Music is certainly an entertainment that occupies many people’s life as music is found almost everywhere such as television programs, cafe, advertisements, radio and many more. “I can’t live without music” is the most said quote by almost everybody that listen to music nowadays where we can know that music for a fact plays a significant role in the modern world. However, record labels that are vigorously making and promoting music for the public have been accused of unethical exploitation of artist and their works for taking a bigger share of income. “Unethical” contains the meaning of ‘not morally correct’ and “exploitation” means that ‘the action of making use of and benefiting from resources’, according to the Oxford Dictionaries. If the
Background on Digital Piracy Digital piracy refers to the general use of digital resources and capabilities (in some cases, hardware and reverse engineering) to illegally copy, hijack digital protection and distribute counterfeited or modified digital commercial products like software, music, films, electronic books, online journals and among others, without the consent to the legal owner. (Higgins, 2008) The evolution of information technology can be attributed for the rise and propagation of digital piracy. (Ramayah, 2009) Software is one of the leading products distributed online. Thus, the software industry is one of the most targeted industry by piracy. (Arli, 2014) This has caused the industry to suffer declines in profitability.
1.1.1. Digital Music Piracy Music piracy is a big thing and concern for the music industry and law enforcement. It is supported by the MP3 invention that enables users to send, copy and keep their music over an Internet connection. The Internet itself is the primary appliance to implement digital music piracy by empowering Internet users to commit crime easily because Internet does allow anonymous communication. Music piracy is transnational and shifts in thinking from ownership of physical property to ownership of ideas (Wall, 2005).
This contribution obtained long after the initial distribution of movies in theaters and television. Pirates do not pay wages or taxes and they do not give benefits to the workers. Therefore, how is it possible for all these workers obtained those benefits when the viewer preferred to watch the film at pirate sites rather than in more legal ways. Conversely, actors and directors may not experience the impact since they may not be getting a considerable portion of back-end money (Strauss, 2013). For them, piracy is just another way of upping up their visibility where recognition of their work, their name, and their face is predominant.
For a music producer trying to do everything on their own, you can: • Manufacture and sell your albums to customers by mail order • Promote them on your live acts • Use the internet tools such as; social networks, websites, and blogs • Use the media such as radio stations. Income Streams The artist music plan of action has been in flux for a considerable length of time. The record arrangement dream that most artists looked for is no more the feasible option that it once was. The leveling of the music distribution playing field by the Web is for all intents and purposes complete. Individuals now get to and download music from different sources, more often than not for nothing.
It also helps to avoid confusion as percentages of royalties should be agreed on by the creator and the person/company that uses the song. Music licensing and royalties are very important to artists/creators because if someone does want to use their work then they get a royalty fee, which will help increase their income. This will help a song creator to invest more money in building bigger projects such as writing an entire
Everyone can download from the internet without paying for that. This procedure allows the entertainment of customers without taxes and payments. Therefore, the threat of other entertainment sources are also posing a mid to low level of threat of substitution to music industry in contrast with music. 5) Industry Rivalry(Low level of threat) In UK music industry, discography has been replaced by digital era. According to RIAA statistics, the blossom of the industry began with the comparison of offline and online sales.
Today’s rap messages differ from the 80’s and 90’s, but a few things have stayed. Violent lyrics and the promotion of drug use is not something new, but something that may be causing more issues today. Some people believe that rap music does not promote drug use nor violence, but is an expression of truth in today’s world and emotions the rapper may have. Rap music is one of the key promoters of violence and drug use among society and its listeners today. There was a study that found that listening to rap is far more strongly correlated with property crimes than crimes of violence among urban youth.
Internet downloading and peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing services has been growing rapidly since the technology has evolved over the time. The internet getting popular and so do piracy has become even more widespread. Choi and Perez (2007) stated that online piracy refers to the unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented (electronic) material such as music or software files. Piracy version of music files which mostly in MP3 format have become widespread on the Internet (Peitz & Waelbroeck, 2005). Today’s the music industry has experienced a world of change which are turning the industry upside down and the music consumption pattern and music sales has been reconsider.
2 Literature Review 2.1 Conceptual Framework “It is obvious that the issue of illegal downloading is not going to be resolved any time soon, despite endless attempts at doing so, since the problem is far too vast and difficult for any one party to monitor” (Bonner & O’Higgins, 2010, p.1352). The focus of this research is on music piracy, we will start by looking at what literature has been collected from the music industry relating to music piracy and independent artists, what has been done and what past research has been able to bring to the forefront. There is not a lot of research that has gone into the area of online piracy and music piracy to date. The government has been overwhelmed by the ever-advancing technology and has often