Music Cd To A Digital Mp 3 example essay topic

Executive summary It's only been about three years since a little known extension of an audio compression technique-MPEG-2 Audio Layer-3 or MP 3-opened the door to being able to send large volumes of CD-quality music over the Internet by pack the equivalent of several commercial compact disks onto the equivalent of one CD platter (Lange 01). It also initiated the veritable floor of pirating activity by an underground community students and hackers. Hundreds of MP 3 Internet sites sprung up overnight. At these sites, everything in music from Mozart to Marilyn Manson is being reproduced (Lange 01). Of course, it's illegal, but it's free, which has a huge appeal. Two men summarize the battle that is still raging over this new technology.

On one side there's Val Azz oli, co-CEO of the Atlantic Group, which has numerous popular artists signed to their label; and on the other is the CEO of the website MP 3. com, which gives away digitized songs by new artists that no one has heard of yet (Mardesich 96). While this may not sound like much of a threat, what lies at the heart of this conflict is the concern of recording industry that this new technology may chance the balance of power and if allows the shipment of music directly to the consumer (Mardesich 96). The five giant corporations that contr ol 80% of the global music industry-worth roughly $60 billion a year-have taken notice (Wood; D'arcy 42). The following discussion will explore more fully why the record companies, despite their obvious power, are scared.

Pros and Cons It is the impressive 12: 1 compression ratio of the MP 3 that has made it so popular. While 60 or so Mbytes are needed to store a typical song, once its converted to MP 3 format it becomes a single 5 Mbyte file (Lange 01). 'The advantages are obvious,' commented one executive, 'CD-quality sound in a small package' (Lange 01). The drawbacks are all felt by the record companies.

Artists are likely to benefit, eventually, if they take advantage of the new technology and deliver their songs to their fans directly via the Internet (Mardesich 96). They'l l no longer have record companies making money off from their work and by eliminating this 'middle man' could conceivably earn a great deal more then they do now. However, for the large record labels, this new technology could mean real trouble in the future. Right now, the loss are negligible. For example, Americans spent almost nothing on downloaded music in 1998, but they spent nearly $14 billion on music from stores (Mardesich 96). Nevertheless, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said that MP 3 piracy may have contributed to a slight decline in music sold to the 15 to 24 age group (Mardesich 96).

Intellectual property issue and copyright contents / legal and illegal duplication / Piracy In theory, the user can go to the Internet, type the name of an artist or song into one of the many MP 3 search engines, such as Lycos MP 3, and find a seemingly endless list of sites with downloadable music (Ashton 79). In reality, it's difficult to get a good connection to these amateur sites and the downloads take forever. However, even if the technology isn't ready to be a real threat yet, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry is ready to treat it as such. This organization has begun litigation against search engines because they state that they point users toward sites with pirated music (Ashton 79). Frank Crieghton, the head of the RIAA's anti-piracy unit, has said that the " educational steps' that they have instigated to stop on-campus MP 3 sites, usually set up in students' dorm rooms, have been ineffective (Lange 01). ' The cease-and-desist letters we were sending were only so effective.

So we had to go to litigation. We needed to send a strong r message,' said Creighton (Lange 01). The RIAA unit has increased their collaborative policing efforts with the FBI, US Customs, and the US Postal Service and Secret Service (Lange 01). This activity appears to be paying off as a number of sites have shut down in order to avoid being litigation targets (Lange 01). However, there are still those in the underground that think the legal pressures will only exacerbate the problem (Lange 01). Distribution Even as the recording industry takes on the pirates, the music industry, itself, is interested in the intriguing implications of MP 3 technology (Lange 01).

After all the design of the Internet and the facility of MP 3 holds potential for future distribution of legitimate music products that could be the wave of the future indicating a 'paradigm c hange over from atoms to bits' (Lange 01). Commenting on this, David Weekly, founder of them 3 Audio Consortium, said, 'The fact that people can now download in reasonable time and listen to audio that cannot be distinguished from a CDma y revolutionize the media-distribution process' (Lange 01). However, what's really got the record companies concerned is the MP 3's leap off the computer. Last year, more than a dozen vendors came out with portable MP 3 players, which were all priced at the magic $200 mark which made them perfect for the Christmas buying season (Ashton 79). The best known of these players is Diamond Multimedia's 'Rio,' a sub-Walkman-size unit that plays up to an hour of MP 3 files (Ashton 79).

