Tarek+El+Saad


 * Music: Too Expensive to Be Free, Too Free to Be Expensive **

This is an article about the problems that the music industry are still facing due to file sharing. The article discusses how companies that are providing free music to consumers are not able to pay the cost to copyright holders. The strategy being used now by companies is to provide music for free online and pay for the cost of the music themselves from ad revenues that the site charges for businesses to advertise on the site (aka a freemium model). But there is a problem with this model. Ad revenues are not covering the costs created by copyright issues. Now the problem is that since people still have the option to use file sharing to download music for free they can just simply go back to downloading music and the music industry gets nothing in return. At least with the freemium model they were getting something out of it The only people who seem to be suffering are the artists creating the music and the music industry. The music industry is not selling music as people can easily download their favorite music, and the option of downloading a song for 99cents seems a bit redundant when you can get it for free. The only people who do seem to be able to make money out of all of this are hard-drive manufacturers. The article also states that it is quite evident that the free music option isn’t working well because sites that planned on being free have now resorted to having users pay a subscription fee or make users pay hidden costs such as Spotify which will be bundled with your future Smartphone or ISP plan. Overall the article discusses the problems that the music industry is still having as music is either too expensive to be free or to free to be expensive.

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I cant imagine how they would deal with piracy, its very widespread

Comments

In regards to how artists are suffering, I read this interesting article the royalty structure on digital downloads. http://gizmodo.com/5417318/my-6247-royalty-statement-how-major-labels-cook-the-books-with-digital-downloads?skyline=true&s=x. It seems the artists were suffering prior to internet piracy. Most of their money is made via concerts, and the only artists who really make any money off album sales are the one who release it independently. Not to mention how illegal downloads has done wonders for indy rock. user:michael_mckerracher