In July a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the British music industry and the main UK ISPs after talks facilitated by Ofcom: they agreed to a voluntary code of practice regarding persistent offenders of illegal music downloading, which will be overseen by Ofcom. The main sanction is warning letters being sent to offenders.
Illegal downloading is undoubtedly cheating musicians out of earning money from their artistic creations. Nevertheless, in the days before filesharing, music industry middlemen (record labels etc etc) were earning vast profits out of expensive CDs, with musicians themselves seeing only a small percentage of this. It is these middlemen fat cats who have been most adversely affected by the illegal download revolution. They buried their heads in the sand when they saw the change being brought by internet technology and, as Matt Mason (author of "The Pirate's Dilemma") put it, believed the music industry to be the little plastic disk industry, rather than embracing innovation.
For new artists at least, technological advances have brought many benefits. You can now make, record and distribute music cheaply yourself. Through sites such as Myspace you can easily find an audience for your music, with the Arctic Monkeys being a particular success story. A significant part of the music industry has, at best, been rendered unnecessary and, at worst, rendered obsolete by these advances. I am led to believe that still "useful" parts of the music industry, especially revolving around live music (venues, promoters etc) continue to do well.
It is true that once artists mature beyond their initial break may need the experience and care of the established industry to progress from amateur to professional. Furthermore, internet users download illegally the music of new unsigned artists as well as established artists on record labels.
However, I think that people are aware of the profit made on the average song by groups other than the artist, and thus regard much of the "theft" involved with illegal downloads as stealing more from record companies than individual artists given the perception that only a small proportion of profits reaches the creator of the work. If a website was set up which made explicit the amount of money going to the artist, and this was judged to be sufficiently high, I do think people's sense of fairness would encourage them to buy the song rather than download it illegally.
The music industry grumbling sounds all too much like them lamenting the loss of their excessive revenues.
Illegal downloading is undoubtedly cheating musicians out of earning money from their artistic creations. Nevertheless, in the days before filesharing, music industry middlemen (record labels etc etc) were earning vast profits out of expensive CDs, with musicians themselves seeing only a small percentage of this. It is these middlemen fat cats who have been most adversely affected by the illegal download revolution. They buried their heads in the sand when they saw the change being brought by internet technology and, as Matt Mason (author of "The Pirate's Dilemma") put it, believed the music industry to be the little plastic disk industry, rather than embracing innovation.
For new artists at least, technological advances have brought many benefits. You can now make, record and distribute music cheaply yourself. Through sites such as Myspace you can easily find an audience for your music, with the Arctic Monkeys being a particular success story. A significant part of the music industry has, at best, been rendered unnecessary and, at worst, rendered obsolete by these advances. I am led to believe that still "useful" parts of the music industry, especially revolving around live music (venues, promoters etc) continue to do well.
It is true that once artists mature beyond their initial break may need the experience and care of the established industry to progress from amateur to professional. Furthermore, internet users download illegally the music of new unsigned artists as well as established artists on record labels.
However, I think that people are aware of the profit made on the average song by groups other than the artist, and thus regard much of the "theft" involved with illegal downloads as stealing more from record companies than individual artists given the perception that only a small proportion of profits reaches the creator of the work. If a website was set up which made explicit the amount of money going to the artist, and this was judged to be sufficiently high, I do think people's sense of fairness would encourage them to buy the song rather than download it illegally.
The music industry grumbling sounds all too much like them lamenting the loss of their excessive revenues.
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