Ben Gadbois (The Beacon)
By Ben Gadbois, Guest Commentary
"Piracy is killing the music industry!" cries Universal Music Group, Warner, and many others who have failed to evolve. And this statement has been re-iterated so many times that people even believe it. Music sales were even up in 2011 (search Business Insider).
It's record labels that lose when people don't buy recorded music, not the artists. For every $1000 is music sold, the average musician gets $23.40 (via The Root's music breakdown study). Artists get their real money from tours and concert merchandise. Go to one normal-priced concert, buy a shirt, and you've probably given the artist more than a loyal-legal-iTunes-buying consumer ever will.
"But downloading music without paying is still stealing!" Really? If I steal your potted plant - that's theft. But if you let me have a seed and I grow my own identical plant, nobody loses anything. And forest nurseries don't run around complaining how seed spreading is killing their industry. It's not a perfect analogy (by definition, no analogy is), but it illustrates how the rest of the world deals with the same thing.
"Easy for you to say, think of the musicians!" I'm a musician, and I put out my album for free, encouraging its piracy. And because of that, far more people have listened to it. It's a win-win for all listeners and me.
And let's set it straight: piracy happens in Somalia, copyright infringement happens in front of a computer.
Ben Gadbois is a senior computer science major. He can be reached at gadbois13@up.edu
