Online Sharing and the Music Industry

The music industry is slowly benefiting from the on-line promotions and sales that is the new face of iTunes and Napster and other on-line music sites. The music industry is finally doing something about the "loss" (and note the quotations) of the on-line downloading phenomena of the late nineties and into this century. While sites like iTunes and Napster have helped to drive the price of a CD down to $9.99 per full volume there are certain conditions. First of all, it's not a physical copy of the CD, instead it is an electronic copy downloaded straight to your iTunes library. Also, the downloaded album has a transfer limit, meaning that it can only be burnt to a CD or switched to a different iTunes library about 3 times. Is this worth the 3 dollar reduction of price as compared to a physical copy of the album? NO! It's not worth it. Just like before when downloading was apparently free and somewhat not illegal just yet, the music industry is still thriving. Thanks to the measures and restrictions on these downloaded albums, having a physical copy still benefits the user. You have all the songs in the same quality in the right track order in the original formatted style. With the downloaded material you have tracks of conflicting quality with long pauses in between tracks that aren't on the original volume. Not to mention that you miss out on the album artwork... bummer :(

So, the CD still has some worth - however if you want one track you aren't going to go buy the album. Insert iTunes and Napster. However these are mostly publicity tools in my opinion. Does iTunes really do enough single sales in volume to truly benefit the music industry? Nope. The new wave is unsigned local artists who put most of the works available to download on the net. If you like them then you go out and buy their album to support them, so that maybe one day you can go see them live in concert coming to an arena near you. Finally being a musician takes a little work. Better get a good publicist, because your "album" deal ain't going to cut it any more.