To Download or Not to Download: Music Piracy

by: Daniel Earney

Music piracy first came to prominence in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s with the rise and fall of Napster. Nearly a decade after Napster’s demise at the hands of the Recording Industry Association of America, illegal downloading of music is still widely popular. Napster’s lead spawned numerous other downloading sites like BitTorrent, Grokster, and LimeWire. Action against downloaders, uploaders, and hosters has been sparse, overly harsh, and ineffective overall.

Apple’s iTunes and other legal downloading sites have offered some relief from illegal downloading’s cut into record sales. According to NielsenSoundscan, album sales dropped 20 percent in 2007 and 14 percent in 2008. Digital album sales have grown 83 percent over the past two years, and digital single sales rose 27 percent and 47 percent in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Still, the increase in legal downloads has not made up for the industry’s total loss of revenue.

So, should you feel guilty for illegally downloading that new Bruce Springsteen album? If you ask Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, no, you shouldn’t. In July of 2000, Radiohead’s album, Kid A, hit number one on the Billboard Charts, something they had yet to accomplish. Yorke attributed the success to the album’s proliferation on sites like Napster. This shows one of the benefits of file sharing: artists and songs that wouldn’t normally be played on radio and MTV can find an audience. The only caveat is that people who download albums and songs would then have to go out and buy what they had already downloaded. Now Myspace , Last.fm, lala, and other sites allow you to preview an entire album before you head to the store, so Yorke's enthusiasm for file sharing is not as relevant today.

Another argument made by illegal downloaders is that music is supposed to be free. After all, music is culture and who could put a price on culture? You have to remember, however, that this is America and anything is for sale.

Perhaps people make a big deal about illegal downloading because it’s easy to believe that bands make most of their money through record sales. People who download music illegally, have claimed that they “make up for it” by going to the artists’ concerts and buying their merchandise. Fair enough, but there is quite a difference between buying an album and paying $10 to see three bands play. And how do you keep up with and make time to go to concerts for every artist whose album you’ve illegally downloaded?

Where illegal downloading really irks me is when albums leak to download sites weeks or even months before the album's official release. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs recently had a leak problem when their album, It’s Blitz!, hit download sites a full month before its official release. Interscope tried to curb sales losses by putting the album on iTunes ahead of schedule, but there’s no telling how poorly the album will sell because of the leak. One of the most anticipated albums of 2009, Grizzlybear’s Veckatimest, hit download sites in early March but the album is not due for an official release until May 26th.

To me, downloading music illegally just doesn’t seem fair. I don’t have time to go out to all my favorite bands’ concerts, and you can only own so many band t-shirts. Plus, I’m a collector. Nothing beats having a solid, physical copy of an album. I don’t even like using iTunes.

So, downloading music illegally is both good and bad. If you do get an artist’s album for free, make sure you help them out in some other way. Go to their concert, order a t-shirt, if you like the album, snag the Deluxe Edition. If artists can’t make money, they can’t make music.