Napster launches in Germany
It’s no secret that the Recording Industry has hit a rough patch over the last decade. In order to better explain the situation, I will present four of the key reasons that this has happened. Today, I will delve into the most obvious reason for the free fall. Why save the most obvious for last, right?
The 1990’s were the golden era of record sales. Sales had never hit numbers that high before, and they will likely never reach those numbers again. Shawn Fanning, then a college student at Northeastern, put a stop to the money train. By creating peer to peer service Napster, he made it possible for users to share files with other users for free. While this service has become a part of our daily lives, at the time, it was revolutionary. In fact, it is arguably the most influential creation in the history of music.
After Napster became the target of some of music’s largest artists, including rock legends Metallica, lawsuits followed. Napster was then forced to shut down. While this was a victory in theory, it simply meant that some other programmer would pick up where Fanning left off. There are now a handful of peer to peer programs that still provide this service.
If the pirating of files was not damaging enough to the recording industry, lawsuits against consumers contributed to the problem. It is understandable that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the major labels felt they needed to defend their legal rights to their property. They were legally justified in doing so. However, by bringing lawsuits against consumers that you hope to make your customers, you are alienating yourself and stripping them of disposable income. Some people even felt more justified in illegally downloading because lawsuits made RIAA out to be villains.
This problem is still ongoing; and it is not a simple one to solve. Record companies are leaning more and more on artists marketed toward a younger audience (e.g. the Jonas Brothers, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus). A problem with marketing artists to a young audience is that younger audiences do not have much disposable income. Illegal downloading is going to continue. As long as there is a desire for music from a public that either does not have the money to pay for it, or simply does not want to, they will find a way to pirate it. It is not a new phenomenon. Copying songs from the radio onto cassette tapes, or making “mixed tapes” were examples of piracy before the digital age. As with any technological advancement, peer to peer file sharing has simply stream lined and improved the ability to pirate.
The future of the music industry is difficult to foresee. The need for music is never going to vanish; it is part of the human condition. However, if the current system is not re-evaluated, it is going to become very difficult for music to survive as a commercial enterprise. Don’t get me wrong, people downloading music is not the only problem with the industry…but we will continue that story next time.
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Jeff graduated Magna Cum Laude from Drexel University with a BS in Music Industry and a minor in Business Administration. I am currently pursuing my Master’s in Business Administration while continuing my career in the music industry.
Over the course of my career I have worked for three record labels; Ropeadope Records, MAD Dragon Records, and RoadRunner Records. I have also recorded and produced multiple albums and worked as a DJ.
Ridiculous. On-line infringement is not hurting the biz, the biz is hurting he biz. The execs have hired lawyers without any creative imagination to jerk the knees of the business. The RIAA should be put out of business as a racketeering influenced corrupt organization.
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Right on.
Down digital, up analog.
Civil rights over copyrights.
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This is absurd. Illegal downloading is barely making a dent in music sales. the real problem is that the so-called ‘talent’ on which the major record labels have been throwing away money is CRAP. Honestly, I think that the record companies should be glad that people even care enough about the acts cluttering up the Billboard charts that they even download any of it — for free or otherwise.
Music industry executives are totally incompetent and they have lost touch with their markets. Like equally incompetent executives in other industries which were run into the ground by lousy management, the music industry is just grasping at straws and pointing fingers.
Keep pushing no-talent junk acts, and sales will continue to drop.
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My personal beef is with the fact that they engaged in illegal payola for decades (cash, drugs, and prostitutes) in order to create demand for a central type of music. That greatly damaged regional music forms and hurt local cultures throughout America and the world. Music is a central component to a culture and regional cultures were greatly damaged by the suppression of regional music forms. The purpose of copyright is to create better quality products not to protect an artist’s property rights, the music industry combined a misuse of copyright with a payola system to devastate local and regional cultures.
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