Has the internet ‘killed’ the music industry?

The argument of wherever the internet has killed the music industry is an extensive argument filled with many arguments for why the internet is to blame and other reasons for why the internet is not to blame. I will be exploring how the internet has not only hindered the music industry but how it has also helped the music industry at the same time. With up to sixty percent of adults who access the internet on a daily basis (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=8) and seventy-one percent of households in Britain have broadband (http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/cmr/753567/UK-internet.pdf) it is no surprise why the internet is the main suspect for killing the music industry. With such a large amount of people accessing the internet on a daily basis, the rise in downloading music is expected. The music industries are trying their best to regain the status they once had before the internet was as popular as it is today. However, as we will see this will not be so easy for the music industry to do because of big the internet is. Ever since “MP3 formatted music files on the internet this meant a wealth of material was ‘out there’ for those who knew how to look” (David, M 2010) it has been a slow increase in the culture of downloading music.

One of the main reasons for why the internet is being seen as the main contributor to killing the music industry is because it has made downloading music access able to everyone who has an internet connection. As mentioned in my introduction a large amount of people have a broadband connection meaning that downloading music is quick and easy. Along with it being quick and easy in most cases downloading music is free; this makes it desirable to many internet users. Yes, the downloading of music without paying for it is illegal; however, the positives outweigh the negatives. With the downloading of free music is illegal it is not treated as if it is. People do not treat it as if they are committing a crime people happily tell others of when or what they have recently downloaded for free. This is because the majority of people download music for free so people do not see themselves as doing any wrong. It is because of this attitude towards illegal downloading there is no surprise to see that CD sales have fallen so much over the past couple of years “sales of singles in the UK fell by 30% in 2003 and while album sales have remained relatively stable over the last three years, their average price has fallen significantly.” (The British Record Industry 2004).These statistics were taken from the BPI Statistical Handbook 2004 and the statistics reflect the music industry in the year 2003. Even though these statistics were taken over six years ago, it shows how even then the decline was noticeable. Many people choose to either download illegally or download music and pay for it because it gives choice. People now have control over what and who they want to listen. “Although singles now only account for a small part of total sales revenue they still remain an integral part of the UK record business in many ways. However factors such as illegal downloading have placed enormous pressure on the singles market in recent years” (The British Record Industry 2004). Over recent years, since this statistic was published the effect illegal downloading has had on singles is noticeable. Not only does it effect the sales of singles and albums it is also effecting music shops. HMV which is the biggest music retailer recently announced that “its annual profits have more than halved.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6252300.stm) Unfortunately due to bad sales Music Zone which was the third largest music and film retailer collapsed into administration in 2007. It is these profit loss and closure of music retailers that are putting the blame on the internet and illegal downloading. People no longer have to buy an album to just listen to the odd track, they can now select specific songs of albums and just pay for those songs instead of paying for songs they will not listen to. It is this freedom that people enjoy having wherever they are paying to have the freedom or doing it illegally, many people thrive off this freedom. The thought of being caught and being prosecuted by the police no longer crosses peoples mind when they are downloading illegally. The lack of fear that people have mean that the thought of prosecution does not bother them as the evidence of people being prosecuted is very little. People are not being prosecuted because it is hard to track people down this is mainly down to how vast the internet is. Along with how vast the internet is people are downloading music through peer to peer (P2P) file sharing applications and programmes such as Bittorrent and Limewire. It is through people downloading files from other people instead of downloading it from specific websites it becomes even harder for these people to be tracked and prosecuted.

It is these P2P file sharing applications and programmes that are the core reason to why the internet has killed the music industry. This is because there are so many applications and programmes it has become very easy to download the latest song even before it has been released. This is another factor that people will illegally download is that they can get the song as soon as they hear it. However, if they choose to pay for the download they have to wait until the artist has released the song. Limewire was one of the most popular P2P programmes on the internet, this was because it was very easy to use and would only take 5 minutes or less to download one song. Here below are a few screen shots of limewire.

However on 26th October 2010 Limewire was closed down by an injunction issued by the US district court in New York “the injunction compels Lime Group to disable its searching, downloading, uploading and file trading features.” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11635320)

This was a major success for the music industry as it was finally showing them fighting back. However this was only a temporary set back to those who used Limewire. This is because of how many other ways there are to download music and the numerous of popular P2P applications and programmes. Frostwire is very similar to Limewire and has been a popular choice for those who once used Limewire.

Filing cabinets OR, the mundane world of technology

This unit is really about how a certain kind of technology – media and communications technology as it would once have been called – comes to be embedded in our everyday lives. It is about how ways of living, working and even playing, change gradually (and sometimes very quickly) from being constituted in largely face-to-face activities, to being characterised by a mediated distance that results from the technological enhancement of daily life. These developments are evident in the objects we surround ourselves with – from televisions to telephones and computers to credit cards, and on and on and on.

If we look at this photograph, there is much that can be learned about a world that, in many respects, seems to have vanished with the passing of time. What we are looking at is a workplace devoted to the organisation and management of information. Whatever else they are doing – running an advertising agency, a food distribution company, or whatever – they are organising information and working towards facilitating its easy communication.

There are no computers here, only typewriters, paper and filing cabinets. Today those banks of filing cabinets have largely been replaced by digital documents. Yet, for all this might look like a quaint vision of a bygone era, it is also the image of a modern, rationalised, technologised, organisation that was common for much of the 20th century.

It is worth making a general point about technology: technology has always been concerned to bend the world to human needs – that has remained the case from technologies as seemingly basic as the hand-woven basket to today’s smartphones. They are things that presume to make our lives easier. As such, technology just embodies – in its various forms and objects – material processes and social relations between people. Technology, as we see it in this office, was embodied in what might roughly be described as service functions. The workers – all women, you may notice – were service workers.

Today, almost everyone who works in a business organisation that relies on communication – and that might include everyone who does not dig ditches, empty garbage or perform so-called ‘menial’ tasks for a living – takes on a variety of those tasks that once belonged to a specific class of service workers. The fact that this is the case explains how pervasive information and communications have become in contemporary life. It is a fact whose implications we need to observe and understand.

This is a picture of a mundane world of technology. Today, information and communications technology is mundane in rather different ways; but to understand the ways in which it has become woven into our everyday lives, we need to begin by considering how it began its drift from the specialised field of the military and industrial worlds into all aspects of life today. It begins with notions such as ‘Information Technology’, ‘Cybernetics’, and ‘real time computing’, which – through the late 20th century – move from the technical to the personal.