Creative Lab's Nomad can hold two hours of music, and Empeg's Empeg Player, an MP 3 player for your car, can hold a whopping 70 hours of music (Ashton 79). Questions as to the legitimacy of these players was answer when a US appeals court ruled that because t here was the possibility that pirated music could be played on them did make the players, themselves, illegal (Ashton 79). Proactive role of corporations In addition to actively pursuing and prosecuting the pirating of music, the RIAA has been struggling to develop an industry-wide technical standard called the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), which would provide copy protection, limit distribution of music files, and provide royalty payments to labels and artists (Ashton 79). However, while SDMI development was bogged down in indecision, numerous record companies that were eager to have their music commercially available on the Internet before last year " 's Christmas season, split from the RIAA and formed partnerships with individual tech companies (Ashton 79). Sony Music Entertainment formed an alliance with Microsoft; Universal Music Gro up and Bertelsmann teamed up with Inter Trust (Ashton 79).

Then, on June 21, EMI cut a deal to make a vast back catalog of songs downloadable via Liquid Audio's front-end software (Ashton 79). This means that the record companies are all competing to deliver music over the Internet with incompatible formats, which was exactly what the development of the SDMI was suppose to forestall (Ashton 79). MP 3 and effect on other sectors of the music industry While the record companies have been concerned with MP 3, a new threat has emerged-Napster, a software program for sharing musical files that doesn't require a web server (Gurley 326). This technology makes change for the music industry inevitable (Gurley 326). 'The music industry is about to undergo a change that is ten times more importance than the launch of the compact disk. Everything will c hange' (Gurley 326).

What's more it ha been predicted that 'once the bandwidth becomes available, the 'movie and book industries will be next' (Gurley 326). Current situation involving the music industry and the Internet On April 29, 2000, just a few days ago, a federal judge ruled that MP 3. com had violated copyright law by compiling an extensive online music database for commercial use (Harmon 1 A). Judge Jed Rak off granted the motion made by the five major music labels for a judgement against MP 3. Com, which is based on San Diego (Harmon 1 A).

The judge also said that he would issue a full opinion within the next two weeks covering the topic of the music industry's efforts to harness the distribution of music over the Internet (Harmon 1 A). Robertson, MP 3 CEO, issued a statement that read 'Wh en new, responsible technologies for delivering music are attacked and shut down, it leaves a vacuum for other technologies that are not responsible to fill it' (Harmon 1 A). He predicted that the record companies would be left with nothing more then 'copyright chaos' (Harmon 1 A). His prediction may be coming true sooner then anyone can imagine due to Napster, which is different from most consumer Internet products or services. Typically, we all have to use browsers to access large websites.

Napster uses the Internet-no browser. Napster also users to share information among PCs rather than through big Web servers (Gurley 326). Users tell Napster where music files (mostly in MP 3 format) are located in their hard drive, and then Napster shares this information with the world (Gurley 326). Any Napster user can share music easily with any other Napster user. Download Napster, and type in the name of a song and Napster will show you other Napster user's that have that son on their PC (Gurley 326). Double-click on the song and it transfers it to your PC (Gurley 326).

No fuss, no muss, and no royalties to the record companies or the artists who produce the songs. Of course, the record companies want to stop Napster and this ultra easy way to share MP 3 files. However, the question is now-can they do it. In just six months, Napster has accumulated a remarkable nine million users (Gurley 326). (That's right, 9,000,000).

