mp3s

     The music recording business is a $14.5 billion dollar industry in the United States of America. The industry has been present in our society since the 1950s and it has generally grown throughout its existence. There was a sharp increase in total sales beginning in the early 1990s that was due to the maturation of the Compact Disk as a commercial product. But, consumers, distributors, and producers in this industry have all been quite ruffled by the potential impact of the internet, specifically MP3 files. It appears, however, that the fear that MP3 technology will take away from the recording industry is definitely premature and the proposed threat may never actually materialize.
     Record sales are, overall, healthy and growing. They are no longer, however, booming as they did in the mid-1990s. In 1990, record, cassette tape and CD sales were under $4 billion annually. (Campbell, 69) By 1996, those same sales were over $12 billion annually. (RIAA Market Research Committee) Sale of cassette tapes and vinyl records had sharply dropped during this same time, but CD sales had made up for the loss. Over 85% of the 1996 sales came from CDs. Then came MP3s.
     The late 1990s brought the rise of MP3 technology. The software that supported MP3 files would allow individuals to upload recorded music onto the internet. Once they have done this it is easy to share files between individuals. Entire albums can be sent from computer to computer within a matter of minutes with no money being exchanged at all. The technologies of CD-Rs and CD-RWs enabled people to "burn" or record music onto blank CDs from their computer.(Campbell, 69) CD-Rs had the limitation that they could only be recorded on once, but CD-RWs fixed this problem by allowing multiple recordings, like cassette tapes. The combination of these technologies would enable individuals to download any music they want and burn it onto CDs, not only without leaving their computer but also without having ever paid for the product they received.
     Many technology experts predict that the internet will greatly effect the music industry. "The Web empowered the digital economy (by allowing it to make) use of the digitalized landscape to affect the world's population by communicating digitalized data on demand to all who could afford access" (Christman, 104). The magnitude of this technology appears to be large, and growing.
     The recording industry, collectively, is quite worried about what effects this could have and has made several attempts to legally close down organizations, such as Napster, that promote MP3 distribution. Last spring, Napster lost an important legal decision. They had claimed that they were an Internet service provider(ISP). (Fitzpatrick, 8) In this, they said that they were simply providing a service and could not be held liable for how their service was used. This argument was trying to keep Napster from liability for copyright violations committed with MP3s from their web site. (Fitzpatrick, 8) This attempt failed, and the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) took the offensive again.
     The RIAA requested "a preliminary injunction to remove all songs owned by its member companies from Napster directories"(Fitzpatrick, 8). In defense of this, the lawyers for Napster have advanced the idea that such an injunction would violate the First Amendment rights of consumers, that the RIAA are attempting "copyright misuse," and that their service can be used for purposes which would not violate copyright law. (Fitzpatrick, 8) The latter defense was meant to parallel the winning argument in the Supreme Court's 1984 Sony Betamax case. This decision found that the fact that VCR technology could enable people to violate copyright laws was not grounds to hinder the existence of that technology because it also had many legitimate and legal uses. (Fitzpatrick, 8) Napster claims that the RIAA wants to destroy the very technology that makes file sharing possible so that music can only be distributed the way they like it distributed. The RIAA counters that, "Whether or not it is lawful for users to share music one on one, it is entirely different for a commercial entity to create a business that induces users to do that. Napster cannot hide behind what consumers might be able to do...to build its own commercial success" (Fitzpatrick, 105). In other words, even if it is legal for individuals to share files among themselves, it is not legal, the RIAA says, for Napster to give them the means.
     The idea that the record labels simply want to get rid of MP3s is tempting to believe. "The thing they hate most is MP3 files. They would dearly love to wipe the slate clean - do away with all MP3 files and start fresh with a secure music file format"(Pohlman, 36). And, it is not only record labels that are not fond of MP3 technology.
     Some artists are also quite weary of the influence that MP3s can have on the record industry. John Kaplan is the lead singer and manager of a Washington DC-based band called The Bicycle Thieves. The internet allows the band to cheaply and easily have mass email newsletters go to over 1000 fans to keep them up on their latest news. It also allows fans from anywhere in the world to check out the bands tour dates online or buy the new CD with a credit card at a web site. He thinks that MP3s can be a good way for people to get a taste of what a band is like and what they are about. "However, it is ludicrous," he says, "to suggest that people are entitled to free music and the artist is not entitled to fair compensation" (Kaplan A). He goes on, "It is very frustrating as an artist to have people care so little about the lack of fairness to the artist in the current MP3 debate"(Kaplan A).
