Youngkyung Ko/Downloading and Sharing music off the Internet/Tues.9 AM

Downloading and sharing music off the Internet

 

Nowadays, media cultures have made remarkable development. More and more people depend on media so that other analog and off-line have declined. And there has been great increasing diversity of media. Equally, means for accessibility improvement have increased remarkably like blogs, Internet sites called SNS and applications. Among various media cultures, downloading and sharing music is the most common thing. I think downloading and sharing music off the Internet has more advantages than disadvantages; publicity effect and economic effect.

 

 First, downloading and sharing off the Internet could make accessibility and proliferation improvement for music and these could bring about publicity effect of the music. In modern society, there is a deep correlation between life and Internet. People could surf the Internet when they are outside even they are walking. If people could download and share the music through Internet, accessibility and proliferation for the music would be improved. When a number of people enjoy the music all at once off the Internet rather than one person consumes a album or a sound source at a time, we can expect publicity effect of the music. Also Internet has intangible characteristic in contrast with record store, so that people could access music very easily.

 

 And downloading and sharing music off the Internet could cause economic effect by developing a new market. In modern society, as the importance of the mobile phones has increased, the "interface" between Internet and application has received attention. Downloading and sharing music off the Internet could facilitate application development and pioneer a new market of application. And actually, many applications already have commercialized like "soundcloud" and "melon music". New applications have been developed competitively. Like this, we can expect economic effect through market competition.

 

 Also, record companies might complain that downloading and sharing music off the Internet could hurt their profit. But I think downloading and sharing music off the Internet could optimize profit in a long-term prospective. Online record markets have already took deep root and also the scale of the market is very large. Let me take an example. In online music service, like "beatport" or "itunes", people could buy albums or sound sources per certain price. When these kinds of primary consumers consume albums or sound sources and share them with other users, there could be formed of secondary consumers. Consequently, this kind of process could be connected to growth of profit for record companies.

 

 In conclusion, I think downloading and sharing music off the Internet has advantages. Through this activity, accessibility and proliferation for the music could be improved so it could cause publicity effect of the music. Furthermore, downloading and sharing music off the Internet could develop a new market and bring about economic effect through market competition. Also record companies could retain secondary and tertiary consumers through downloading and sharing music off the Internet activity and consequently the profit would be optimized.