by Julia Jennings

Created on: April 07, 2010   Last Updated: April 11, 2010

Every day we are reading that the music industry is sitting on a precarious cliff edge ready to fall into oblivion with the next illegal download. It seems everyone is harping on about how we have to stop people from downloading songs, copying CDs and generally putting the music industry into jeopardy.

Everyone knows the music industry has been ripping of artists since the day the first vinyl hit the streets. The trouble is they are not getting away with it any more. Right at this moment we are in a transitional period of complete change. First we had radio, then vinyl and cassettes, then CDs and now file downloads and all in the space of a few short decades.

No one can afford to sit still and bemoan the fact that things are changing, they just are, and it’s a natural evolution. There are always casualties when things evolve it’s just that this time it’s the relatively youthful music industry that being axed. The old way no longer works simple as that.

Recently some research revealed that around 7 million people in the UK regularly listen to illegal downloads, a trend that incidentally has become a global phenomenon and which is apparently costing the music industry tens of billions, but is it? The implication is that if they weren’t illegally downloading the songs they would go out and buy the CD but would they? I doubt if the numbers would add up. Yes it’s a problem but it isn’t the only problem.

Just because the number of people using illegal file sharing software is increasing and the number of CD sales is declining, it doesn’t necessarily mean that one is causing the other. Charles Arthur from the Guardian was well on the right track when he decided to start from the premise that we all had a certain amount of cash to spend and just chose to spend it on different things.

He looked at the figures supplied by the UK music industry and the games industry. He ‘discovered’ that total spending on gaming had increased from £1.4 billion in 1999 to £4.04 billion in 2008, and at the expense of the music industry. Yes it seems that gaming is costing the music industry and not illegal music downloads.

The gaming industry has got something right, but for how long who knows. It isn’t easy to copy game content whereas anyone with even a fraction of an IQ could download a music title. However, the gaming industry shouldn’t be too complacent with OnLive and gaming in the cloud just around the corner. No what we’re talking about here as Arthur suggests, is the need to adjust to change. The music business has to evolve just as we all have to adapt to a new world.  

Think about it, nowadays you need a computer, a broadband connection, a mobile phone, and numerous other gadgets and devices just to feel as if you are kind of normal. Sad but true. Technology is evolving faster than we can download the updates to our software, we are living in a techno world, and some things are becoming a lot easier, like filing your tax return or applying for road tax, whereas other things are a heck of a lot more difficult, like trying to remain incognito.  These days with social networking, GPS and Street view it isn’t hard to find out anything you want to know about anyone else including where they live.

Yes we are evolving and the music industry have had it too good for too long so should stop moaning and actually do something about it. Those that do, like R and R Music – Unsigned Artists Community for example, are likely to prosper, those that don’t will inevitably fall by the way side and their incessant ramblings about illegal downloads and lost sales will simply fade away with the wind.

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