Technology, rapidly advancing as it is, has dramatically altered the face of the music industry. The industry used to control its own fate when it could control the use of new technology. However, as we discussed in one of our very first lectures, the digital age opened up a new format for all media that anyone could use, which totally added new complexities to the legality of the distribution of files from person to person. It also posed a new question of right and wrong when it comes to copyright law. Was it wrong for Napster to allow users to share and upload files for which they did not have the rights? The RIAA and the courts said so, but the people emphatically disagreed. For my paper topic, I want to write about how the music industry is adapting to this huge transformation and more specifically how new companies are capitalizing on new business models for music distribution. There is an article called Music in the Digital Age: Downloading, Streaming and Digital Lending that further describes this situation.
Many more programs like Napster came onto the scene after 2001, and most of them operated from decentralized servers so it was much harder to seek legal action. Also, few artists these days even bother to do so, and many even encourage free downloading. This is interesting because what we’ve seen is a population that has become gradually more accepting of the changing trends in media distribution. In response, some of these new programs, like the website Grooveshark, are embracing the change and going even further with it. Grooveshark operates like a used record store, only applied to digital media. Users upload and share their “used” music files, and other users can purchase these songs, for a price. Here is where they rope you in, though. Just for signing into the site, which is free, users are allowed to stream, for free, in perfect quality, any song in the database. This creates a listen-on-demand experience that provides instant access to over 22 million songs. Playlists can be created and saved, and music can be listened to as many times as desired. It seems too good to be true, and it definitely does not seem legal, but for the time being it is.
The site protects itself by holding users personally responsible for music they share. The problem lies with the record labels and with users who do not want to compromise themselves by sharing unlicensed music. Grooveshark gets around this by attempting to warm up to record labels and users of the site, who are each given a percentage of the cost of all the music shared through the site. For example, if a user uploads a song and another user downloads it for, lets say, 99 cents, 70 cents goes to the record label, 25 cents in credit goes to the user who uploaded the file, and the remaining 4 cents goes to Grooveshark. Essentially, Grooveshark is trying to make everybody happy, while giving the biggest royalty still to the record company. So far, this method has been fairly successful. Grooveshark has a growing “labels list” (http://www.grooveshark.com/labelslist/) of record labels with which they have royalty agreements. To date, no user has faced legal action from either Grooveshark or a third party.
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Aaron - I think the kernel for this paper is a really good start. I'll definitely be curious to see how you build out the topic and organize it in your outline (the next deliverable for this paper). There is a lot written about the digitization of the music industry, so I am betting that you will find a lot of resources. The only probably may be finding an academic article - remember that it needs to be from a peer-reviewed journal (and let me know if you want to talk about this more).
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