Do any of these terms sound familiar: “vinyl”, “LPs”, “cassettes”, “CDs”? Probably none of these terms sound familiar, because of all of the new music streaming sites. Bands are not making money anymore, so there is no reason to pay for tours, new albums, etc. The whole music streaming services began in the late ‘90s, with Shawn Fanning, and his best friend, Sean Parker, (Parker also became friends with another famous social media mogul: Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook) the founders of Napster. Napster was the first of its kind as giving individuals the ability to not have to pay such a big price for albums and records. It was the predecessor for such sites as Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Sound Cloud, and many more. Music streaming services …show more content…
The term “stealing music” has undergone a series of meanings throughout the past two centuries. “Stealing music used to mean when you shoplifted a CD or cassette from the record store, and it was pretty clearly understood that it was ‘wrong’ (Arrington). Stealing music has come to be known as morally and ethically wrong. However, if you do decide to steal music, be prepared to face the many possible consequences for such a crime. There are both positive and negative consequences for stealing music. “A positive consequence of stealing music is that you get free music for your own personal enjoyment. You can also profit from piracy. However, more often than not, piracy will result in the negative consequences. Caught pirates are sued and occasionally served with jail terms.” (“Music”). The consequences for stealing and/or pirating music are either positive or negative, depending on how much a person purchases illegally, but if they want to avoid any possible consequences altogether, do not do it! Fortunately, the fans and users of these sites are not who the artists are furious at, it’s the sites …show more content…
Music streaming services do not pay the artists they feature nearly as much as they should, or at least what the income they receive from having a physical product purchased, is. Up- and-coming cellist Zoë Keating decided to make an income statement using Google Docs in order to show her pay from these sites: “That first Google Doc revealed that nearly 97% of Keating’s income came from sales of her music on iTunes, Amazon and her own Bandcamp website. During that 6-month period, Keating earned just under $47k from iTunes, $25k from Bandcamp and nearly $11.2k from Amazon, but less than $300 from Spotify” (Dredge). Keating herself should be paid much more than what sites such as Spotify are offering, and iTunes and Amazon need to increase their pay, also. In addition, much of the music streaming services unfair pay has caused a rift between artists and their labels. Many artists out there today have been too focused on what will sell and how much money they are intaking, but record labels are imploring that they should be focused on putting out the music they want to make. “To put it simply-labels have decided that the royalties for both downloads and streams should be accounted for to the artists as sales, while publishers and songwriters’ collecting societies have decided that they are something