Remember the Napster controversy back in 2000? Good times. But for those that don’t know, Napster really pioneered the whole online music piracy business starting in 1999 (it wasn’t the first, but it was by far the most popular). But the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) caught on to its methods of transferring MP3’s across networks and filed a lawsuit against the company (and Metallica played a huge role in attacking Napster as well). Napster was forced to shutdown and pay up a ton of money, and now the name is merged with Rhapsody.
I think online piracy is something characteristic of our time, an era filled with obtaining a bunch of free programs, movies, music, games, and information. But I want to focus on music right now, and what better way to start than to address how piracy has affected the world view of the music industry. And just so people know, I actually sympathize with the music industry on a lot of issues, although I disagree with how they are going about solving them. Everyone needs to understand that music both as a recordable art form and as a file-type is UNIQUE compared to EVERY OTHER RECORDABLE PIECE OF ART. I’m not trying to sound arrogant, nor am I trying to say that music is superior to movies or video games. I’m merely trying to say that the way we consume music is completely different than the way we consume, for instance, Breaking Bad or Frozen.
First, the value of recorded music comes from repetition. You don’t listen to a song you like only once and then walk away. You listen to it again and again, often until you get it stuck in your head.
Second, recorded music is portable and requires little attention. Yes, of course all file-types are portable in the sense that they can be uploaded to any computer or device. What I mean by portable here is that music can be played in a variety of places with no real time investment – you can play it on almost any device at home, in your car, or at work while doing other things – you don’t need to be focusing your energy on the song unless you want to.
These characteristics have forced the music industry to make money in a limited number of ways, comparatively speaking. Keep in mind that movie studios make the majority of their money at the box office, something virtually unaffected by the Internet. Television networks either make their money through paid subscriptions or advertisements. And many video game studios are protected by console or hardware restrictions, although loss of sales are the most comparable to that of the music industry. But the music industry as a whole has almost of these luxuries – they have no box office (you might try and compare live concerts, but I’ll get to that in a bit), they have no way of placing advertisements on songs (people would stop listening), and paid subscriptions usually go to the website providing the streaming service. All the industry has is the sale of music and its concerts.
Before moving on, I want to address this latter point of live music. Remember that, when I say “music industry,” I’m referring to every part of the industry, including musicians. The average band makes between $20,000 and $50,000 a year, and because of the ease with which music is obtained freely online, the vast majority of this income is coming from live concerts. Try and compare that to the box office revenue two days ago, when Godzilla made $93 million its opening weekend. The movie industry works with much higher budgets than the recording industry, and the payment of its actors are almost never dependent upon sales. I’m not trying to argue that the music industry doesn’t also have incredibly large concerts that provide a lot of revenue, I’m just pointing out that piracy has more adverse effects upon those actually making the music.
This doesn’t mean that piracy has in any way put a dent in the profit of the recording industry. In fact, because of the repetitive and portable nature of music, people tend to buy songs they like even if they pirated it, so that they can support their favorite musicians. Also, iTunes sales are absolutely fantastic, and I believe a lot of these sales are due to word of mouth facilitated by transferring music online. As a whole, I think the recording industry doesn’t need to worry about piracy, it just needs to focus on increasing revenues paid to its musicians.
Arman is Awesome 