Critically Assess the Proposition that Illegal Downloading is Destroying the Music Industry - Essay Example

? Illegal Downloads of Music: The Destruction of the Music Business Illegal Downloads of Music: The Destruction of the Music Business One of the mostdestructive forces to any industry is the capacity for the consumer to gain access to its products through means other than the purchase of the product. In the digital world, no other industry has taken as much of a hit as has the music industry. As a highly capitalized art medium, music has influences in many spheres within the cultural construction. In redefining the meaning of music in its consumerist capacity, the meaning of music in cultural influence also changes. There is an argument to be made that in providing free music or allowing file sharing, the promotion of music makes up for the lack of revenue. However, the real change comes from the diminishment of power that is being experienced by the corporate controlled music industry as it no longer can control the content that is in the hands of the consumer. The following paper will examine the influence of file sharing and illegal downloads in order to discuss the impact it has had on the music industry. In examining the issue, it is clear that illegal downloading of music has contributed to the current downward spiral of the music industry, systematically destroying it in its current construction but leading to a new framework for the dissemination of musical experiences into the social world. Digital music has placed the music business in a vulnerable position. Illegal downloading has created a bleeding industry in which the revenue that supports the industry is being lost through the technologies that provide consumers with access to the work. Chris Rojek (2011, p. 17) creates an argument against illegal downloading of music in which he states that while the rise of digital downloading through legal means has been at 940% between 2004 and 2009, during that same period the sale of music decreased by 30%. This indicates that the mere production of legal downloads has not been enough to stem the tide of illegal downloading. Furthermore, gaining music for free through legitimized means such as YouTube has provided for anyone to have access without paying for the privilege or having risk associated with the act of accessing music for free. Copyright is an important factor in the discussion of the impact of illegal downloads on the music industry. Without copyright, there would be no claim upon which to determine if sharing files is illegal. Marshall (2005, p. 39) writes that one of the first fundamental changes in the relationship of music to commodity occurred when the UK Copyright Act of 1814 when copyright began to be valid throughout the life of the author of a work. The rippling effect was to add the author as part of the value of the work. In the case of illegal downloads, it can be argued that value is being shifted once more into the public ownership of the works and away from the authors of the works. When music becomes more nameless as it is not acknowledge through monetary payment, it can be said that the music is taken from the authors and placed in the hands of masses. Navigating digital download technologies means redefining the nature of music ownership (May 2002, p. 119). It is not clear, however, whether or not this will create damage to the music industry to diminish its existence or if it will mean reconfiguring the process of music commodification. Current models are not working and future models have yet to be revealed. It is also relevant to the process to discuss the influence of YouTube on the digital download controversy. On the YouTube site people can search for almost any song they wish to listen to and get the audio content as well as some form of visual content. The files can be shared through other outlets such as Facebook. The issue of copyright has emerged for the site as much of the content has not been purchased and it is not being spread through legal terms (Hilderbrand 2007, p. 48). Often items are deleted over the copyright issue. Other artists allow the use of YouTube for their products because of the hope of their work going ‘viral’ and influence the social spectrum of cultures. Scientific discovery leads to consequences that are often unpredictable when put into public use. Collins and Pinch (2002) discuss the nature of science and its uses by comparing it to the nature of the mythical golem, a human representation that is animate, but only able to have the moral nature of those who make use of it. File sharing is the golem of the consumers of music, the ability to form an illegal activity that actually contributes to the social construction of the music world through promotion, denial of income, elevation of the unique, and diminishment of the industry control in designating who will and will not be powerful in the art of music. The changes in social construction are affected by the instrumentalizing of new technologies. The capacity to record the voice and then to hear it outside of a live performance changed the face of human experience. The capacity to disseminate music in a widely diverse number of ways for content and listening has further changed the nature of music as it affects the human condition (Hutchby 2000, p. 353). In addition, the nature of music creation has turned to digitalization, thus placing into context a whole new format for creation and consuming music. Technology has influenced the construction and consumption of music (Thererge 1997, p. 242).As music has changed, it should be expected that the consumption of music would change. In 2000 Castells discussed the emerging nature of the network society. The network society is constructed through a community in which production/consumption power as well as experience creates culture. Castells (2000, p. 5) writes that “ They are enacted, reproduced, and ultimately transformed by social actors, rooted in the social structure, yet freely engaging in conflictive social practices, with unpredictable outcomes”. This specifically describes the nature of file sharing through which the conflict between its criminalization and its promotional value has the unpredictable nature that has defined the issue since its beginnings. Through corporate control, modern construction of culture has been based upon acquisition driven by marketing and constructed needs, but the information age and new technologies have worked both towards participating and circumventing the