Thank you for your comments and opinions on the topic of music piracy. I have to say that looking at both sides of the issue is extremely important in order to figure out how to approach the issue because there are two sides involved, the producer and the consumer. Being on the consumer side allows me to understand why people do not want to purchase music. Like Stephanie said at a dollar a song on ITunes it would become extremely expensive to purchase all your favorite songs. Like you said for most people this is not realistic, especially considering every other thing we have to pay for in life like school, apartments, groceries, and phone bills this makes music not one of the top priorities! We are so accustomed and naturalized to downloading music that many “pirater’s” do not even see the act as illegal because we have always downloaded to obtain music. The younger generation, especially my friends are obsessed with having their itunes filled with all the latest songs, albums and various playlists and with technology advancing having an ipod with endless storage for these songs allows you somewhere to store all of your favorite pirated music. If people have the ability to download endless amounts of music and a device that stores and plays that music why wouldn’t they.
As09em and Stephanie both mentioned that buying a CD from a store is a thing of the past. When you only want two or three songs from a 20 song album what is the point of wasting your time driving to the store and fifteen dollars of your money when you can download it for free at the click of a button. In recent years I have come to notice how many HMV’s are closing down due to the decrease in sales. The demand for CD’s is slowly disappearing because the music is available to its listeners on the internet.
However there is also the producers side of the story which is also important. Like Stephanie said, relating to Dale Bradley’s (2006) article, no one really understands the seriousness or the consequences of pirating music. If recording companies do not want internet users illegally downloading music they need to enforce the fact that serious repercussions will result if music is illegally pirated. If people feel like they are being surveillance they will likely refrain from stealing music over the internet, because the thought that they could potentially get caught will be present.
For me personally I have always downloaded music and until right now I haven’t really thought too much about it. I understand that it is illegal and the morals behind it are wrong, however I could never imagine myself going out and buying a CD or purchasing a song off of Itunes. I don’t have the money to spend on music. However the only reason stopping me from continuing to download music is the fact of how many viruses are attached to these files that I do not want on my computer. There are always going to be ways to obtain music other than buying it. If I’m not pirating it, there are other ways to listen to your favorite songs like Youtube, Songza and even 8Tracks. Recording companies have to accept the fact that the majority of people do not want to purchase music and they must accommodate these beliefs.
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