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Title: Music File Sharing Killed the Music Industry

Author: General Buck Turgidson

Source: Fortissimo: the Newsletter of the American Marching Band Association, p. 5-6

Date: 2010 July

Most people would agree that it was the MP3 that sealed the fate of the music industry in the

United States. A quick look at CD and cassette sales in the early 1990s, when the MP3 format was first

available, and at sales in 2009, when sales showed massive decline points to MP3s as the bullets and file

sharing softwareas the guns that killed the American music industry. In France, sales are down 47% and,

in Brazil, they are down even more, 63% (LeNez 23; Campos 34). The news for record companies is bad

everywhere. This essay will show how file sharing software is unjust and has wrecked the music industry

for good.

Just as the exchange among friends of music copied onto blank cassettes in the 1970s and 1980s

began eating away at record sales, so too did the first file sharing networks pick away at the foundation

of sales in the 1990s. Any sort of copying, even of content you bought and paid for, is a copyright

infringement, and thus a form of theft. In America, there are strict laws against stealing, which everyone

agrees with; so too should our courts prosecute people for stealing music, which robs artists of their

livelihood (Uhltrarich 89). Jack Valenti, former head of the Motion Picture Academy of America, argues

that there is a huge avalanche of thievery todayand that 400,000 to 600,000 movies are being

illegally uploaded and downloaded every day (Spring).

More evidence about the damage done by filesharing can be found in reports published by the

Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the American Society of Composers, Authors, and

Publishers (ASCAP), and Broadcast Music, Inc. The RIAA website puts this sobering statistic front and

center on its page about piracy:

One credible analysis by the Institute for Policy Innovation concludes that global music piracy

causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, a loss of $2.7 bill ion in

workers' earnings, and a loss of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income

tax and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes (Piracy: Online and On the

Street).

The evidence from these numbers clearly shows where the problem lies: illegal downloading of 

music. Gene Simmons of the band Kiss argues that those kids [illegally downloading music] are putting

100,000 to a million people out of work (Bruno). Another issue is that the people who create the

filesharing software are mostly criminals. Shawn Parker, one of the two founders of Napster, has argued

that it is not the responsibility of companies like his to prevent people from illegally sharing music; given

that he was arrested for cocaine possession a few years after that, it is fair to write off his special

pleading for his company. Some estimates suggest that Napster alone was responsible for the loss of 

millions of dollars in revenue for artists.

Most Americans respect the law and believe in private property. If you steal something, that

makes you a thief. Few Americans would want to think of themselves as thieves, so it make sense that

the record industry needs to do all it can to publicize the idea that that filesharing is actually theft.

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Enlightening the minds of those who maybe have not thought through what they are doing is likely to

have the desired effect of shutting down the filesharing networks. The RIAAs efforts seem to be

working, too. In 2000, Frank Creighton, RIAA Senior Vice President and Director of Anti-Piracy, said that

the investment our members made in anti-piracy efforts this year has begun to show significant

returns (Recording Industry Releases Midyear Anti-Piracy Statistics.) As long as the RIAA keeps up the

pressure and Americans come to realize that downloading music is theft, it is likely that this problem will

be solved.

*Bruno, Antony. Billboard Q & A: Gene Simmons. Billboard 12 Nov. 2007. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.

Campos, Paolo. Brazils Music Industry on the Ropes. Music Today 23 Oct. 2000: 34-35. Print.

LeNez, Marisol. CD Sales on the Decline Across Europe. Financial News 6 Jul. 2001: 6. Print

*Piracy: Online and On the Street.RIAA.RIAA, n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.

*Recording Industry Releases Midyear Anti-Piracy Statistics.RIAA. RIAA, 19 Sep. 2000. Web. 20 Nov.

2010.

*Spring, Tom. Three Minutes with Jack Valenti. PCWorld 22 May 2003. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.

Uhltrarich, Lars. Artists Begin to Speak Out against Piracy.Rolling Stone Mar. 2000: 85-89. Print.

Sources marked with an asterisk (*) are real sources. The others are made up.

General Buck Turgidson teaches music at St. Ignatius Loyola High School in Schenectady, NY, and has

taught previously at the West Point Military Academy. He is the author of Music Unleashed: A Guide to

Marching Band Formations.