Consumption

Consumption – the consumption of the institution for the music industry is what we, the audience, and possibly one of the most important people in the music industry as we are bringing in the profit for the music industry as we are spending our money on music products. This is greatly affected by technology and the online age, just like marketing is greatly affected by this too, depending on how the way to download has been marketed is usually how the majority of people will download. I think one of the main things that tell people how to download successfully is word of mouth, if everyone is downloading using itunes then word will eventually get round and people will think that is the best way to download. However, this is not the case as since people have been able to download from illegal sites where you are able to change youtube videos and convert them into mp3 tracks which can them be imported into your itunes library and transferred onto your ipod which is a positive in some respects but also not in others as this makes it a lot easier for different files to be shared via email and other social networking and instant messaging components, which therefore makes it easier for virus’ to spread but not only that it is slowly killing the music industry. The music industry needs the profit to keep going so if everyone is downloading illegally then there will be no cause for sites that support independent and major labels and there will be no money to keep artists and bands running. I don’t think today’s generation is aware of just how dangerous free downloads are for the music industry but then at the end of the day, why would you care? If everyone around you is downloading for free, and you know this because of word of mouth then why would you pay to download music? Its almost as if you are just cheating yourself when you might as well get the music for free if the opportunity is there. So when did the opportunity become available? When did it become okay for this to be taking place? The truth of it is its still not okay for this to be going on, as its part of the copyright act.