Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Future of the Music Industry
I think that since the demand for music remains high, there is no way that recorded music or even major corporate entities controlling production will vanish. However, since music can be transmitted electronically and not in physical form I think that illegal downloading and music piracy will constantly be a problem for the industry. Moreover, even if the music industry can somehow address the problems with file sharing and piracy we see today, tech savvy internet users will simply find another way to distribute music. The MP3 was a system that because of its duplicability and non-physical form begged to be pirated and copied. As long as it exists music companies will be fighting piracy and music pirates will be finding new and clever means of distributing MP3s. Is the MP3 the most perfect form of recorded sound? Probably not. I think the key for the big music industry juggernauts is to use their resources to find a more perfect system than the MP3, something that might have codes to prevent pirating. However, it is probably a long shot because right now we like getting music for free, and might outright reject a system that limits our ability to share music.
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1 comment:
@Ray-- In fact, the music industry is working on a better sounding compressed music file. But the problem is that the MP3 has now become the de facto standard. The new compression standard would have to be vastly different to induce people to abandon their MP3 players for something new. I don't see that happening for a few years at least.
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