Chloe Quinlivan

Gone are the days where you buy physical copies of your favourite bands’ new album. Things aren’t so simple anymore thanks to piracy, YouTube, Spotify and iTunes. With any Internet access and the click of a button you can have a whole album downloaded within a matter of minutes on iTunes. Unfortunately piracy is more appealing to most, regardless of the ethical and moral boundaries they break in order to obtain music. With technology evolving so quickly, supporting legitimate digital commerce is diminishing. The current generation will have grown up only knowing the ways of the digital music world. Not understanding the same emotional connection as previous generations felt when buying their first physical copies of their favourite bands.   This essay will look into how illegal downloading has evolved, how organisations and artists are combatting it, what artists really think of file sharing and how much they really profit from iTunes and Spotify.

  Bit-torrenting or peer-to-peer file sharing made its online debut in 2001 thanks to a language programmer by the name of Bram Cohen (Gil, 2014). Peer-to-peer file sharing allows users to download files for free from other users who already possess the exact same file, or a similar file (Gil, 2014).  File sharing back in the Baby Boomer generation was simply lending or making your friend a mix-tape. In recent years it has become apparent that file sharing and obtaining new music is a habitual movement containing little to no emotional attachment. Between 2007 and 2012, 7.3 million people were engaged in illegal file sharing costing music publishers, distributors and copyrighters a cumulative cost of 2.15 billion dollars (Bristol, 2012). However, Craig Wilson from Media Hunter believes that piracy in a wealthy western economy like Australia indicates that the business model is wrong, “not the consumer” (Wilson, 2014). He believes consumers have made a different decision on how to obtain music, because they do not like the options they’ve been offered. ITunes is an application that is paired with all Apple devices and allows users to pay for single songs, EP’s, full-length albums, and listen to iTunes radio. Following Australia’s Friday release scheme, iTunes is updated every Friday with new music. In April this year, CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple has just over 800 million iTunes accounts- a 40% growth since June of 2013 which Mr. Cook says is “surprising and scary” (Ullola, 2014). People blame lack of advanced features and lagging on iTunes as a contributing reason for using torrent websites to obtain music (Gordon, 2013). However, little studies have been done which prove why people continue to illegal download their music through P2P sites. With this being said, researchers do not know a legal way to reverse this growing trend (Sirkeci, 2011). Interestingly, research done by Sirkeci reveals that people who faithfully buy music are more worried about being persecuted if caught illegally downloading, than ethical reasons (Sirkeci, 2011). 

So how can we stop it? As Billboard Magazine reports, the music industry is on the verge of adopting a global release date. At this point in time every country, record label and artist can pick their own release date. As it stands, Australia has chosen a release day of Friday, which heavily impacts sales in the United States on Mondays, and consequently the United Kingdom on Tuesdays (Christman, 2014).  As soon as Australia releases new music on Fridays, the digital piracy begins almost immediately giving people living overseas to download the music illegally through torrent sites including but not limited to Pirate Bay, Torrent Reactor and Bitsnoop. These websites are what’s known as P2P file sharing sites, also known as peer-to-peer (Gil, 2014). File sharing sites such as these are also open source, spyware and advertising free, meaning that no single person profits from someone’s download success. If countries and record labels agreed on one release day a week, such as Friday like Australia, everyone would be able to purchase the desired album at the same time which would limit the amount of illegal activity happening online. Unfortunately this would make it difficult for artists to schedule promotional appearances in multiple countries in the week leading up to a release. A team of researchers at Deakin University in Melbourne has been assigned the task of finding a way to combat torrent websites. They found that watermarking audio files with metadata such as the artist’s name, publishers name, identification and signature could help track the source of the illegal distributer and verify legitimate purchasers of audio files (Rayner, 2014).  Associate Professor Yong Xiangalso found that 95% of music downloads in Australia alone were from an illegal source (Rayner, 2014).

Although artists do not profit from illegal P2P download, most encourage it because they would rather fans have their music. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich spoke about their new album, saying, “If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days. Happy days” (Up Venue, 2013). In a move that echoes that of Metallica, Adelaide rapper ‘Allday’ wrote to his 90,000 followers on Facebook, saying “Not sure what my label is going to say about this but if you are broke you have my permission to torrent my album when it comes out” (SBS, 2014). American rapper ‘50 Cent’ has a more philosophical view on where the music industry is headed. “I think we’re just experiencing technology and we just have to pass new laws, eventually, to change how music is being distributed. There’s no lack of interest in great material, I don’t see people ‘not’ enjoying themselves when the song comes on”. While not profiting from illegal downloads, artists also struggle to make minimum wage through streaming applications like Spotify. Spotify consider themselves proud to be able to deliver a legal and paid service which artists benefit from. Users who do not pay are allowed to make playlists and steam music with the exception of ads every few songs. Users who pay monthly for the service do exactly the same minus the ads (Spotify, 2014). An artists’ song must be streamed just over 4 million times before they earn $25,000, which has to be split with the record label (Thompson, 2011). Cellist Zoe Keating, who made $281.87 from 72,000 streams, believes Spotify should be viewed as a discovery channel and not a source of income (Max's Thoughts, 2014).

ITunes works in a similar way, though when you purchase your music, its your to keep unlike Spotify where it is purely streaming. To earn a salary equivalent to a McDonalds employee, artists need to sell 12,399 songs. This is due to iTunes and record labels taking majority of the profit, leaving artists with 9 cents from each individual song downloaded (Reed, 2011). Nonetheless, profiting at all is better than giving out free music through P2P sites.

