critique of "effect of file sharing on record sales"

               I chose to critique this article because I have been considering the loss in revenue for the music industry from music piracy for a few years now. We are in the Era of Technology, hence why it is so fast and easy to download music for free. However, there is a dispute between researchers and music producers regarding the cause for loss of album sales. According to Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, music pirating is not the cause for the loss in music sales. In fact, the two are almost completely irrelevant.

                I agree with both Ty and Oberholzer-Gee that many teens and college students are constantly downloading illegal music. They claimed that this illegal downloading is actually a form of “free” promotion for artists’ music. In order for a radio station to play music, artists have to pay them a ton of money just for one song. However, this is how people are informed about the various artists and then they decide to go buy their album. Illegal downloading of music is essentially the same type of promotion as the radio, yet it doesn’t cost the artist anything to promote their music. When people (mainly high-school and college students) download songs off the internet, they are viewing a free sample of the artists’ music. Then, once they’ve decided that they are really interested in the artist, they will go buy the album. Hence why the first half of this year saw the number of illegal music downloads and music sales directly proportionally: they both increased.

                I really liked how Ty explained that the economics of the music production are characterized by significant fixe costs and because albums are now broken apart, the revenue earned from a new album is much lower. The music industry should consider strategizing or colluding with Itunes regarding their sales of individual songs. Itunes is a main source for music downloading across the nation; if the music industry negotiated a plan with Itunes, they might be able to regain their loss of sales from albums.

                Ty also did a nice job explaining the effect that advancements in technology have over the music industry. Unfortunately for artists, technology advancements are only going to increase in the future. Artists and firms affiliated with the music industry really need to consider coming up with a strategy fairly quickly to prevent the internet from these future technology advancements, such as enabling people to download full albums for free, not just singles. Maybe the music files online could allow potential consumers to preview the song online but not actually download it. This way they are able to hear the artist on their computer as well as on the radio, before they decide to purchase their albums. Another possible idea, although much more tedious, could be to set a limit on downloads per computer and/or per artist. Otherwise, I have no doubt that the internet will soon allow free downloading of albums; this will be a detrimental set back to the entire music industry across the world.