mouse button. The dawn of music’s digital era has brought with it a
fair share of its own brand of controversy, including the frantic
scrambling of record companies struggling to hold on to every last
dollar, the infringement of copyrights by the download-devoted, the
violation of artists’ rights, and the collective indifference
society has taken on to the thought of “stealing” music by
downloading it.
Prior to the
advent of the internet, seeking out independent artists was a much
more difficult affair, for few musicians are graced with the gift of
mainstream media approval. Indie-starved youths could always retreat
to the back aisles of record stores and the increasingly endangered
format of traditional AM/FM radio still seemed substantial to the
public’s awareness of new music. That, however, was a very long time
ago, before a program named Napster revolutionized the collective
accessibility to music, turning it into a process as simple as typing
a few words into a search bar and three clicks of a mouse button. What
differentiated Napster from its peers during its heyday in the late
‘90s was its exclusive focus on music files, opting out of sharing
anything other than MP3 files. Since Napster opened the door to the
digital world of music sharing, it has grown and escalated into a very
big problem for all the major record companies.
Scrambling to
find a way to stifle the adamant growth of digital piracy, record
companies have gone to great lengths in hopes of protecting their
investments. Faced with four years of continually decreasing revenues,
our nasty little habit of downloading music has become a glaring
blemish on the once abundantly profitable music industry. From 1999 to
2003, the recording industry’s revenues sank 14%. Sales of blank
CD’s now outnumber the sales of actual compact discs by musicians by
a margin of more than 2 to 1. Many have attributed this drop to the
fact that more and more internet users are starting to download music.
This claim isn’t entirely false: at any given time of the day, about
5 million individual internet users are connected to peer-to-peer
file-sharing programs, offering their loaded hard-drives for trade.
Close to 2.5 billion songs are traded monthly on Kazaa, a popular
file-sharing program, nearly tripling the total amount of albums sold
in a year by the recording industry. The allure of free music is
undeniable: why pay for something when I can get it for free, without
leaving the comfort of my home? While music is a very integral part to
youth and their culture, the prices of compact discs often offset the
desire to purchase, as nobler means for spending hard-earned money
often come to mind.
In response to
the budding outbreak of piracy, the Recording Industry Association of
America (RIAA), in coalition with major record labels, has launched a
number of campaigns to counteract the dwindling profits. New albums by
major label acts such as Radiohead and the Beastie Boys come fully
equipped with software that prevents the conversion of the tracks on
the CD into digital music files. Yet, both albums are available for
download in their entirety on every peer-to-peer file sharing network.
Drastic
measures call for frantic actions, and in September of 2003 the
recording industry filed 261 lawsuits against illegal file-sharers.
The following month, the RIAA sent letters to 200 more file-sharers,
demanding monetary compensation for their piracy, holding the
impending threat of legal action above their heads. The value of these
requested compensations varied with each individual based on the
volume of illegal music downloaded. The suits ranged in value from
$3,000 to $10,000, and the RIAA was impartial in its distribution of
the suits, unaware that for some individuals, paying the demanded
restitutions would drive them into debt. In this bold action, the RIAA
finally found a scapegoat for the faltering state of the record
industry: the internet. Theories of the deteriorating quality of music
went to the wind. Album sales were suffering due to piracy, not
quality! The bottom line could not be bothered with what critics
cared. In the eyes of major record companies, albums are gauged by
their commercial success, not their searing potency or their enduring
appeal.
The casual
downloader cares little for copyrights. The sudden boon of digital
music simply comes across to the armchair file-sharer as a means of
programming a radio station that only plays the good stuff,
twenty-four hours a day. Another huge attraction to digital music is
its immense flexibility. The music follows wherever one decides to go,
whether it blares out the speakers of a desktop computer, through the
headphones of an MP3 or CD player, or blasts out the sub-woofer in the
backseat of an automobile. The downloading-devoted will argue, if
anything, that digital music helps the music industry by introducing
the masses to new talent. Rather than spending money on one record,
people may sample the works of many different artists before deciding
on which disc they would like to buy. Artists are helped in their
garnered exposure, and the casual consumer gets the opportunity to do
some research before investing their money. Digital music also gives
lesser-known artists, those not embraced by the mass media and hyped
to excess on major media outlets, a heightened level of exposure. Many
bands have accumulated a cult following due to the widespread exposure
their music has received due to file sharing.
So at the end
of the day, a few things are for certain. Music sales are on the
downtick. But, just as with every major industry, this could be a mere
consumer recession or a full-blown assault by internet pirates.
Internet piracy is expanding at an exponential rate. Will this
translate into bigger exposure for lesser-known artists and a leveled
playing field in terms of mass-media coverage? Or will it merely
handicap an industry already struggling to stay afloat with the
changing trends in society? Do you download, and if so, do you carry
with you any sort of guilt for doing so? While it may be covered in
federal legislature, is satisfying your aural pleasure zones by
listening to one of your favorite songs really a harsh criminal
offence? And really now, to the musician, isn’t it all about the
music, anyway?
These
questions – and many more – are begging to be answered. Make sure
to get involved in this debate. Write to the RIAA, your favourite
music artists, or even your local politicians. It is clear that the
debate is still raging on, and public opinion may be the most
important factor at the end of the debate.
Sources
Borland, John. "RIAA lawsuits yield mixed
results." 4 December 2004. 30 June 2004. <http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5113188.html>.
"Some
Facts About Music Piracy." Recording Industry Association of
America. 25 June 2003. 30 June 2004. <http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/062503_c.asp>.
Stop RIAA
Lawsuits Coalition. 30 June 2004. <http://www.stopriaalawsuits.com/index1.html>.
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