     Lars Ulrich, a member of internationally famous heavy metal band Metallica, has testified before the Supreme Court in support of the RIAA's attempts to close down Napster. (Pohlman, 36) Metallica's concern was that fans were going to simply download all of their music from the internet and nobody would ever have to actually purchase the CDs or cassettes. "You know the end of the world has arrived when Metallica goes to court as plaintiffs instead of defendants. These thrash metal rockers were the definition of anti-establishment," writes Ken C. Pohlman, pointing out that the band used to encourage
their fans to secretly record their live concerts and distribute the recordings among themselves on cassette tape. (Pohlman)
     What makes MP3s different is its unprecedented convenience. (Kaplan B) With a few clicks of a mouse, an individual can have in ten minutes what would otherwise cost them over $15. Some MP3 advocates say that this is ok because music artists make too much money already. But, "you can say that about professional athletes too, but you can't easily go see them for free" (Kaplan B).
     It is not likely that MP3 proliferation would put a band of Metallica's stature out of business any time soon. But, John Kaplan feels that the spread of unpurchased music has made the tough road of being a professional musician even more difficult. "I think with the proliferation of Napster and other MP3 sites, artists are now going to be selling even less product and making even less money. There needs to be some way for artists to be compensated for their loss of income" (Kaplan A). It is very clear to him that when a musician creates a song it is "owned by the songwriter and the legacy of that song should be income generated by its creation" because "art is the property of the artist"(Kaplan A).
     There is a lot of division of opinion, however, over whether MP3s will actually have any great impact on the record industry's sales numbers. Many news sources say that the MP3 impact is growing large and will soon damage record sales. "Everyone recognizes that whatever (the net's) impact today, it will increase many fold in coming years" (Christman, 104), wrote one reporter for Billboard magazine. But, the statistics given by his own magazine disagree. The numbers say that the influence of MP3 distributors is decreasing. At one prominent site, MP3.com, estimated average daily unique visitors, monthly page views, and number of "listens to songs" all decreased last summer. (Newsline) This would seem to indicate that MP3 use does not have all the growing momentum that it would take to put a dent in record sales.
     Annual record, cassette tape, and CD sales did indeed go up from 1998 to 1999(RIAA Market Research Committee), the two most recent years for which statistics are available. The sales of cassettes and singles in all formats did decline, but sales overall went up due to the continue growth in CD sales. (Jeffrey, 3) Perhaps the effects of MP3s can be measured in the fact that CD sales growth slowed - it grew only 10.8% in 1999 whereas it grew 12.5% in 1998. (Jeffrey, 3) But, that is only a small decrease. The decline in singles is explained by the fact that labels are "releasing fewer commercial singles into the market or else cutting off manufacturing after they become hits"(Jeffrey, 3). The growing prominence of MP3s has not yet made a clear impact on record sales.
     It is true that some people are greatly taking advantage of the free music available on the internet. Ben May, a computer-science major at Columbia University says he has over 1,700 MP3 files. And, he is an example of someone who uses this technology to then burn his own CDs with music he has gotten off the internet.. But, he says that he buys more CDs since he has started trading MP3 files, not less. (Napoli)
     John Brookins, a self proclaimed computer nerd from Rochester, New York, has over 800 MP3 files on his computer. He likes MP3s because they have the advantage of easy accessibility. "For the most part," he says, "if it's been recorded, you can get it on MP3." He is most likely to download an MP3 after having heard it on the radio, hearing about it from a friend, or already having it on CD. Having it available on a computer MP3 player simply makes a song more accessible. He also, however, often buys a CD after having heard it on MP3 and says he buys more CDs since he started trading the online technology. (Brookins)
     MP3s have certainly not been the record industry's death toll, as some people feared(or hoped) it would be. It has actually not yet had any measurable impact on record sales at all. It could be that its impact is only just beginning and the majority is yet to come. But, with CD and overall sales continuing to rise, it does not appear that there is any extreme revolution on the recording industry's immediate horizon.

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WORKS CITED

Brookins, John. Personal interview. 25 October, 2000.

Campbell, Richard. Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000.

Christman, Ed. "Hefty Sales Raise Issues: Some fear bar for artists too high." Billboard: The International Newsweekly of Music, Video and Home Entertainment. July 15, 2000: 1, 105.

Fitzpatrick, Eileen. "Napster Launches New Defense." Billboard: The International Newsweekly of Music, Video and Home Entertainment. August 26, 2000: 8, 108.

Jeffrey, Don. "RIAA Stats Show Dip in Formats." Billboard: The International Newsweekly of Music, Video and Home Entertainment. March 4, 2000:

Kaplan, Jon. (A) Email interview. 7 November, 2000.

Kaplan, Jon. (B) Personal interview. 5 November, 2000.

Napoli, Lisa. "Tracking Technology: MP3 and the Spread of Music" Campbel, 96.

"Newsline" Billboard: The International Newsweekly of Music, Video and Home

Entertainment. August 26, 2000: 66.

Pohlman, Ken C. "Conspiracy Theory." Sound and Vision. September, 2000: 36.

RIAA Market Research Committee. Music Industry Scorecard: Jan.-Dec. 1996-99.