Culture And It's Impact On The Music Industry

While label companies fret that downloading songs ruins the music industry, many people do not perceive the impact music has on cultures. Industries are obstructing people’s cultures by taking music in their possession for profit benefits only. Music has always belonged to people until industries decided to put a price on culture and blame individuals for the music industry’s lack of sales. In the words of Natalie Hidalgo, “downloading music is a type of theft; stealing a huge amount of money from the music industry” (Hidalgo). When people use music services, for example, Spotify, one stream is only worth a fraction of a penny for the artist. Now, that might truly affect the artist as if their whole career depends on services like Spotify.

Throughout the world, people will be buying artist’s albums, concert tickets, merchandise, but they worry about someone listening to their song on a music service, and become sadden if they do not receive a fraction of a penny. If listening to fancied music is theft, then artists creating covers of other songs that are not theirs, would be considered theft also. In an interview with Joe Elliott, a fan from Northville, Michigan, stated that Elliott “did a cover of Rebel, Rebel” (USA Today). Elliott replies to the fan that they are correct and they also covered “Who do you love” and “Stay with me”, but will not “put them out on the Internet” since they “never waste their singles” (USA Today). First of all, Elliott does not possess those songs, in terms of calling them his singles. If artist can take songs and change them in their own way, would that not be called piracy? Artist have their own platform, which causes people to look up to them and as they are stealing artist's’ songs, there should not be controversy of people being able to download songs for their right to hear music for