Sunday, 7 March 2010
Does the emergency of digital download signal the end of the music industry?
The emergence of digital download does not necessarily mean the end of the music industry. The argument is that if music is free then nobody will pay for it. Well this is not technically true; bottled water for example shows us that people will still buy even if they can have something for free. A lot of this comes down to guilt and the culture we live in where stealing is frowned upon. File sharing is partially proven by a student from Havard Business School to almost no effect on record sales; other factors tend to be the reason sales fall, such as the amount of CD's released. Lawrence Lessige states that it is illegal but can also help get artists recognized. The relatively unknown band, RadioHead had their first album, Kid A, shoot to number 1 on the billboard chart after it was shared through Napster. It hereby gained recognition and fans went out to purchase it.
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Kid A was not Radiohead's first album and while they had not had large scale commercial success in America at this point, they were certainly not unknown. Other than this and the fact that the theorist you cited is called Lawrence Lessig however, this is quite a good post.
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