BLOG POST #6 (SYNTHESIS POST)
TITLE: SYNTHESIZING RESEARCH: What changes would help the music industry now that there is almost always a free alternative for getting music?
The economic principle I researched was that “Institutions are the “rules of the game” that influence choices”
In order to understand the best way to help the music industry you have to first know how the music industry makes the majority of its profits and the reasons why they are struggling. Singers and bands in today's society are finding that they are making far less money than in the past due to the fact that there are so many ways people can listen to their music for free. Today people can hear their favorite songs for free on the radio, from free streaming services likes Spotify, and from illegally pirating music. The trend of piracy has been on the rise resulting in an estimated 12.5 billion dollars lost annually for the music industry and in the U.S. alone a loss of 71,060 jobs. Musicians now are discouraged from putting too much effort into their songs because they are afraid that all their efforts will be for nothing if people can just illegally pirate their music and they get nothing for it. If the issue of piracy continues then we may see the loss of many great musicians and bands today and we will never get to hear all of the great music that would have been produced had people actually just payed for their music.
How do we go about solving the issue of piracy? Some music companies today are changing the way we receive our music entirely by providing free streaming services with some adds thrown in so that there is no need to go out and illegally pirate music because there is now a legal way to get it for free. Of these streaming services the most common and well known is Spotify. Spotify allows its users to listen to music that they stream for free while throwing in some occasional adds. If the user wants to be able to select specific songs that they want to hear or to be add free then they have to sign up for a monthly membership with the company where they pay to rent an unlimited amount of songs for a certain period of time before they have to renew their membership again. This means a steady source of income for the music industry because people now have to keep paying time and time again to rent their songs for a certain period of time. But how does Spotify make money off of all those people who don’t apply for a membership and just listen to their music at random for free? Companies pay Spotify to put in their adds because they know that there are thousands of people who will then hear their adds and this will potentially give them more business.
Now knowing how the music industry makes money and what shifts they are making, what is the best way to get our music as a consumer? In the article “The Cheapest Way to Listen to Music, Uninterrupted” by G.E. Miller, I found that the author had a highly effective way of obtaining their music at the cheapest price while still obtaining it legally and still helping out the music industry. G.E. Millers says that the best way to go about getting music is to utilize the free streaming services that apps like Spotify provide to help find new songs that you enjoy and save them to a playlist. From the playlist you are able to listen to a bunch of songs that you enjoy for free and the only drawbacks are that you will occasionally have to listen to an add or two and that you can’t select specific songs to listen to from the playlist. Spotify is a good tool to find songs you like, but you are better off purchasing any of the songs that you find yourself liking for an extended period of time or that you need to be able to hear whenever you are in the mood. This method for getting music is extremely effective, cheap, and still helps the music industry because you can listen to all the songs you like for free, you end up saving money because you only purchase your favorite songs, and the music industry is still getting money back for all the effort that it took them to provide you with the music that you love.
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