Popular Artists And The Program example essay topic

Since the creation of the Internet people have found different ways to use it at their advantage. More recently people have used it to download music from any artist off huge servers, the most popular of which was Napster. This program was originally created by Shawn Fanning as a way for him and his friends to share MP 3 files. Now it has grown to the most popular place to share pirated music over the Internet. So how has this program affected the music industry?

An article arranged by David Gray entitled, "Sound off Napster" is a roundtable discussion on the pros and cons of Napster. Some ideas discussed here are the affects on the consumer, the artists, and what are some possible solutions to the problem. The big question here is how does Napster affect the artists themselves. CEO Marc Geiger explains success as an artist is", really having your music owned by as many people as possible.

If someone said their music was illegally downloaded a gazillion times, that's a measure of success, not failure". Geiger expresses a valid point here. In order for an artist to make money off their music and for it to become popular is to have more and more people listening to it. Recording artist Chuck D. labels file sharing as, "the new radio. It's a fantastic way for art to get exposed". So how does this free publicity negatively affect artists?

The most obvious reason is music downloaded is not music purchased. Many artists rely on the sale of albums to support themselves financially. CEO Hilary Rosen also points out that, "Though most people don't realize it, only 15 percent of all releases sell enough copies to make a profit, and those record sales support the other 85 percent, including those from new and emerging artists. Piracy cheats producers, composers, sound engineers, studio musicians, publishers, and vocalists out of their share of royalties, on which they generally depend on for livelihoods".

Rosen clearly shows that the piracy of music affects more than just the artists. Artist Todd Rundgren also points out that file sharing takes away his, "right to decide whether to give my stuff away". Artist Alanis Morissette agrees with Rundgren when she states that, "The artist should be the person to decide when, where, and how something should be shared with whomever they choose to share it with. It seems these artists are not just concerned about losing money, but also about losing control over their own music. Napster has not only effected the artists themselves. Many would say Napster changed a community of music lovers, into a community of thieves.

Is this really a fair statement to make? Some artists, like rapper Chuck D, feel Napster is just the new radio, "It's a fantastic way to get art exposed". Listeners can now chose what song they want to hear and if they like it they can buy it. It gives consumers a chance to hear any song off an album, instead of just the popular ones.

Artist Aimee Mann agrees with this idea when she says, "Many is the record I've bought based on hearing one part of one song played on the radio, and the rest of the record was terrible". But Aimee also brings up another good point. What ensures a person will even buy the CD after they downloaded the songs? One would think the number of CD sales would have gone down since the creation of Napster, but the truth is actually the total opposite. CEO Danny Goldberg points out that, "In a year where you had a billion downloads, record sales increased 6.5 percent". There are also those who feel that Napster can be changed to give people a legal alternative for MP 3 download.

Artist Aimee Mann agrees with this idea and says the only way to control piracy is to "Show people what the legal valid alternatives are, and the vast majority of them will follow the path". So what is the solution to this problem? Popular musicians, like Metallica, are dependent on their CD sales to live their luxurious lives. Napster and other file sharing networks intimidate these artists and make them feel like they are being screwed out of a CD sale by offering the same music for free download. But for some new artists, Napster is their way to get a large community to listen to their music. So how can you make money for popular artists while providing free publicity to new artists?

One idea is to create an alternative program that works the same as Napster, but charges a service fee. This extra fee should cover the financial loss of CD sales for more popular artists and the program should also provide good publicity for new artists waiting to be discovered. In the long run though, the Internet itself would have to change in order to accommodate a program like this. The idea around the Web is that anything available for download should be free, even someone else's music.

So it seems as though until we fix the way the whole Internet works, we won't be able to fix problems like Napster and other file-sharing programs. So as of now it's a standoff between popular musicians and Napster, with a clear winner nowhere in site.