Piracy in the Music Industry

There are many debates over some parties that think that music piracy is actually stealing. Music pirates perceived music piracy as free-from-fault and remained dismissive towards the copyright. In my opinion, music piracy is stealing.

The most significant impact of music piracy is the drastic decline in the sales of music albums. Nowadays, music sales have been so low and continue to drops, and it is very difficult for artists to reach platinum (selling a million records) or even multi-platinum (selling 2 million records or above). Back in the day, going platinum was the norm, but today, it is almost impossible. For some artists, even going gold (selling 500,000 thousand records) is a struggle. Although music piracy has been around for a while, it seems to have become more rampant after the popularizing of the internet. Internet provides a platform for peer-to-peer sharing and illegal downloading websites to be readily available to the worldwide community. A simple internet connection is now all we need to download millions of tracks and music videos, free.

The Music Industry is thus suffering from a deficit. Every time a song is downloaded from illegitimate sites, money is taken away from the pockets of not just record company executives, but also from the artists and songwriters, to office staff, and music shop employees and owners. They deserve to be paid for their hard work and creativity. No one who has a conscience can deny that. But there are far too many people out there feel that is their right to get creative content for free. Music advocates may argue that they do so because they do not want to buy albums that have a few decent songs only, but the bottom line is this: if it is not paid, it is stealing. Look at this problem from a long term point-of-view, without money, the bands will eventually go out of business. Of course, there are just a few at the start; but as it gets worse, more bands will drop out. Fewer bands will result in less music and thus, fewer genres. For the case of music store and record company, both of them will lose money in business, and eventually go into liquidation. In this time of economic recession, this just lets the unemployment rate raise even higher.

Do all music downloads constitute theft? No. However, downloading of copyrighted material without the permission of the artist is theft, and when you get caught, nobody is going to listen to the excuses. The majority of people who illegally download see the act as harmless, as if their use of these illegal sites will have little effect on the music industry as a whole. Nevertheless, music piracy has actually brought huge negative impacts to music industry as well as the public. So, next time if you are tempted by the offer of free music, just pause for a minute and consider the consequences, because they may be greater than you think.