Napster - the Pear-To-Pear Sharing

The pear-to-pear sharing (p2p) made by Napster in 1999 is a great invention. This p2p make people’s life easier because they can share songs, videos, movies, and others things they want to the world. However, since it is free to share and receive through p2p, it is considered to be illegal (Bullnotbull.com, 2015).. People started downloading and sharing without notice that it is illegal and unfair to the music industries. The majority thinks that the fall in CD sales was due to the p2p and Internet piracy (Koh, Murthi and Raghunathan, 2014).

According to the research that have done by International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), because of online music piracy, the CD sales have decreased in 2000 to 2006 by 0.7 billion units. In 1999 to 2002, the global sales have shrunk 19.8 percent, which was 7.7 billion US dollar. Obviously, this brought a huge damage to the music industries since the sales of CDs is one of the main incomes in the music industry. Actually, in between 2003 to 2004, the music industries have slowly recovered and it has increase in 3.3% in 2003 and 4.7% in 2004, but it dropped down again in 2005 and 2006 by 0.5% and 4.9%. Furthermore, according to Music industries, there is a close connection between the p2p network and the drop of CD sales. Liebowitz has estimated that in 2002 and 2003, the online file sharing has directly pulled down the CD sales around 30%, which was about 4 billion US dollar annually (Janssens, Beken and Vandaele, 2009).  Moreover, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has also reported that, in 2002, the Internet piracy caused a fall in the CD sales by 8.9%, which were 79 billion units, making the revenue dropped by 6.7% (Lessig, 2004). For example, when Plushgun (a famous music band) released its album "Pins and Panzers," the song had the highest rate of illegal downloads from the p2p web, more than 10,000 times (Money.cnn.com, 2015). This affect of online piracy has lead to the lost of millions of dollars to artists and rights holders (prezi.com, 2015). In short, pear-to-pear sharing not only stealing but also killing the music industries and make it terrible to the musician to release new albums.

Refrences:

•         BULLNOTBULL.COM What's Behind the Big Drop in CD Sales? Lawrence Lessig - Bull! Not bull In-text: (Bullnotbull.com, 2015) Bibliography: Bullnotbull.com, 2015. What's Behind the Big Drop in CD Sales? Lawrence Lessig - Bull! Not bull. [online] Available at: [Accessed 31 Oct. 2015].     
•         JANSSENS, J., BEKEN, T. V. AND VANDAELE, S. The Music Industry on (the) Line? Surviving Music Piracy in a Digital Era In-text: (Janssens, Beken and Vandaele, 2009) Bibliography: Janssens, J., Beken, T. and Vandaele, S., 2009. The Music Industry on (the) Line? Surviving Music Piracy in a Digital Era. European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, 17(2), pp.77-96.     
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•  KOH, B., MURTHI, B. P. S. AND RAGHUNATHAN, S. Shifting Demand: Online Music Piracy, Physical Music Sales, and Digital Music Sales In-text: (Koh, Murthi and Raghunathan, 2014) Bibliography: Koh, B., Murthi, B. and Raghunathan, S., 2014. Shifting Demand: Online Music Piracy, Physical Music Sales, and Digital Music Sales. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 24(4), pp.366-387.     
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•         MONEY.CNN.COM Music's lost decade: Sales cut in half in 2000s - Feb. 2, 2010 In-text: (Money.cnn.com, 2015) Bibliography: Money.cnn.com, 2015. Music's lost decade: Sales cut in half in 2000s - Feb. 2, 2010. [online] Available at: [Accessed 31 Oct. 2015].     

PREZI.COM English Oral Presentation In-text: (prezi.com, 2015) Bibliography: prezi.com, 2015. English Oral Presentation. [online] Available at: [Accessed 31 Oct. 2015].