Internet and Music Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Internet and Music Industry - Essay Example The music industry is not limited to the artists and the record companies. It also includes the composers, the musicians’ representatives, television and radio broadcasting companies, advertising agencies and so much more. It has, for the past 50 years, earned most of its revenues through selling its artists’ albums in the form of long play (LP) record albums, cassette tapes, compact discs (CDs) and digital versatile discs (DVDs). Aside from these albums sold in record stores, revenue also comes from music videos played on television, music played over the radio, and, of course, concerts and tours. The music industry is considered to be one of the top industries as far as value and income are concerned. In the last few years, however, with the rise of the Internet, the music industry has found new ways to earn money. Record companies began to collect orders online and ship their products to any part of the world which has internet access. And even later, they learned to collect money in exchange for downloadable music. This meant that they needed less money to produce and store their products. It also meant faster service for the customers and, therefore, faster influx of cash. The internet became a very good source of income as it has a greater consumer reach, faster response time, and it presented a lot of choices for the consumers. But, as with many happy stories, there is a down side to this new technology. The internet also gave way to both small and large scale piracy. It allowed its users to violate intellectual property rights in a snap, that they do not even realize it until much later. The instant connection between people that the internet provided allowed its users to share files, especially music and other multimedia content. The rise of multimedia tools and social networks, such as YouTube, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, and MySpace, made copyright infringement easier, faster and even harder to control. 39% of social network users embed copyrighted materials into their pages and 79% of them say that these embedded media reflect their personality. In the early part, consumers did not realize that this was a form of piracy and just enjoyed acquiring "free" music. Then after some time, when record companies started to feel the pain of illegal downloads, they started informing the world of how their properties are being stolen even if unintended. Still, illegal downloads have gone up from 36% in 2006 to 43% in 2007.4 The record companies