Title: “Music File Sharing Killed the Music Industry”

Author: General “Buck” Turgidson

Source: Fortissimo: the Newsletter of the American Marching Band Association, p. 5-6
Date: 2010 July

Most people would agree that it was the MP3 that sealed the fate of the music industry in the
United States. A quick look at CD and cassette sales in the early 1990s, when the MP3 format was first
available, and at sales in 2009, when sales showed massive decline points to MP3s as the bullets and file
sharing software as the guns that killed the American music industry. In France, sales are down 47% and,
in Brazil, they are down even more, 63% (LeNez 23; Campos 34). The news for record companies is bad
everywhere. This essay will show how file sharing software is unjust and has wrecked the music industry
for good.
Just as the exchange among friends of music copied onto blank cassettes in the 1970s and 1980s
began eating away at record sales, so too did the first file sharing networks pick away at the foundation
of sales in the 1990s. Any sort of copying, even of content you bought and paid for, is a copyright
infringement, and thus a form of theft. In America, there are strict laws against stealing, which everyone
agrees with; so too should our courts prosecute people for stealing music, which robs artists of their
livelihood (Uhltrarich 89). Jack Valenti, former head of the Motion Picture Academy of America, argues
that “there is a huge avalanche of thievery today” and “that 400,000 to 600,000 movies are being
illegally uploaded and downloaded every day” (Spring).
More evidence about the damage done by filesharing can be found in reports published by the
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the American Society of Composers, Authors, and
Publishers (ASCAP), and Broadcast Music, Inc. The RIAA website puts this sobering statistic front and
center on its page about piracy:

One credible analysis by the Institute for Policy Innovation concludes that global music piracy
causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, a loss of $2.7 billion in
workers' earnings, and a loss of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income
tax and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes (“Piracy: Online and On the
Street”).

The evidence from these numbers clearly shows where the problem lies: illegal downloading of
music. Gene Simmons of the band Kiss argues that “those kids [illegally downloading music] are putting
100,000 to a million people out of work (Bruno). Another issue is that the people who create the
filesharing software are mostly criminals. Shawn Parker, one of the two founders of Napster, has argued
that it is not the responsibility of companies like his to prevent people from illegally sharing music; given
that he was arrested for cocaine possession a few years after that, it is fair to write off his special
pleading for his company. Some estimates suggest that Napster alone was responsible for the loss of
millions of dollars in revenue for artists.
Most Americans respect the law and believe in private property. If you steal something, that
makes you a thief. Few Americans would want to think of themselves as thieves, so it make sense that
the record industry needs to do all it can to publicize the idea that that filesharing is actually theft.
Enlightening the minds of those who maybe have not thought through what they are doing is likely to
have the desired effect of shutting down the filesharing networks. The RIAA’s efforts seem to be
working, too. In 2000, Frank Creighton, RIAA Senior Vice President and Director of Anti-Piracy, said that
“the investment our members made in anti-piracy efforts this year has begun to show significant
returns” (“Recording Industry Releases Midyear Anti-Piracy Statistics.”) As long as the RIAA keeps up the
pressure and Americans come to realize that downloading music is theft, it is likely that this problem will
be solved.

*Bruno, Antony. “Billboard Q & A: Gene Simmons.” Billboard 12 Nov. 2007. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
Campos, Paolo. “Brazil’s Music Industry on the Ropes.” Music Today 23 Oct. 2000: 34-35. Print.
LeNez, Marisol. “CD Sales on the Decline Across Europe.” Financial News 6 Jul. 2001: 6. Print
*“Piracy: Online and On the Street.” RIAA. RIAA, n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
*“Recording Industry Releases Midyear Anti-Piracy Statistics.” RIAA. RIAA, 19 Sep. 2000. Web. 20 Nov.
2010.
*Spring, Tom. “Three Minutes with Jack Valenti.” PC World 22 May 2003. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
Uhltrarich, Lars. “Artists Begin to Speak Out against Piracy.” Rolling Stone Mar. 2000: 85-89. Print.

Sources marked with an asterisk (*) are real sources. The others are made up.

General “Buck” Turgidson teaches music at St. Ignatius Loyola High School in Schenectady, NY, and has
taught previously at the West Point Military Academy. He is the author of Music Unleashed: A Guide to
Marching Band Formations.