Summer Investigation: Internet Research

Another aspect of my research included investigating on the internet and finding out what the internet community think of legal and illegal downloading.

Robert Verkaik believes that: “Illegal downloading in the UK has become a massive threat to the music and film industries. In 1997, 78 million singles were sold in the UK; last year, it was just 8.6m. It is estimated that half the population has engaged in some sort of nefarious downloading in the last five years.” www.independent.co.uk [Wednesday, 8 July 2009]. The number of album sold has depleted since 1997, however is this because of illegal downloading or because of the invention of Spotify? A piece of technology where audiences can download tracks for free. Spotify is based on a invitation service, where the invitee has to be a member of the service in which they pay for it; there is a maximum limit of 10 invitations and someone who has been invited cannot invite anyone; also if you want to use the service and haven't been invited, you can become a (paying) premium member. This supports Verkaik's view that "half the population has engaged in some sort of nefarious downloading" because illegal downloading is accessible, easy to use and most importantly: free. Although, Spotify offers a free service, it is an exclusive option because you have to be invited to use it for free or pay for the premium service, whereas [illegal] services such as Limewire offer free and accessible to everyone services. Spotify and Limewire are the antithesis of each other. In order to counteract Limewire and other illegal downloading sites iTunes are dropping the prices of their music, however this is only because they have been forced to do so that the UK is on par with prices equal with the rest of Europe; could this mean that Apple are responsible for some of the illegal downloads, because if the music in the UK is more expensive then everywhere else, consumers are going to find cheaper (if not free) music from elsewhere.

When researching the internet, I decided to find out just how easy it is to find illegal download sites. Using a single search engine, I typed in "Illegal Downloads" and www.google.com pulled up 38,200,000 hits; this highlights how big the problem of illegal downloads are and from looking at the articles on the first page, as this has the most relevant articles, I found that many consumers and critics believe that the illegal download trade is having huge implications on the music industry in terms of cost: "Music industry blames huge illegal download market for ever-falling sales" (Daily Telegraph, 22nd January 2010).

It seems that the entire internet community understand the implications that illegal downloading is having on the music industry, however it seems that even these implications aren't enough to prevent the illegal download trade. The music industry appear to finally be taking action, by releasing new software such as Spotify: " Eventually, belatedly, towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year, it appears as though the music industry is starting to accept the inevitable: that it will have to fundamentally change the way it operates." (Andy Vandervell). The industry and music lovers just have to wait and see whether this change has in fact come too late or just in time.