Impact of iTunes and Other Online Services on Music Industry Research Paper

Impact of iTunes and Other Online Services on Music Industry - Research Paper Example Furthermore, the study indicates that the drop in the number of revenues is a result of two main factors; an apparent increase in piracy related issues and the ability of the potential buyers to pick and choose particular songs rather than buying the entire albums instead. Though iTunes has proved to be a dynamic and a powerful medium having the potential to revolutionize the music industry, but the drop in revenues has turned out to be a huge drawback which overpowers the apparent advantages of the medium of the industry. Impact of iTunes and other online services on music industry Introduction iTunes is like a music jukebox which is used to manage, purchase and download the music online. It is an online music library with an added feature that allows the online purchase of music. However, in contrast to the tradition purchase of music albums iTunes allow the customers to cherry-pick the particular songs instead of buying the entire albums. This in turn has various implications whic h will be addressed further on in the paper. iTunes was launched in 2003 which was a product conceived by Macintosh replaced Napster; therefore it is important to analyze and track the impacts of Napster on the industry to contrast the results with iTunes for a more credible result. The decade after Napster was replaced saw a drastic decrease in the revenues of music industry in the U.S. In contrast when Napster was first introduced in the market, the U.S music industry saw a rapid increase in the profits. According to the statistics, the U.S shipments for recorded music were increase from $5.8 billion to $12.8 billion between 1975 to 1990`s. This is a positive indicator as the recorded shipments almost doubled. However, between 1990`s to 2007, the records again dropped back to $5.5 billion. (Waldfogel 2011). The same trend was observed worldwide indicating the strong impact of iTunes in the market. Though many researches indicated that iTunes have paved way for piracy and illegal c opying of music, but iTunes was constituted in such a way that it minimizes the risks of piracy related issues. With iTunes, music can be shared in two ways, i.e. either by sharing an entire library or by sharing specific playlists. iTunes doesn`t support illegal copying of music over the internet as the music is only available to the host system where iTunes is located. Also, the music can only be retrieved by the person using the iTunes, he shuts down the system the music is no longer available for anyone to be listened. (Waldfogel 2011). iTunes protects the content by two ways, i.e. firstly by incorporating copyrights laws and secondly via contracts. However, different countries have now come up with different jailbreaks and unlocking software which allows copying of music online onto iTunes for free. Though the laws are considerably strict in U.S, but in Europe and other places the laws can be molded which results in music piracy via iTunes elsewhere. Thus, these two factors i.e . pick and choose which music to purchase, and unlocking software leading to music piracy leads towards the apparent decrease in revenues. However, according to a review by Berkeley University, the impact of peer-to peer music