If you are a college student and you are reading this article, there is a good chance that you have broken the law at least once sometime this week. For example, most students would not consider themselves thieves for downloading music illegally, but it is still technically against the law. Now that the Internet has made file sharing so incredibly easy, teenagers and children are beginning to fall for the belief that music is not worth paying for.
A recent poll by Piper Jaffray has found that only 22 percent of teenagers would be willing to pay the standard price of $1 for a song. The same poll also found that 65 percent of teenagers use a file-sharing program to download music illegally.
Having lived through the age of Napster, Kazaa and Limewire, I am well aware of how easy it is to obtain music online for free. However, I also had the experience of seeing the lawsuits and legal debates that stemmed from the use of that kind of software. The younger generation of today did not experience these things, and they are growing up without the knowledge that music is something that is supposed to be paid for.
Clearly there is an issue with the way that music is being distributed. Currently, the three options for obtaining new music are: purchasing a CD, purchasing a digital download from iTunes or another online retailer, or downloading the song illegally. Buying the CD is almost completely useless because CD players are rarely used these days outside of a car, and most car stereos can be modified to play an mp3 player. Most people would buy the CD and immediately load it to their computer and mp3 player, leaving behind a useless piece of plastic afterwards.
Most people who aren’t in need of a new Frisbee would download the music from iTunes, but this brings up another issue. Buying music from iTunes is like paying for nothing. You click a button, some money is sent from your credit card to Apple, then they send you an mp3 file and a few pixels and the transaction is over. You are left with no actual physical evidence of your purchase besides a completely digital file on your hard drive.
There has to be some kind of incentive for people to pay for music other than a CD. Teenagers want to listen to new music, but they aren’t interested in collecting CDs like people used to collect vinyl records. The music on CD is nothing but digital information that can almost instantly be removed in full quality, so teenagers have no connection to it. What they want is the files, and they can easily obtain them for free if they need to.
The music industry shouldn’t be surprised that kids are downloading music for free. I want to have some kind of physical evidence of my purchase if I am going to pay for music, but I don’t need a CD. I think artists need to start thinking of more creative methods of distributing their songs. For example, the most recent Radiohead album, “The King of Limbs,” was released online before it was released as a physical copy, but the band also offered a more-expensive special edition that came with a massive book of artwork and multiple other collectable items. If artists began to include some kind of gift or artwork that is only available with the physical copy, it might be incentive enough for people to buy music again.
Matt Grippi is a junior journalism major and contributor for the Daily 49er.
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