Pros & Cons Of Illegal Music Downloading

Illegal music downloading is very popular all around the the world, there are millions of sites that provide the opportunity to illegally download music just with the access of internet. Illegal music downloading is like robbery in most peoples eyes because the fact that it’s illegal and supposedly the music industry is losing money, but what some people don’t realize is in fact this can raise the popularity in the music/artist/album. Regardless illegal music downloading should not be done no matter the case, it is illegal and punishments for getting caught can be tremendous. Illegal music downloading is hurting the music industry’s pocket, Bowie-Sell stated equating to a loss in retail sales of more than 500 million pounds, the figures highlight why music companies are concerned about the damage this might do to their long term sales (1). Illegal music downloading has tremendously hurt the music industry financially, if this continues how much worse is it going to get? Sprague stated in fact by 2009 the British phonographic Industry estimates that 25% of all company profits will come from music downloads (1). Some people ev think that illegal music downloading could be ruining the music industry, Crowson stated despite the fact that the UK legal download market is thriving and that album sales are at an all time high, BPI officials still insist that file sharing is killing the music industry (1). All though illegal music downloading might not affect the artist themselves, the music industry might be in danger. Proof that the music industry is in danger is Mackenzie stated illegal downloading has hurt the music industry, whose CD sales have decreased since 1999, according to the “Boston Globe” (2). CD’s aren’t really necessary when you can illegally download free music and there’s the main issue. Oddly enough some research shows that illegal music downloading actually increases CD sales, Crowson stated the researchers found that the most heavily downloaded tracks showed measurable drop in sales and that music file sharing actually increases CD sales for popular albums that sell more than 600,000 copies (1). So that would mean this only increases some CD sales, not all of them. Other research also shows that for every so illegal download sales increase by a copy, Crowson stated they found after tracking sales of 680 albums over 17 weeks, that for every 150 downloads of a song from those albums, sales increase by a copy (1). The process to end all illegal music downloading would be very long and spendy