To hell with legal formalities. Illegal file sharing is rampant, and everyone is doing it. Have you noticed that people stopped buying CDs and that no one watches MTV or MuchMusic anymore? When was the last time you actually liked what you were hearing on radio? The traditional business model of the music industry is undergoing an inevitable decline as more and more people are figuring out how to download music from the internet. Let us examine how file sharing has transformed everything about music.
Traditionally, people acquired music by paying for it. As much as this might boggle the mind of some people now, this was one of few ways people could listen to musicians they liked. In the past, reproduction of pre-existing music was rather cumbersome. You were able to make mixtapes by recording from radio, but selections were limited and recording quality was poor. If radio or TV didn’t play artists you like, you were out of luck. You simply had to buy their CDs. Taking advantage of this inability of people to acquire music in any other means, record companies were able to make huge profits consistently for decades.
The introduction of file sharing threatens this business model to its core. Reproduction of music can be done at almost no cost by anyone by simply ripping a CD and copying the file multiple times. The music can then be distributed to a limitless number of people by a single file sharer through protocols such as peer-to-peer or BitTorrent. The copied mp3 files can be further digitally duplicated multiple times without diminishing the audio quality. A single individual is now able to do the job of major corporate labels composed of thousands of employees.
File sharing transformed what people get to hear as well. Traditional dissemination of music was almost exclusively performed by a few major record labels, large retailers, television and radio. Therefore, people’s taste in music was largely acquired by listening to music provided by these large corporations. TV and radio, with limited airtime, tried to cater to the largest demographic possible. Thus, they were likely to have the blandest selection of music. With the rise of file sharing, consumers are no longer restricted to the selection of music provided by mainstream media. If we ignore marginal costs associated with bandwidth usage, consumers now can freely explore new music from different eras and cultures at no cost whatsoever. Some music blogs also have risen to prominence through offering a rare selection of music created by independent artists.
File sharing also has changed the way we listen to music. With vinyl records, CDs, and cassette tapes, people tend to listen to the album from start to finish simply because it’s cumbersome to switch albums in the middle. With mp3 files downloaded from internet, shuffling through different albums is incredibly easy. This inherent ability of mp3 players to jump from one song to another easily has trained people to venture through unknown songs from a playlist they have downloaded from music blogs. If someone doesn’t like what they are hearing, they can just jump to the next track.
Although it is clear that file sharing has liberated many music listeners from the limitations imposed by the music industry, it is not entirely clear what the future will bring for file sharing. The activity of file sharing has been regarded as illegal. The major record labels represented by CRIA and RIAA are also constantly lobbying the government to deter file sharing with more severe punishment. At the same time, it seems unlikely that any severe punishment will stop file sharing, and so it is likely that the face of the music industry will not change for the time being.
Leave a Reply