technoculture314-09

The topic of music piracy is an interesting issue, especially in today’s techno- cultured society. With the increase of different MP3 players available out there, and the Apple brand of iPods taking over the youth market, music piracy seems to be popping up everywhere. As discussed in the lecture that it use to be illegal to have music on your iPod that you do not own in hard copies. As people soon discovered, this was hard for piracy police to manage and monitor. Majid Yar (2008) points out in her article that downloading music and taking music without paying is a ‘crime’. Sometimes I myself do not think about giving new music to my friends or vice versa as being a crime, I believe this is how youth culture and popular culture is being adapted. Yar (2008) also points out in her article that the youth are the main offenders of online piracy and have linked this sort of action to the increase of youth crimes, in which I believe is going a bit too far.

 A good point that was raised in the lecture is that because of this kind of sharing of music amongst the youths and even adults, has allowed for bands to be introduced to new audiences and listeners. And if it was not for this kind sharing, the bands may have not even been able to further themselves into other markets and get exposure. From my own personal experience, after getting new music off my friends computer and listened to it, if I like what I hear I would usually go out and buy the hard copy album. This is because I like the booklet and the other stuff that comes with a physical album, unlike the downloaded copy. This brings up the fact that I would not have gone out to buy the album if I had not initially been given it on my iPod.