Downloading of music from the Internet is a very common practice. It is difficult to acquire the exact numbers but legal
downloads from services like iTunes, Musicmatch, and Napster occur tens of thousands of times a day and illegal downloads appear to be at least as common. Questions surrounding music downloading are common and this issue affects many concerned people and groups. We see markets, legislators, courts, pundits, advocacy groups, organizations, corporations, technology developers, and individuals as well interacting in a typical complex and complicated tangle.
Digital music files and the Internet have turned this model on its ear. Now there is no need for a CD to distribute the music. Millions of copies can be made for free from a single master on a server kept anywhere in the world. Each of those copies can be duplicated endlessly with no loss of sound quality. Files can be downloaded from a server or through e-mail, or carried on a CD, micro-drive, or portable audio player to another location and copied there. There is really no physical limit to the
distribution of these files and the cost of reproduction is negligible.
Consumers enjoy the convenience of downloading only the songs they want, for a low price, in a format that can be enjoyed anywhere they like. They consider music, which provides them peace of mind, their property to use exactly like a saying of Philosopher, which they read, learn and quote free of charge and royalty.
Let’s start by getting past the obvious, music does not provide nutrition, shelter, warmth, or protection from predators. A valid question might be why we have music at all. One position is that a basic need for humans to survive and prosper is mental health and well being. Music, through mechanisms not fully understood, can activate deep human emotions and can soothe and relax, or excite and agitate, human beings. This requires no training, even the youngest children respond to auditory stimulation. Additionally, some studies have indicated that listening to music as an infant helps to train the human ear to prepare it for verbal communication. Can we really place music alongside water in the hierarchy of human needs? No, but we can say that listening to music is a means by which human beings may satisfy a lesser need. This helps us understand why the music industry is so large and why listening to music is so common worldwide.
Recorded music is like food, in that it satisfies a human need and is a commodity traded in a market. In order to acquire music individuals must either buy it or create it. Our focus is on those who buy music in the form of recordings. Because of the relatively finite resources available to most individuals for procuring goods and services difficult decisions must be made on what to spend time and money acquiring.
Recent events and new technologies have left consumers with a new awareness of the music market and a perception of the commodity that is fundamentally different from the perception of the producers. There are now competing models for music distribution and use, one that is favored strongly by conservative sellers and one that is favored by most buyers and a few ‘upstart’ sellers. Consumers have discovered that the online distribution and the Copy & Paste models generally meet their needs better than the old models did. Thus, rationally self-interested consumers have moved by the millions to adopting the online distribution and Copy & Paste models. Online music presentation is a way of advertisement and getting popularity amongst global community. In a very low cost, singers and production companies get enormous popularity in all over the World and hence creating a huge market which is limited in case of copyright and royalty based strategy. Most of the companies offer one / two songs free available online and induce customers to purchase complete album on CD / tape whereas some vendors also offer incentives to Internet users through their site. Of course this a very advantageous strategy to use a popular mean of communication at very low cost to popularize their band, songs and productions all over the World. Those who oppose online music availability can not tell how much their market will shrink and reduce if music is not available online to share or to download free of cost. Each producer or singer is proud of what rank they are having on Internet as the level of their popularity. It is simply because their music is available online to share - if not then they will be known and popular in a particular territory.
Consumers and producers are now operating in a market where they do not agree on the nature of the commodity being traded. Consumers no longer respect or trust the legal system and as a result they freely violate copyright laws with no guilt or regret. The response from the RIAA and the government has been counterproductive, further undermining public trust in the system. The rift between the consumer paradigm and the producer paradigm causes tension, mistrust, and hostility on both sides. The fact that the music industry is more than $14 billion dollar a year industry meaning that the monetary stakes are high on both sides. And while there is conflict it is conflict that comes from rational, self-interested actions on the part of most participants.