Impact of Internet and Music Download on Music Industry

MUSIC INDUSTRY BEEN AFFECTED BY INTERNET AND MUSIC DOWNLOAD?1
MUSIC INDUSTRY BEEN AFFECTED BY INTERNET AND MUSIC DOWNLOAD?
BASED ON RESEARCH OF FINDING AND LITERATURE REVIEWS
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MUSIC INDUSTRY BEEN AFFECTED BY INTERNET AND MUSIC DOWNLOAD?2
Table of Content
Table of Contents
Table of Content..............................................................................................................................2
Introduction and the Problem Statement.........................................................................................3
Research Question...........................................................................................................................4
Research Methodology....................................................................................................................5
Research Design..........................................................................................................................5
Delimitation of the study.............................................................................................................5
The population of the study.........................................................................................................6
A sample of the population..........................................................................................................6
Sampling techniques....................................................................................................................7
Instruments of data collection......................................................................................................7
Methods of data collection...........................................................................................................7
The Outcome of the Research..........................................................................................................8
New Knowledge............................................................................................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................13

MUSIC INDUSTRY BEEN AFFECTED BY INTERNET AND MUSIC DOWNLOAD?3
Introduction and the Problem Statement
The last few decades have ushered in the digital and internet era which have revolutionized the
world media and communication including music production, marketing, and sharing. The
internet platform has drastically changed lowed the time for transfer, sharing, and dissemination
of the information. In the music arena, the ease of access and cost has been advantageous to the
music consumers where they enjoy a variety of products at lower costs. This has been a major set
back and likely undoing to the music producers. Music producers have feared the growth of the
digital and internet world which is the source of the music pirating ad threat to the music
industry revenues.
The understanding of the of the internet growth and the information digitization in regard to the
music industry and how the music is distributed to the end consumers in order to appreciate the
effects it has to the welfare of the main stakeholders. According to Landes and Posner (1989), in
promoting creative art and welfare of the stakeholders, copyright protection and limitation to
access is inevitable. Weakened music copyright has caused havoc in the music industry where
music privacy has thrived especially due to the internet growth. Therefore, it is of paramount
importance to understand the generic effects of the internet which have led to digitization from
the perspective of the general public. Digitization of the music and increase in music piracy in
the distribution channel has led to demotivation of the music producers, especially due to lower
revenues generated from music ((Waldfogel, 2012a; 2012b)
There are extensive studies in the empirical literature focusing on the effect of the music piracy
in the music industry. The studies have found how the internet has let to digitization and thus
increase in the music piracy by looking at the level of sales made over time by the producers.
That is, the internet has enabled the ease to access and to share the unlicensed music, in terms of
online piracy ((Aguiar and Waldfogel, 2016; Handke, 2012; Waldfogel, 2012a; 2013).
However, the last few decades has internet has offered an alternative to the licensed digital music
where the consumer is able to access the MP3 music downloads from unethical internet sources.
Waldfogel (2010) observed that technology for file-sharing and the downloading has different
adverse effects on the sales of music. This is dependent on the number of the illegal music on the
sale of a particular artist. In this regard, some customers may be interested in paying for a
particular song in an album instead of buying the whole album from authentic sources. The file-
sharing and downloads of individual songs from a particular album can be considered to affect
more on the album sales rather than the song sales.
Much of the recent empirical studies have failed to illuminate on the effects of the internet on the
music and the transcending effects to the music producers. It is at the heart of this research paper
to answer the question of the internet and music download and how it has impacted the music

MUSIC INDUSTRY BEEN AFFECTED BY INTERNET AND MUSIC DOWNLOAD?4
industry. The first question to ask is how the consumer perceives the unlicensed music download
being the alternative to the licensed purchase of the online music. In this respect the question on
the displacement of the music sales by the illegal online downloads and the trade-off that exists
in the economics of the copyrights. Secondly, the paper address how the online music downloads
have affected buying behavior of the consumers. And finally, the determinants on the internet
music distribution and their overall contribution effects of the internet and music download.
In analyzing the dataset, the study will present the questionnaire to the music consumers where
few relevant questions will be asked to assess their online behavior. The target population will be
1000 internet users and music consumers. They are only expected to answer the questions
presented without giving personal information, focusing on music purchase preferences between
licensed and unlicensed, sources, their rates of download, music format and their opinion on the
effect of the illegal music downloads (Knopper, S. (2011).
The study found that the internet has influenced on the consumption behavior in the music
industry. First, the majority of the respondents were found to use free websites for music
downloads. Second, the higher numbers of the population download music at least ones per
week. Third, only a few of the respondents buy legal music from the licensed websites. Fourth,
the study found that most of the people buy a CD for legal music. However, only a few young
people buy the CD because most are tech savvy and found no need to buy CD. And finally, when
asked about the effect of illegal downloads, most were neutral to the music industry.
Research Question
Research Questions: Music Industry been affected by internet and music download? Based on
Research on finding and Literature reviews
Explanations of Terminologies
1. Internet: Internet is the interconnection of the computers through the web of
interconnected servers. The Internet allows end-to-end information sharing and
communication (Mansell, 2013). Currently, the internet is also used for cloud computing
and storage of mass information for easy retrieval.
2. Music download: Using internet storage and retrieval services from computer servers,
music is uploaded into the cloud and later accessed through downloads (Sisario, B. 2013).
A music download is made possible by the ease at which it is distributed to the consumer
via the internet in the websites.
This research question targets to answer the question of the effect of internet and music
download to the music industry especially the music producers and artists. The solution to this
question gives the answer to the major breach of copyright protection of the music art facilitated