  Works Cited

Billboard Music. (2013). Bruno Mars Tops List of Most-Pirated Artists in 2013. Retrieved September 13, 2014, from Billboard Music: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/5855105/bruno-mars-rihanna-top-list-of-most-pirated-artists-in

Bristol, T. I. (2012, September 17). Online Music Piracy: The Debate. Retrieved September 13, 2014, from Bristol Post: http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Online-music-piracy-debate/story-16922513-detail/story.html

Christman, E. (2014, August 12). Record Industry Considering a Standard, Global Album Release Day. Retrieved September 22, 2014, from Billboard Music: http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6214409/record-industry-considering-a-standard-global-album-release-day

Gil, P. (2014, April). Torrents 101: How Torrent Downloading Works . Retrieved September 2014, from About Technology: http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/peersharing/a/torrenthandbook.htm

Gordon, W. (2013, September 9). Why Does Everyone Hate iTunes? Should I Be Using Something Else? Retrieved September 25, 2014, from Life Hacker: http://lifehacker.com/why-does-everyone-hate-itunes-should-i-be-using-someth-1221209656

Max's Thoughts. (2014). how much money do artists make from itunes or streaming services? Retrieved September 25, 2014, from Max's Thoughts: http://thoughtsofmaxh.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/how-much-money-do-artists-make-from-itunes-or-streaming-services/

Rayner, T. (2014, July 17). AUSTRALIAN RESEARCHERS MAKE ‘BREAKTHROUGH’ TO STOP MUSIC PIRACY: ACTUALLY WON’T CHANGE A THING. Retrieved September 23, 2014, from Techly : http://www.techly.com.au/2014/07/17/australian-researchers-make-preventing-illegal-mp3-downloading-breakthrough-wont-change-thing/

Reed, B. (2011). Who really profits from your iTunes downloads? Retrieved September 25, 2014, from Investing Answers: http://www.investinganswers.com/personal-finance/rich-famous/who-really-profits-your-itunes-downloads-3818

SBS. (2014, June 18). Adelaide rapper tells 'broke' fans to illegally download his album. Retrieved from SBS: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/06/18/adelaide-rapper-tells-broke-fans-illegally-download-his-album

Sirkeci, I. (2011). Understanding illegal music downloading in the UK: a multi-attribute model. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing , 90-110.

Spotify. (2014). How is Spotify Contributing to the Music Business? . Retrieved September 25, 2014, from Spotify: http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/

Thompson, D. (2011, November 30). How Musicians Really Make Money in One Long Graph. Retrieved September 25, 2014, from The Atlantic : http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/how-musicians-really-make-money-in-one-long-graph/249267/

Ullola, N. (2014, April 24). iTunes Has 800 Million Accounts…. and 800 Million Credit Card Numbers…. Retrieved September 25, 2014, from Digital Music News: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/04/24/itunes800m

Up Venue. (2013). Artists Speak Out On Music Piracy. Retrieved September 25, 2014, from Up Venue: http://www.upvenue.com/article/1590-musician-stances-on-music-piracy.html/2

Task one- I signed an e-petition! Click here to read about it

Task two-  Respond to a professional blogger I responded to a music blogger at the Herald Sun who, in my opinion, did a really bad album review. Below is the article he wrote.

Here is the email I sent

Task three- This is my 140 character message to President Obama

Task four-  The Australian Communications and Media Authority currently has content restrictions in place to block illegal activity such as child pornography and sexual violence. This is often referred to as "clean-feed" and I think It's a terrific idea. Source

Task five-  I believe censorship has no place in democracy because the voice of the opposition can be censored and suppressed. This is the approach that North Korea takes in order to make things acceptable or unacceptable in their culture. 

Task six- The national broadband network is the new fast, reliable and affordable internet plan where fixed phone lines, computer and tablet platforms can access the online world in a matter of seconds. 

Task seven-  My local member of Parliament in Caloundra is Mark McArdle and he is also the Shadow Health Minister. If I were to send him a message I would tell him about how happy I am with the progress of the new Sunshine Coast University Hospital.

Michelle

Tessa

Olivia 

Gabby

Part B involved us citing a book/journal article which would help us understand the latest medical thinking on internet addiciton. Below is the journal article which furthered my knowledge on internet addiction.  1. Narelle Warden, J. P. (2004). Internet Addiction. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 

The second task in Part B involved researching what IT engineers think of surveillance cameras. We then are required to cite three papers which would be helpful if we were to write an essay on this topic. Below the papers are referenced in full APA 1. Abas, K. Porto, C, Obraczka, K, (2014). "Wireless Smart Camera Networks for the Surveillance of Public Spaces," Computer , vol.47, no 5, pp 37,44

2. Ren, Y.J, O'Gorman, L, Wu, L.J, Fangzhe Chang, Wood, T.L, Zhang, J.R, (2013). "Authenticating Lossy Surveillance Video," Information Forensics and Security, IEEE Transactions on , vol.8, no.10, pp.1678,1687

3. Day, C. (2013). "Big Surveillance", Computing in Science & Engineering, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 88-88.

Our week three tasks involve us familiarising ourselves with Griffith University's library catalogue. Below is one of Stephen Stockwell's in full APA citation 1. Stockwell, S. (2005). Political campaign strategy : doing democracy in the 21st century. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing. Task two involved us citing three books that would help us write an essay on the book Alphaville by Jean Luc Godard.  1. Brody, R. (2008). Everything is cinema : the working life of Jean-Luc Godard. New York: Metropolitan Books. Available at Griffith's Nathan Campus

2. Alphaville : a film / by Jean-Luc Godard ; English translation of screenplay. (2000). (P. Whitehead, Trans.) London: Faber and Faber Ltd.  Available at Griffith's Nathan Campus

3. Dixon, W. (1997). The films of Jean-Luc Godard. Albany : State University of New York Press. Available at Griffith's Gold Coast Campus