In comparison, it took American Online 12 years to accumulate nine million users (Gurley 326). Corporate management response / long term implications It is not clear, despite all the rhetoric, that the music industry or the press fully understand the size of this movement or it's future ramifications. In the future, 'we will all listen to music via computer files-either on MP 3 players or hard drives. Just six weeks ago, Stewart Alsop highlighted in his FORTUNE colum n two new MP 3 players that use hard drives-each holds 80 hours of music and fits in your pocket (Gurley 326). There is no doubt that the compact disk, which in many ways still 'feels " new, is on its way out. While CDs can only be borrowed or traded by friends and acquaintances, with Napster, nine million users can be electronically connected through a centralized directory, and the 'sharing is mighty easy' (Gurley 326).

Until just recently, MP 3 usage wasn't really that widespread because files took up a lot of space on a hard drive and required lots of bandwidth to be transferred (Gurley 326). However these two commodities are becoming more plentiful and cheaper (Gurley 326). Within a few years, 'E-mailing an entire album of music to a friend will be no different than forwarding a Microsoft world document today' (Gurley 326). The obvious question that all this brings up is ~n can the record companies do anything to stop it? The answer is probably 'no.

' For one thing, the cat-as they say-is already out of the bag. Every multimedia PC can convert a music CD to a digital MP 3 (Gurley 326). That translates to more than 100 million encoding devices already in use (Gurley 326). Can new CDs be produced that are ',' that is immune to copying. Not likely, if you want them to work in the 200 million CD players that already in homes, offices and cars (Gurley 326). Can a new type of CD or encrypted file type be created that can't be copied?

The potential for such a development certainly exists. However, as long as the CD can be played (which is the whole point) it can also be easily re-recorded into a digital format (Gurley 326). The music industry appears to believe that there is a Holy Grail out there that will save the day for them and they all assume that a technological solution is imminent (Gurley 326). However, it looks like there will be no technological white knight for the record industry. How about litigation?

The RIAA has sued Napster in order to shut it down. Napster claims that ~n just like Betamax and the Rio MP 3 player, the serve they provide has appropriate uses and therefore should not be liable just because some customers may choose to use it illegally (Gurley 326). Lots of precedent for this defense already exists both in and outside of the music industry. (It's worked for alcoholic beverage producers for years.) Even if the RIAA can get a judge to enjoin Napster, there are already five or six more companies that have already launched similar products (Gurley 326). To shut down Napster at this point would require the Internet equivalent of wiretapping, which would undoubtedly send 'privacy advocates into a frenzy' (Gurley 326). Another barrier to stopping Napster is community.

Napster's nine million users are passionate about it and today's young people are serious about their retaining their freedom to transfer d ig ital files (Gurley 326). Recommendations There are no consumers with a similar loyalty to a record label. That's because the record companies have -- for years -- taken advantage of the public. CDs can be produced very cheaply and the record companies have been overpricing them for years. The consumer knows this, and therefore feels no remorse in obtaining free MP 3's. The old status quo is gone, and the record companies may just vanish with it.

When everything settles down, musical artists may make more money from appearances, sponsorships and product licensing then from the sale of actual music (Gurley 326) Personally, I believe that artists will discover that they can sell directly to the public via the Internet and, thereby, bypass the large record companies entirely. One thing is cert a in-those who adapt and change to fit the times, will survive and probably thrive. Those who refuse to change and fight against it will almost certainly condemn themselves to failure because change-very dramatic change-is a certainty.

Bibliography

Ashton, Richard. 'Multimedia: Pump up the volume. The music biz rushes to bring MP 3 to market and reap holiday bucks,' Entertainment Weekly (1999): 16 July, pp.
79. Gurley, J. William. 'e-Company above the Crowd: want to stop napster? Forget it-it's too late,' Fortune (2000): May, pp.
326. Harmon, Amy; Sullivan, John. 'Online music site MP 3 loses key ruling,' The Dallas Morning News (2000): 29 April, pp.
1 A. Lange, Larry. 'MP 3 compression opens recording industry's coffers to hackers-Net pirates plunder the high Cs,' Electronic Engineering Times (1997): 21 July, pp.
01. Mardesich, Jodi. 'How the Internet hits Big Music,' Fortune (1999): 10 Mary, pp.
96. Wood, Chris; D'arcy, Jewish. 'Free music: Record companies face a huge challenge from the Internet,' Maclean's (2000): 20 March, pp 42.