If you don't know me well, then you wont know that I play in a signed band that goes on tours and has their music distributed worldwide. We're on iTunes, Amazon, and pretty much any other site that music is sold on. The point of this isn't to toot my own horn but just so I can establish my knowledge on the subject and kind of give my own standpoint. Now, I know that this is a little off the vein of video editing but, I do think it is important to talk about illegal music downloading because we are seeing a lot of the same things in illegal video streaming and downloading. I am also giving a speech and writing a documentary on the subject so I have done a lot of research on the topic.
Although I am connected very strongly to the music industry, my opinion on the subject is very unbiased and dead in the middle on the topic. On one hand, it has costed the industry millions of dollars every year and since Napster started the online illegal file sharing in 1999, the industry has regressed in sales almost 50%. Its costed almost 100,000 jobs in the music industry and is the reason the music industry and labels support really crappy mainstream artists because they don't have money to invest and take risks on musicians and artists that are outside of the mainstream.
On the other hand, you have to blame the record labels and the RIAA for failing to adapt well if at all to the changes that the internet has brought into the music scene and have stayed in the stone age when it comes to file sharing and streaming content. In recent history, they have allowed things like spotify and pandora which is great but have made it very hard to make music accessible to everyone. Most people want to experience music before they put money down to buy it.
I think a lot of it comes down to education and the mindset of Americans. I'm worried that this trend is beginning to plague the movie industry as well. I'm wondering what everyone else's thoughts are on the subject and if they have ideas on how to fix it.
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ReplyDeleteI personally don't pirate music. I listen to a lot of bands that aren't well known and I understand that they need people to buy their music and see their concerts to keep making music. I buy physical copies of the CD's and I've gone to so many concerts to support these bands. It sucks that my favorite bands can't tour as much or make as much music as they could because people steal their music.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand I can see why people would steal music from mainstream bands, what's a few thousand dollars for bands that make millions? That's what I thought for a while until one of my favorite bands Disturbed went on hiatus because people kept stealing their music. I think people need to listen to Spotify more instead of stealing music, at least money goes to the artist in some way.