by By Sephiroth
The best place to start is the beginning of online
music. Soon after porno files first crept online,
music soon followed. The forms of online illegal music
has taken many forms from midi files, wav files,
streaming files , and the infamous lil mp3. All of
these file types throughout the years have been a
target of the Recording Industry to cleanse the
Internet of the “threat” to their industry. The RIAA
in the past I have seen first hand as they took down
millions of web pages, music programs like mp3
encoders and everything else they considered a threat.
The RIAA didn’t seek to use new technologies to their
advantage ever and so that trend continues today. Mp3
files have always been free and widely traded legally
or not and that will continue no matter what happens.
The RIAA and other companies want to start to charge
for mp3 files. I don’t think online music is worth
money. The music in stores a person pays for shipping,
packaging, and a nice plastic coaster called a CD. Why
pay from five to fifteen dollars to buy the digital
rights to a few songs when you don’t receive a
physical product. Isn’t that what buying is all about
you trade money to get a physical product. Music can
not exist in any form and music exists the same form
in reality and online. Music is just a combination of
digital code, zeroes and ones lined up in a fashion to
produce music. It doesn’t matter if its burned into a
plastic disk or etched in a hard drive.
Also online music is not reliable as a CD because in
one instance your computer can crash and you can lose
your entire music collection. What would happen in the
future, would the person have to pay again for the
music they already paid for but lost due to computer
failure. Also music is available for free from
numerous sources and the RIAA will never be able to
shut them all down, but that doesn’t mean the RIAA
will stand by and make music trading easy. They will
still shut down all the popular places and most people
will complain but that’s how its done. Be grateful for
what you got while you could.
With that said I would like to make clear that the
majority of people who can afford it would pay the
Artists but not the recording companies themselves. I
like the music I want the artist to get the money and
not the RIAA. That is fair and that is really what
most want. I want to know what I am paying 20 dollars
for before I start blindly shelling out money. The pay
for online system will fail unless all the money goes
to the artist.
Today in America almost all cultural is manufactured
by big multi-national and multi-billion dollar
corporations. It has its benefits in that with big
bucks glamorous movies and music can be produced. But
like a corporation it has no soul. Music is a piece of
the artists own soul trapped in a series of musical
notes on paper. But most music today isn’t made by the
artist themselves, they pay other people to help write
the music that they sing or they use other artists
work and just re-sing it which is becoming more and
more popular. That is not culture, that is crap.
Musicians today could benefit a great deal online.
Many artists don’t know anything about the Internet I
mean during the whole Napster saga many artists called
Napster a web page, when its a program. Many artists
prefer traditional methods and are skeptical in trying
new methods. Even if the artist benefited a little the
recording industry would benefit the most. They would
no longer have to pay shipping or packaging costs
which means more profit. The artist themselves would
not be able to break away from the labels and work
independently online because the music companies will
play such a big role in legal file sharing programs
that the artists would not be able to get any support
or afford any marketing online at all. And even if
they were successful they would get paid very little
than from a label band.
I looked around in the music store and when I was in
the middle I looked up and looked around at row upon
row of CDs. Then I realized that I was surrounded by
many great bands but because they weren’t marketed
enough by their label they will never accomplish their
greatest potential, they would never get the credit
they deserve. Then I thought to myself would their
music company do any different to promote the band if
this was the Internet and after a while I thought to
myself no they wouldn’t. Because music will never gain
the respect it deserves while corporations are
involved.
