Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Where is File Sharing leading the Music Industry?



It is becoming more and more difficult for the music industry to ignore the basic economics of their industry: unenforceable property rights (you can’t sue everyone) and zero marginal production costs (file sharing is ridiculously easy). All the big labels have now given up on DRM. They haven’t yet given up on trying to charge for their music, but it’s becoming more and more clear that as long as there is a free alternative (file sharing), the price of music will have to fall towards free. You can disagree as to whether it’s “fair” that the price of recorded music will be zero or near zero, but you can’t disagree that it might happen.
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6 comments:

  1. I think music industry suffered a lot due to file sharing. File sharing makes the music industry die out slowly. Eventually I think music industry will have to find other ways to make profit because if we look at things in a realistic way, people will not stop sharing and downloading. Many copyright issues are involved and no one knows if they will be solved soon. In the mean time I think the music industry must do something instead of waiting and watching its termination.

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  2. Music industry is charging for music and I think it is fair because if they will not charge then how are they going to run their business. We share files for free and there are some who charge for music. I don’t think that the price of the recorded music will be zero or near zero. When that will happen there will be no one left who will be willing to play music for other people. Without music there will be no iPods, which are sold a lot in this generation. Music is really relaxing and so I think that no matter what there should be charge for music but not too expensive either.

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  3. Even if they try and stop all the music sharing their will always be one person that will be able to get away with it. And if you have one person then you will have amillion people. They should just reallt give up on it. by Jen Hight

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  4. this will continue to happen. you cannot possibly stop everyone from doing it, because i believe every one has done it before. it is not fair but thats how the technology works. there are always advantages and disadvantages to things.

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  5. I think that the music industry is at the mercy of the people. It is difficult enough to survive within the music industry let alone the fact that most of music is available through the internet at no cost if not a very minimal cost. I think that eventually there will have to be some sort new laws that are strictly enforced in order for the music industry to survive the internet age of downloading free music.

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  6. I use LimeWire on a regular basis so I am in no way opposed to file sharing. That being said, I am also not one to complain about the price of concert tickets because I understand why they are so expensive sometimes. If the artist is not making money from their album they need to make up the revenue from somewhere.

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