The Music Market (T & R 8 am)

When was the last time you bought a CD? Do you even consider the whole ordeal worthwhile anymore? As the digital age dawns on all of us, it seems that the need to actually leave your home for the newest music from TI, or everyone’s favorite pop star, Brittany Spear’s new CD. But is the digital age destroying the market for music. Granted almost everyone loves some kind of music, no matter how pure, poppy, or weird it sounds, so the market will always be there, but in the last few years musicians and retailers have reported drastic decreases in the sales of CDs, which has some fearing for jobs in the factories where they are produced, and jobs of others involved in the process of making these products. However, as I’ve learned in Econ class, these people should not fear. The digital innovations should actually help the economy (in theory at least). With the ease at which music can be uploaded onto a computer, and the simplicity of putting it on your iPod, time is saved, money is saved, gas is saved, and the resources that go into producing a CD are saved as well. Almost everyone is just as happy, if not more so than if they bought the CD. However, the opposite effect may be in the not too distant future. In all reality however, with the rise of the mp3, it’s true that you can legally buy a digital version of a CD on iTunes or the newly reformed Napster (which rips you off, trust me), but it is also true that there are just as many, if not more places to download the music for free. As we learned today in class, ownership leads to the incentive of protecting your product, but these websites take ownership out of the equation and simply offer music at the low-low price of nothing, except for maybe a couple viruses, but that’s beside the point. Anyways, what I am trying to say is these websites are taking away much needed revenue in the music industry. The advancement of technology allowed for the economy to reallocate many of the resources required in the distribution of music to other more important areas, but in the process has done something that could also completely destroy the music industry. With at least a portion, if not a majority of internet users downloading music illegally, the incentive for musicians to make good music is dropping, and no one enjoys a pay cut. As much as I enjoy free stuff, I am not willing to destroy a market like the music industry all in an attempt to enjoy their music for free, because music is something that I place a value on now and know I will have value for in the future, and I do not want the future’s music to be shoddy just because no one was willing to pay for it now.