The Internet is often thought of as a negative technology when it comes to music and the music industry. Downloading music and pirating are two of the biggest concerns on the minds of anti-internet music lovers. However, as the music industry evolved and begun to really discover what popular culture wanted from music, the producers and record labels began taking advantage of artists and the music they wanted to play. Music today has largely become a week-by-week fad change...
The Internet is often thought of as a negative technology when it comes to music and the music industry. Downloading music and pirating are two of the biggest concerns on the minds of anti-internet music lovers. However, as the music industry evolved and began to really discover what popular culture wanted from music, the producers and record labels began taking advantage of artists and the music they wanted to play. Music today has largely become a week-by-week fad change. Labels in the music business have created this sort of culture by influencing which artists get advertising more than others and how they are sold. All of this manipulation of the market for music has generally caused an undesirable laziness in music. Most music isn't even about what people really like to hear, but rather what other people say is good. Therefore, when the Internet started having a big impact on how the majority of the populous acquired their music, of course the music business was upset. As the Internet grew, however, the ways in which music could be distributed became more available and cheaper. This gave smaller independent artists a much better chance at being heard.
In my paper, I am going to try to argue the fact that piracy is actually helping the music industry on a whole rather than hurting it like they are trying to say. I am going to aim my paper at readers who are probably likely to download music illegally or those who are wondering about the legality of all the music downloading going on. My hope is that this will help people to realize that music downloading is not really hurting anyone.
Thesis: The advance of the Internet and communication technologies is causing an increase in downloading music illegally. This increase in illegal downloads is often considered a bad thing and a hurtful illegal practice, but in actuality it is helping the music business and the individual artists a lot more.
Grossman, Lev. "The Battle Over Music Piracy." Time Magazine 24 May 2007 26 Oct 2008 <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1625209,00.html>.
This is an article, in Time Magazine, that examines the effects of piracy on the music business. This is a good source because it looks at both the positive and negative effects of music pirating. It will help me form a good argument for why the effects of pirating are actually beneficial to the music business. As a magazine article it is helpful because it gives good figures that I will be able to cite in my paper. It uses specific examples of companies like apple and amazon to talk about the affects of piracy.
Conversation with Jeff Mallett & Mickey Hart on IT Conversations.
<http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail856.html#>
This is a great source, because it actually is a real time conversation between one executive of an anti-piracy company and a drummer for the band "The Grateful Dead." Its great to have an actual professional musician take the side that piracy is actually a good thing and it helps everyone out in the long-run. The executive works for a company that makes it their goal to eliminate piracy and facilitate legal ways to transfer music. The conversation is held at an IT conference and should be a very useful source for my paper.
Hearing before the subcommittee on international economic policy and trade.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen speaking.
This is a House of Representatives hearing about information piracy in general. This subject includes music piracy and this transcript is good because it is a primary source, which I can cite for very specific reliable facts. It has many useful figures that will help to solidify my position. It is mostly against piracy, because it is referring to piracy in general but it is actually helpful to my topic because of the figures and is helping me make counter arguments for some things.
Crawford, Krysten. "The war over downloading." CNN.com 28 Mar 2005 26 Oct 2008 <http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/28/technology/grokster/index.htm>.
This is a good background article on the development of the piracy issue in music. It starts with discussing the company Napster and how that became a big issue for companies and then continues to iTunes and the effect all of that has had on the music business. It also talks about how the music industry is fighting back by forming unlikely alliances with other organizations. This is a very helpful article because it allows me to reference the history of music pirating and talk about the evolution of it through time.
Krasilovsky, M. William.. The Business of Music. New York: Billboard Books, 2003.
This source talks about the interworkings of the music business and how that affects what we get to do and what we don't get to do with our music. It does a good job at explaining many of the legal issues that arise with piracy and the copying of music. I will be able to use this as a good background for explaining how the music industry works and explaining why they have the regulations that they do.
Hinduja, Sameer. Music Piracy and crime theory. New York: LFB Scholarly Pub. LLC, 2006.
This is a source that is more focused on the actual crime aspect of piracy, which will give me a good way to cite the ridiculousness of it's illegality. This book discusses how music is intellectual property and the ways in which we can avoid being "criminals." It also references the crime theory behind music piracy and will be a very good source for that part of my paper.
In my paper, I am going to try to argue the fact that piracy is actually helping the music industry on a whole rather than hurting it like they are trying to say. I am going to aim my paper at readers who are probably likely to download music illegally or those who are wondering about the legality of all the music downloading going on. My hope is that this will help people to realize that music downloading is not really hurting anyone.
Thesis: The advance of the Internet and communication technologies is causing an increase in downloading music illegally. This increase in illegal downloads is often considered a bad thing and a hurtful illegal practice, but in actuality it is helping the music business and the individual artists a lot more.
Grossman, Lev. "The Battle Over Music Piracy." Time Magazine 24 May 2007 26 Oct 2008 <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1625209,00.html>.
This is an article, in Time Magazine, that examines the effects of piracy on the music business. This is a good source because it looks at both the positive and negative effects of music pirating. It will help me form a good argument for why the effects of pirating are actually beneficial to the music business. As a magazine article it is helpful because it gives good figures that I will be able to cite in my paper. It uses specific examples of companies like apple and amazon to talk about the affects of piracy.
Conversation with Jeff Mallett & Mickey Hart on IT Conversations.
<http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail856.html#>
This is a great source, because it actually is a real time conversation between one executive of an anti-piracy company and a drummer for the band "The Grateful Dead." Its great to have an actual professional musician take the side that piracy is actually a good thing and it helps everyone out in the long-run. The executive works for a company that makes it their goal to eliminate piracy and facilitate legal ways to transfer music. The conversation is held at an IT conference and should be a very useful source for my paper.
Hearing before the subcommittee on international economic policy and trade.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen speaking.
This is a House of Representatives hearing about information piracy in general. This subject includes music piracy and this transcript is good because it is a primary source, which I can cite for very specific reliable facts. It has many useful figures that will help to solidify my position. It is mostly against piracy, because it is referring to piracy in general but it is actually helpful to my topic because of the figures and is helping me make counter arguments for some things.
Crawford, Krysten. "The war over downloading." CNN.com 28 Mar 2005 26 Oct 2008 <http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/28/technology/grokster/index.htm>.
This is a good background article on the development of the piracy issue in music. It starts with discussing the company Napster and how that became a big issue for companies and then continues to iTunes and the effect all of that has had on the music business. It also talks about how the music industry is fighting back by forming unlikely alliances with other organizations. This is a very helpful article because it allows me to reference the history of music pirating and talk about the evolution of it through time.
Krasilovsky, M. William.. The Business of Music. New York: Billboard Books, 2003.
This source talks about the interworkings of the music business and how that affects what we get to do and what we don't get to do with our music. It does a good job at explaining many of the legal issues that arise with piracy and the copying of music. I will be able to use this as a good background for explaining how the music industry works and explaining why they have the regulations that they do.
Hinduja, Sameer. Music Piracy and crime theory. New York: LFB Scholarly Pub. LLC, 2006.
This is a source that is more focused on the actual crime aspect of piracy, which will give me a good way to cite the ridiculousness of it's illegality. This book discusses how music is intellectual property and the ways in which we can avoid being "criminals." It also references the crime theory behind music piracy and will be a very good source for that part of my paper.
Hi Matt,
The sources you have are primarily popular, media or from a music industry perspective which could have some inherant bias. The hearing will be a good source for background and statistics, and you may also want to search for some articles in the Music Index (from the library's Indexs & Databases page) for additional articles.