power of corporate influence. David (2010, p. 1) writes that there are two wars in the consumerist realm that are being waged. The first regards fossil fuels, which is not relevant to this discussion, but the second regards the ‘post industrial’ informational goods for which there is abundance. Corporate control is threatened by the fact “of having no legal, technical, social or cultural foundations by which to secure their economic interests, identities, strategies and alliances” (David 2010, p.1). The defining conflict in file sharing is based upon the idea of controlling scarcity as defined by the interests of the corporation against the attention of the masses as they become a community and share in the influence of the music that they provide for each other. That community has a great deal of power and when harnessed towards developing monetized results, can be highly valued. The way in which the market is constructed creates control over the influences that reach the public. The acts of the artist are secondary to the control of the market when corporations control the dissemination of artistic influence. Deleuze (1992) discusses the nature of the power in relationship to the influence of marketing that the power lays in transformation rather than in specialization of the production. Control of marketing is the control of the public mind. One of the most important outcomes to the proliferation of illegal downloads is that the public mind and the construction of culture has been subverted and made more diverse. This means that the idea of the top ten is obsolete as the diverting public is now exposed to a much wider variety of music. The importance of the influence of art on the public is far reaching and has deep consequences to the construction of culture. Bourdieu and Johnson (1993, p.32) discuss the nature of the power relationship as it impacts the social construction of a culture when a fundamental change takes place in an artistic field. While they were referring more distinctly to symbolism and influence from the art itself, in consumerist society artistry is combined with consumer based activity, the construction of culture based upon how the value of the art is ascribed and through that value, influences cultural construction. Martin (1995, p. 30) discusses social construction and the way in which human beings designate value and meaning on an object. Music is given value through its social influence and meaning, but consumerism also creates value through costs to consumers and promotion of other consumerist activities within the music industry, The social meaning and value of a mainstream artist with a major label who sells records and fills stadiums is very different than that of an independent artist who has limited number of sales and brings out patrons to a more intimate music venue. There are some arguments against the idea that there is a great deal of damage that illegal downloading can do to the music industry. There is the belief that promotional values and the diversity of music listening actually will increase the capitalization of music as a commodity. Katz (2010, p. 202) quotes economist Karen Croxson for her opinion that illegal downloads are valuable as a promotional vehicle. She says “To the extent that piracy raises consumption...consumption fuels hype and hype in turn boosts future sales” (Katz 2010, p. 202). Katz (2010, p. 202) also writes, however, that economist Stan Leibowitz conducted a 30 year study on the sale of music and while the initial work yielded results that suggested that only a small amount of record sales was being affected, later discovery by Leibowitz suggests that “file sharing is responsible for the entire decline in record sales that has occurred”. According to the information by Rojek (2011) and that which was provided by Leibowitz through Katz (2010) illegal downloads are in the process of destroying the music industry. Frith and Marshall (2004) write that although the music industry is being destroyed, it may be a necessary destruction in order to re-construct the nature of the business in order to support the development of a new age of information technologies that cannot be stopped. The nature of illegal downloads has been criminalized, but the act of illegal downloading has been legitimized within the social framework. The anti-capitalism that is a natural conflict within a consumerist society revels in the idea of getting something that has a value to the corporate structure for free. Rojek (2011, p. 36) writes that illegal downloading has been normalized. In a logical thought process on the concept, the risk associated with illegally downloading music virtually negated as there is no enforcement of its criminality. In addition, consumers often believe they are part of a righteous protest against the gluttony of the music industry as it has gleaned fat paydays from the consumers. The act of illegally downloading music is a protest against the power that the corporate structure has had over the dissemination of music. The music industry is in jeopardy of being destroyed in its current incarnation, but this will mean that some other format will emerge. The importance of music in culture has been far too deeply established to be completely eradicated by the freedom to download content through file sharing. Where corporate influence has been strong in the development of taste and cultural music appreciations before the internet, listeners now have access to work that would never have been in the public before the wide distribution capacities of the internet. The fear that the music industry more likely has is not the losses incurred by a lack of recording sales, but that they are no longer in control of their consumers, taste and influence in the hands of anyone who can create music, upload a file, and share it with the world. Bibliography Bourdieu, P., & Johnson, R. (1993). The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. New York: Columbia University Press. 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Bootlegging: Romanticism and copyright in the music industry. London: SAGE. Martin, Peter (1995) Sound and Society: Themes in the Sociology of Music. Manchester: Manchester University Press. May, C. (2002). The information society: A sceptical view. Cambridge: Polity Press. Rojek, C. (2011). Pop music, pop culture. Cambridge, U.K: Polity Press. Thererge, Paul (1997) Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making music/consuming technology. Wesleyan University Press: Hanover Read More