Music Industry

Last Saturday, I was checking my Friend Inti’s facebook, who lives in Spain. He uploaded a Lily Allen’s video which I liked very much. So, I decided to buy digital music through Mimix.cl web site for first time in my life. Before to do that, I looked for Lily Allen’s Album in Taringa.net, which is an Argentinean web site that contains an infinite musical catalogue. I found it. Moreover, I found videos, concerts, etc. I was going to spend $4.900 on that album, but I didn’t spend any money in the end.

Such an example reflects the moment that Music Industry is living right now. Another example is Michael Jackson’s death. What would have been a big business due to selling millions of albums years ago today is only a good business, because more and more people are not able to spend money on music, specially the youngest people.

What will be the future of music industry like? Nobody knows but we can make hypothesis about the future. If we see the situation in the developed world, the authorities are releasing new laws in order to punish the internet users who want to download material not authorized. In fact, this year, the French Congress approved a law whose purpose was punishing users who download material not authorized through suspending the internet service to them. Such a law wasn’t authorized by the Constitutional Council because it considered this law attempts against the rights of access to communication services.

In United States, the labels through the Recording Music Association of America, have taken legal actions against more than 30.000 users who have downloaded material not authorized. Last week, a woman was condemned to pay USD 1,920,000.00 due to download illegal material. By the way, she has been the only person who has been punished in USA for such kind of crime.

If we analyze the situation in our countries, it is very difficult to adopt such measures right now, because the authorities would have to spend a lot of resources to pursue the people who break the law. We have a lot of problems more important than protect copyrights such as poverty, health, habitation, etc. But, we have to look for a way to control the situation.

For this reason, we are going to see more and more artists producing their works for their own means. Labels will have to transform in companies whose purpose will be to organize concerts and collect a commission for this service. There is not return. The digital era has arrived.

Rdevia