The Funeral of the Music Industry Essay

The Internet Is the Funeral of the Music Industry
Kenneth Russell
Strayer University
Professor Murray Jackson
Eng. 215
March 7, 2012

The Internet Is the Funeral of the Music Industry

The music industry has reached its last days of survival. Like a thief in the night, the digital age has attacked music sales and the recording industry like a rapid Trojan virus since early 1999. Could Prince have been onto something when he sang “Party like it’s 1999?” Could this be the end for the recording industry? The recording industry had slowly started showing signs of declination in music sales around early 2000. Was this due to the creation of Napster, which appeared in 1999? Napster, the online file-sharing service made its debut in 1999. The peer to peer giant was created by a college student Shawn Fanning as an easy method for people to share music and digital content directly over the Internet. Napster’s growth exploded and became a major concern for the recording industry in late 2000- acknowledging a massive user base of 38 million people were illegally sharing music and digital content. Not only did Napster help the exposure of music, it changed the way most people acquired music. It also lowered the price point of the CD from $14 to free-which the recording industry wasn’t too favorable of.
Russell Frackman, the lead attorney for the music industry in its 1999 case against Napster, “it’s not that the music industry thought the technology was bad, it just objected to the use to which it was being put” (CNN Money.com, February 3rd, 2010).
The music industry’s inability to decisively make decisions, and refusal to compromise with the peer to peer user base at the time effectively sealed its fate. The music industry was more concerned about the peer to peer sharing rather than utilizing its popularity. Which cause them to let a huge opportunity escape? There decision to work with Napster as a pay by the month service did not happen. Instead the...