The Decline Of The Music Industry

After the release of iTunes and many other forms of digital music in 1998, the music industry's profit has decreased by the billions! Digital downloading may have seemed like a musical revolution, but for the music industry, it was the start of a downfall. It all started in 1991 with the release of the MP3 soon they made websites to get the music for your MP3. Then in 2001 the Apple iPod was launched and 3 years later iTunes was launched. People flocked over to the opening of cheap digital sales. After a series of negotiations Steve Jobs was able to sell albums for $10 and single songs for only .99 cents. People had never seen song prices this low before and in just two years physical sales were dwarfed but downloadable songs and Apple

In 2000 MP3.com were sued for copyright infringement and was the first suit ever ruled in the favor of the label compines. Since then there has been many court cases about illegal downloads from various users. Illegally downloading or sharing music is the most common music scandel. For illegal downloading (and for sharing music) the minimum penalty for downloading or distributing, according to the RIAA's website, is $750 per song. As has happened in previous cases, however, that rate can run into the thousands and even the hundreds of thousands. If found guilty of a felony offense, downloaders face an additional $250,000 fine. None of these prices, of course, factor in legal fees. As many have seen, this can lead up to be a very pricy form of crime. Sense 1999 music sales have gone down almost 50%! From 14.6 billion in 1999 to 7.7 billion in 2009. Since this recent drop 71,060 people have lost their jobs. The RIAA said that in the years 2004-2009 only 37% of the songs were paid for and that means 7 - 20 billion dollars of illegally downloaded songs annually. This can really crush the music industry's sales and this isn't accounted for the amount of damage legally downloaded music does as

This industry also works to protect the first moment of artists and music labels, consumers, and technical research. In party of their protection the need to inform average people the toll illegal downloading takes, on artists, songwriters, music labels, producers, publishers, etc. They describe illegal downloading to easy to download and to get away with it. “While downloading one song may not feel that serious of a crime, the accumulative impact of millions of songs downloaded illegally – and without any compensation to all the people who helped to create that song and bring it to fans – is devastating.” says RIAA. This industry talks about everything there is to know about illegal music. They helped set up a lawsuit to raise awareness about file sharing and the likes. Before this lawsuit in only 35% of people thought file sharing was illegal and after this now 70% people know this and many have been warned. Unfortunately, this war will never stop. People will always share or somehow get ahold of illegal music but the RIAA says if it's at least at a manageable level that will give room for the music industry and other legal sites to really flourish and gain money back and hopefully bring the music entry higher than it's been in a long