Music on the Internet: Legal or illegal? *

The habit of downloading music on the Internet has been growing year-by-year for several reasons, mainly due to the rapid and easy methods for obtaining a song and listening to it in different formats anywhere. However, the music industry has suffered a "knockout" on its revenue, which is shrinking due to this spread of music piracy thanks to street vendors and the Internet, with websites of content exchange.

In fact, the typical Internet music customer has adapted much faster than the music industry to the various music formats and other digital media such as CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray, iPod, Digital TV and the Internet offerings such as Web Radio, Mobile Radio, iTunes and Video. The music industry has not adapted fast enough to the business model of the digital world, and it has paid the price for this lag by allowing room for a culture of “unofficial” downloads of their music. Unofficial downloading, which is basically illegal, has decreased the size of the official music industry to only 30 percent of its size ten years ago.

Recently, music companies have understood that customers are willing to pay a fair price for digital music, which can be recorded on all available devices without concern for formats, rights and usage permission. The reality of the music world today is that many people have stopped buying CDs and are making their purchases of music online, not because they don’t want to pay, but simply because their habits and desires have changed. Online music is easy, convenient, comfortable and portable. The iTunes Store and Amazon MP3 are great examples of the success of online music.

It is estimated that in 2012, the worldwide sales of music online will overtake CDs. Brazil is one of the countries where the legal music business suffers the most from piracy. This is happening for one simple reason - there is no easy, accessible service fitting the consumer’s needs that sells digital music. As a result, artists and entrepreneurs have begun investing in different online models to provide songs that may cost as little as 10 cents as a way of boosting sales and avoiding piracy. Some online service companies have also developed plans that allow users to listen to unlimited music via streaming, which is a way to distribute multimedia information over the Internet through packets. One such company is Sonora, from the portal Terra, the largest service selling digital music, with 40 percent of the market share to date.

Last year, sales of "mobile" music were identified as a big gamble for the Brazilian market. However, now it is being seen as an example of the digital music industry that has the potential to reverse the flood of pirated downloading. Another example of the digital music industry’s transformation is YouTube, which reigns supremely as the music source for consumers. In the past six years, YouTube has helped catapult the careers of such artists as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, whose fans clicked a million times on their videos. So, there is space for everybody in the digital music world; however, the key to success for artists and the music industry as a whole will be the creativity they can develop in reaching consumers.

* Article published on Curitiba in English.