Pirates of the Internet: The Curse of the Musician

It is undeniable how hard the music industry has been hit because of music piracy with the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) recording thousands of jobs layoffs and billions of dollars in losses.  Through Napster's easiness to share non-copyrighted songs, the industry declared it's biggest war yet. Even though, the monster software was ultimately defeated, the damage was pretty much done. It was sort of an "inception": the idea was already planted in people's mind and led the way to an uncontrollable P2P sharing on the Internet. 

Putting the customer’s (the internet user) perspective aside, since it is very obvious that people will take advantage of any opportunity that’s favorable to them even if it is the unethical choice, how does music artists feel about this issue? Heavy metal band Metallica has always been pretty keen in defending their online intellectual property (first one to actually challenge Napster when a demo of their song was release without any consent) but others like singer Joss Stone are "down" with piracy, stating: "music is meant to be shared". So does this mean that some musicians see their work as charitable? Maybe when you’re entering the business you’d rather do anything to share your material and draw attention, but to how much extent? If you eventually change your mind, even a second later, it will be too late to be controlled.

Moreover, musicians have been forced to tour extensively throughout the last decade and deliver exhausting performances because record sales are regrettably too low. Maybe they’ll have to swallow hard, embrace piracy and adopt innovative measures such as Radiohead's "pay what you want" approach in which they perfectly accepted fans to pay nothing or pay as much money as you like for their last album 'In Rainbows'. What other sources does musicians have to comfortably release new records? Could it be Apple's iTunes or Amazon? The problem is that the current generation, unlike the good 'ol days, are not that interested in buying the whole album. They are satisfied with the songs marketed as singles or hit songs and both services allow them to purchase songs individually. So still there is not much earning left this way either. Kid Rock's anti-iTunes policy, and one of the few artists outside the realm of Apple's music engine, may have some good reasons in doing so, since he might have earned an extra $3.3 million figure by keeping his new album 'Born Free' out of the iTunes' grid and making his non-pirate fans buy the whole record.

Also, there's the issue with online streaming, using your Internet like a radio but with the possibility to select the song that you want to hear. From Gainsville, Florida, Grooveshark's service is a free and so far legal streaming site with a powerful interface and a large database, where you can find even local underground songs from distant countries (it allows its users to upload any song into the system). Downsize? The average people who want to listen to their favorite bands in their iPod or Zune device are unable to download the file from Grooveshark. However, its popularity has been increasing over time and definitely it has not been received with kind-hearted eyes inside the music industry (legendary band Pink Floyd successfully removed itself from the program's database after settling a dispute). As well as torrents, Grooveshark is not directly violating copyrights so far; only their users are because they are the ones fostering illegal copies and as long as the program doesn't make any real profit from letting people share, there is not much left to do to fight back.

Many countries, especially in Europe, are meticulously battling against online pirates, passing new laws and measures in order to hinder illegal downloading. But combating online music piracy is like combating technology in its pure form. Nonetheless all giants can be brought down to his knees, right Goliath? The RIAA recently won a lawsuit against popular P2P program LimeWire, making the service to shutdown for good. So musicians, hold on, all curses have the tendency to end.