Cd From A Music Store example essay topic

The New York Times article put a perfect perspective on how ridiculous and greedy record companies really are. What a perfect way to teach a lesson; sue a child for $750,000, and lesson learned. As far as I can remember, music downloads and file sharing has been going on for years, and even before The Napster era, so how convenient to make it illegal now, coincidentally when the music industry has been at an all time low. Of course the reason behind that may not be the fact that the past couple of years have been filled with teenybopper garbage that consumers, including myself, refuse to spend money on.

Aside from a few exceptions, what has the music industry offered worth buying? And whom are they aiming at anyway? Parents? Hardly. They have to keep in mind that their biggest customers are still the same people they are suing. I think that it is a waste of time to even file a lawsuit against file sharers, since logically they cannot expect to actually get paid.

These cases will either get settled for a tiny fraction of the actual cost or will be tossed out of court, so instead thinking of ways to scare us, record companies should think of ways to work with us. For example, I am not doubting that the cost of production that goes into making a CD is small; the average is about $15. But the cost of duplicating a CD is about $1, so when these top selling artists sell millions of copies, they cover their cost of production upon selling about a thousand CDs. When we take into consideration how many legit CDs are still sold at music stores, the numbers are overwhelming despite the increase in music downloading and file sharing. So when Tommy Motto lla makes $50 million instead of $75,000 million, I can't find it in my heart to be sympathetic about his and other companies' income losses. One solution would be instead of pushing for $17 CDs, why don't they significantly lower the prices?

As a college student and as a middle class worker who has to think about purchasing absolute necessities before buying CDs, I know that I would fork over $10 much faster than $17. In fact, I would buy more than one CD if they cost at an average of $10. I can't remember the last time I actually purchased a CD from a music store because nowadays all we hear are singles. Except for old classics such as The Beatles, there aren't many CDs out there that are worth their price. That's why kids download and share music, because hit songs come and go as fast as trends change, thus consequently resulting in teens and college students wanting to change their music collection at the same pace. Thus far, the only positive action taken toward stopping illegal downloads and file sharing is creating online music stores where customers buy on per song basis, which is a very smart idea.

As mentioned in the article, Apple Computers, Inc., being one of the best and user-friendly companies in the world, offers iTunes now. And what's even better is that Apple now is offering iTunes for PC Windows users, and it is available as a free download on the Internet. For 99 cents per song, consumers can now have 17 songs that they actually like on a CD, instead of paying $17 for a couple of songs. Instead of looking for unsuccessful ways of making even more money, record companies should face the reality and realize that music just doesn't sell as good anymore, regardless of Kazaa or Morpheus.

The only way to stop this "problem" is by significantly reducing the cost of CDs. This might just be the best solution they are looking for.