The music industry losses billions of dollars due to the illegal and unauthorized distribution and sharing of music in the internet. Now that we are in the digital age, it seems that big music companies are facing yet another fierce competition – digital media distribution. The internet has offered us utmost convenience when it comes to accessing information online and also downloading various kinds of media, such as mp3. Because of this, sales of cds and dvds continue to drop which means record companies are losing a huge amount of money. However, some saw this as an opportunity to turn the table and also to put a stop to digital piracy.
Over the past years, the music industry has been fighting against piracy but although copyright laws are made to protect the rightful owners, it turns out that this has not stopped pirates from copying music and even entire albums only to be distributed for free online. But since people like easily downloadable media, rather than wasting their energy in stopping piracy why not just simply copy them. This may sound like a ridiculous plan but this is actually something that might work.
It is expected that sites offering unlimited access to mp3 downloads will start to proliferate the internet in the years to come. Record companies will sell copyrights of their songs to these sites in return they will have to share a percentage of their profits to them. Sounds like a good plan right? Doing so will also help ease the problem on illegal music download.
Truth of the matter is, this is not a new plan. In fact, iTunes successfully introduced legal music downloads a long time ago. Though there are still record labels and music companies that are not ecstatic about the idea, they are not completely shunning it either. Besides, as mentioned earlier, we are now in the digital age. Everything we use today, from tv, computers even airconditioners are now digitalized. So why not do the same when releasing music albums. In fact, record companies will save a lot when they opt for a digital release. They won’t have to shell out money for the cds or dvds where the music will be recorded. Instead, they can use that money to advertise their digital music releases which is now very convenient thanks to the emergence of social media. In addition to that, they can even put up legal mp3 streaming sites where users can listen to their favorite music without having to download them. With this said, it is very likely that huge music companies will eventually embrace digital distribution completely. After all, it is better to offer their music at a lowered price than not earning profit at all.
The best thing that huge record labels and music production companies can do is to adapt with the changing trends in the industry, and use the advancing technology to its fullest advantage. However, I strongly believe that copyright laws should be revised to ensure that no one will take advantage of the ease of distributing digital music online. By doing so, the law can protect the rights of not only the record companies but also the music artists as well.