Every year there is growth in music
streaming and digital sales, never a decline. There are only changes
in ways music is acquired. The music industry claims that
stream-ripping is the latest, biggest trend ongoing that threatens
the livelihood and motivating factors all recording artists need in
order to create and survive. Ick...that was hard to write!
The big surprise to be learned is that
customers are shying away from buying digital mp3 albums and are
preferring to live stream whatever they desire from streaming
services such as Spotify.
Hard to believe, but it's true. It
seems people are willing to pay subscription fees to access music
instead of buying it outright. Why? Many will contend that it's
cheaper that way, and who wants their system bogged down with mp3's.
The main argument for judging prices of
music mp3's to actual physical CD's and or DVD's is that they are
often priced similar to the same, when in fact they are not the same.
I will agree with anyone who contends
that digital media is over priced and should be re-evaluated. If
consumers believed digital files were worth the price they'd buy it.
The point being made, is that digital albums are priced too high, and
that is a major reason for looking for alternatives.
Most everyone already knows about the
many streaming services available, that said, there's still the
growing trend of what is called stream-ripping where you can stream
and download music files in mp3 format to your system for offline
use.
It has been reported that there is a
rise in this activity, and music labels are of course crying
foul...claiming theft and piracy and suing websites that allow you to
download and convert streaming content to files.
I definitely do not advocate piracy,
but I think that the music industry claims are over exaggerated. Many
of the people downloading files have already bought the same content
in another format.
Unless you have bad, slow and
unreliable internet I still don't see the need to actually download
anything...there's so much free stuff on YouTube, all you need to do
is create play-lists and Rock Out to your heart's content!
Record companies could do better by
their customers. They could bundle digital versions on the actual
physical copies, then you'd see a real drop in downloading activity.
Expecting customers to pay for the same content, multiple times does
nothing in the way of discouraging illegal per se downloading of
media.
The main culprit being targeted by
record labels today is
Suing and shutting down websites does
not fix the problem. When one goes down another goes up.
The best solution is to try and do
right by the customer.
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