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Why sharing music with friends has become a revolutionary practice...
The answer is simple. Greed.
| The music industry invests a lot of money to bring the consumer a product called a CD. Mass-produced, a CD costs less than a dollar to produce. The artist gets another dollar or two depending on the contract. Minus the cost of the product and the artist, the consumer recieves a product that has been marked up nearly 1000%. |  |
Impressive. Now, a music industry representative will tell you that the mark up goes to insure dominance of the music market. The money involved in the mark up is necessary, the rep will say, so that the product will receive proper promotion. What they mean is that a ton of money goes into flooding the nation's airwaves so the consumer will know what to buy.
Dominance of the nation's airwaves
is important if the only way I learn about new music is from a few radio
stations playing the same playlist nationwide. But if I can learn about
new music by other methods - methods that I can control - then the reason
for the huge mark up disappears.
| Shawn Fanning invented the software that became Napster as a way to share music with his friends. He found that by using the Internet he could link his hard drive to other hard drives and share stored music files. He shared the software and now the Napster Music Sharing Community has grown exponentially. | See
for yourself. It's free (for now). It's easy. It's... Napster |
As I log on to engage in some file-sharing with my fellow Napsters, there are 7,845 libraries sharing files. There are more than 1.3 million song files available to me. I don't have to pay a cent to hear the music. Think that bothers the music industry? You bet.
Shawn Fanning has testified this year to a Senate Judiciary Committee. The music industry claims that sharing music with friends is a federal copyright infringement.
But as Harry Allen, media activist
for the rap group Public Enemy, would say, "Don't believe the hype."
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Chuck D co-founded the influential rap group Public Enemy in the 1980s. He has been involved in the music business for nearly 20 years. Recently, D spoke about "Race, Rap, Reality, and the Digital Age" here at Chico State University.
Rather than a threat, D sees file-sharing as a way of revitalizing music. "It's time to give the music back to the fans and the musicians," he proclaims. He sees the future of music in "a million independent Internet music stations," or "In-tys".
"The new music will come from under the underground," he says, meaning it will sidestep the old framework of the music industry all together.
D's efforts toward making Internet
music and radio a reality are at the cutting edge of this new media. To
watch and listen to the edge as it is cut, log onto the following sites:
| Official Public Enemy | http://www.publicenemy.com/ |
| Rapstation.com | http://www.rapstation.com/ |
| Bringthenoise.com | http://www.bringthenoise.com/ |
Many artists have come out against file-sharing calling the act "piracy". You may have seen the commercials: Artists Against Piracy. At their Web site http://www.artistsagainstpiracy.com/you can find an alphabetical listing of the artists opposed to file sharing.
But pay attention. All the artists on the list have contracts with the major labels, which means they are dependent on the old framework of dominating the airwaves to sell product. You're not. You can share music files on the Internet, decide for yourself what's good and buy CDs without the music industry mark up.
That means you keep more of your own money, and more of your money reaches the musicians not the corporation.
Music that's about the fans and the creative artists instead of the greed of the music industry?
Revolutionary! 
InterActivism | The Whole Truth? | Your Government | The Front Lines | Burning Issues