We all like to get something for nothing. Those buy-one-get-one-free perks, or discount deals on products make us feel good about our purchases. But what if your good fortune causes harm to the person on the other side?
Everyone enjoys free music. Just look at the success of the radio and now Google Home and Amazon's Alexa which can play your favorite song or artist on demand. Software apps like Spotify and Pandora force you to listen to a few ads in order to enjoy free music, but that is hardly a steep price to pay. While you are listening to your favorite tune, have you ever thought about these benefits from the other side? What about the artists and musicians who rely on royalties from their craft to make a living?
That is the argument that surfaced when Napster first appeared in 1999. Debuted as a way to share songs among users, the software allowed music listeners free access to all of the music they could consume without any commitment to purchase. Once a highly lucrative industry, profits had begun to decline. Artists felt the financial pain of their intellectual property being copied without permission and without repercussions.
Behind the discussion of creative ownership lies the issue of copyrights and patents. Are government protections of monopolies necessary to encourage innovation or do they block the very idea they propose to promote? These arguments go back centuries but with the advent of the internet and technological advances, the ability to replicate others’ hard work quickly and effectively with relatively minimal cost, has opened the conversation again. Proponents of free trade, whether it is goods or ideas, believe that perfectly competitive markets reward perfectly. Mozart and Shakespeare lived in an age without copyrights. Would their creativity have been constricted in a world of government controlled distribution of ideas?
By allowing the government to control the flow of information, are we limiting innovation? What is the cost of developing new ideas? The question we should be asking is, what is the true cost of free?
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/feb/24/napster-music-free-file-sharing
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2002/was-napster-right
I think, as it was discussed in the documentary, that the losses artists feel from people not really paying for their music is made up for by merchandise sales and concert sales because their music being free makes people more willing to try listening. With more people listening, they are likely to gain more fans who will want to buy their merchandise and go see them in concert.
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting read. I definitely love things that are free–I use streaming services almost daily & have used websites such as 123 movies. I think in terms of music, the costs of "free" are better since they can make up for the lost physical album sales because they are able to reach a wider audience, and in turn, gain more merchandise and concert sales. However, for movies and other aspects, the same benefits don't translate. Therefore, it is interesting to see how the "costs" of free differ in different forms of art.
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