Sunday 6 September 2009

Spotify - the soloution to downloads

Hi

Well I’m back after my holiday, which was great. Anyway to the point, there is a problem with modern music. Or rather there is a problem with the modern music business.
Before that though let’s go back to a time when things were a lot simpler, the year is 1886 and the place is Berne Switzerland. This is the day when the convention for the protection of literary and artistic works takes place. At this convention the copyright was born! To skip all the dull copyright law, the convention basically decided that anyone who created some new book or piece of music had the legal rights to their own creation. Or rather if they put that little symbol there name and the year on their piece, from then on they had the legal right to how it was copied. Meaning if it was reproduced they had to receive some sort of payment.
So after this convention most countries agreed to the terms and signed up to it happily. Interestingly America however only agreed to the convention in 1988! From then up to near the modern day everyone seemed happy. Records, tapes and CD’s were produced and the bands or artists got their money as per copyright. Books were published and the authors got payment.
However now we have arrived at the modern day and the problems have started. With the advent of MP3’s and the internet along with modern technology, anything can be put on the internet and the copyright law is becoming difficult to enforce. This is making the record companies jolly angry as they fear that people who can get something for free will never pay for it.
Of course to force people to pay for what they listen to or download, governments are branding people thieves and dishing out extreme punishments. The thing is though there is quite a difference between the types of thieves. On one hand there are the people who are downloading an album and burning it onto CD with the intent of selling it to make a profit. And I agree these people are committing a crime. However on the other hand there are the people who are downloading the one song or album for personal use, simply because they cannot afford to buy it at a legitimate outlet. Now these people are not the same as the people who mass download with the intent to sell. As one they are not making a profit. And two once they have downloaded there one song they will probably feel a sense of wrong doing themselves and when they have the money buy the album from a legitimate outlet. Now those two aren’t the same thing. One is criminally wrong the other is at worst ethically wrong.
Personally I don’t illegally download and never have, so I don’t have a two side’s stand point. I do however understand that the artists deserve to get payed and that there fans should be able to listen to their music. Happily for once both sides seem to be able to get their wish, new internet programs such as spotify are allowing people to listen to their favourite band perfectly legally on their computer. While still giving the band or artist a suitable payment due to the advertising that is shown on the spotify website. Unsurprisingly Spotify and others like it are becoming a huge success. So hopefully in the feature the consumer and the record label should be able to reach a happy medium. And they will be no need to brand ordinary music fans as thieves. Also it will make the real criminals easier to catch.

And best of all they might at last remove that stupid advert from every single DVD!

Kyle

No comments:

Post a Comment