The Impact Of Internet And Digital Downloading On The Music Industry

Introduction, Aims and Objectives

Background of the study

The rise and the growth of internet and technology in the past few decades have changed the way of life of people. Every phase and everything in the lives of the people has changed forever after the internet and advanced technology had captured the world. Music industry is no exception. Widespread reach of the internet and the technology of digital downloading had cast a significantly huge impact on the contemporary music industry (Trabucchi et al. 2017). According to the experts, there is both positive and negative impact of the internet and advanced digital technology on the music industry. Illegal downloading of music is one of the biggest downside effects of the internet and digital downloading that has been affecting the music industry (Bacache-Beauvallet, Bourreau and Moreau 2015). As the technology is becoming more advanced overtime, the incidence of illegal music downloading is increasing too.

Internet has made music download possible, legally as well as illegally. Internet, coupled with digital downloading technology, has become a big threat to the survival of the music industry. The illegal music download was possible by the internet due to the technology or software allowing the peer-to-peer files transfer between several internet users at the same time (Sinclair and Green 2016). This practice has always been violating the copyright rules. Music is a creative art, which is copyrighted to protect the intellectual property and it is not allowed to be shared in this way. However, there is no proven and effective way to stop this practice altogether. This has affected the business of the music industry in a negative manner. Belleflamme and Peitz (2014) say that the creation of music has never stopped, but the companies that publish those copyrighted music through CDs and DVDs, lose out a big amount of revenue from the sales due to the digital downloading and this has led to a fall in the profit of those companies, making it difficult for them to sustain. However, digital downloading also has a positive impact on the music industry as it spreads the music to far wide corners of the world (Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf 2016).

Aim and objectives

Research aim

Aim of this research paper is to evaluate the impact of internet and digital downloading on the music industry of the world.

Research objectives

The objectives of this research paper are:

• To examine the technological revolution in the music industry
• To explore the impact of technology of digital downloading and internet on the global music industry

Evolution of the music industry

Music has been one of the most popular arts since the beginning of history. It plays a major role in the different cultures of mankind cross the world. In the past 150 years, music of all types has gone through a huge revolution. The technological revolution has affected the music industry too like the all other industries. Music has transformed from just a sound note to digital coding with the help of technology (Lebler and Weston 2015). From phonograph to mp3 files, music has travelled a big journey within a very short span of time. The technologies that contributed in the digital transformation of the music are phonograph, radio, television, electric instruments, synthesizers, cassettes and CDs, DVDs, MP3 or peer-to-peer trading, iPod and streaming (Gebesmair 2017). The music industry depends on the creation and publishing of music, creating a brand for the musicians and a source of earning revenue.

Background of the Study

The technological revolution has changed the facet of the music industry. Before the technological advancement, music used to be confined to particular regions. When people started to record the music in the form of phonograph record, it started to spread across the world and the music industry was created. Radio and television also helped in globalization of music (Frith 2016). The musicians started to record their music under the recording companies and selling those records would yield revenue to both the musician and the recording companies. With the advancement of technologies, the music industry grew into a magnificent business and established strict copyright rules. Not only the music creating and recording techniques and software have changed, but the type of business has changed too. The digitalization of music has opened new channels for earning revenue (Thompson 2017). At the same time, it also faces many risks of the piracy and fall in business revenue, which is creating big issues to the music industry. 

Different aspects of internet and digital downloading

Discovery of internet is one of the biggest successes of the modern world. Due to the internet, people’s way of life has changed. Music industry is no exception. As the technologies have changed the nature of music files and introduced music sharing options, such as, digital downloading and streaming, people find it convenient to listen to the music online or download it rather than buying  a CD. New technologies have both advantages and disadvantages (Taylor 2014).

Internet has encouraged many more artists and music companies to produce songs and sell it online for streaming in iTunes or Youtube to make fast money. The biggest advantage of this trend is that the artists can reach a far bigger audience across the globe, which brings popularity to them and make them international stars (Sparrow 2017). Digital downloading has enabled the users to download the single track that they like within an album.

It has some disadvantages too. Digital downloading has often brought in viruses to the system, which is harmful. The most challenging situation is the illegal downloads of music, which brings losses to the music companies and the artists by depreciating the values. Technology has made it easier to replicate the music files and share them among the peers. There has been no fruitful way to stop the illegal downloads. It violates the copyrights also. Hence, it affects the revenue of the artists and the music companies and there is also no way to measure the actual amount of business generated from this practice (Reardon et al. 2017). Apart from that, in the online market, there is lack of governing bodies for monitoring the businesses. It is easier to enter the market for the music companies or any single artist, but at the same time, lack of regulations affects the protection of intellectual property (Zhang 2016). Hence, internet and digital downloading have thrown some challenges to the music industry.

Aim and Objectives

Philosophical approach/paradigm

Research philosophy or paradigm is the set of assumptions or belief about the way the information or data on the research topic will be collected, analyzed and explained (Saunders et al. 2015). There are many different ways to conduct a research study. Research philosophy defines the particular way that the researcher would adopt for the research. There are four major types of research paradigm, namely, positivism, interpretivism, pragmatism and realism, among which the researcher chooses one according to the nature of the study and source of information (Edson, Henning and Sankaran 2016).

In this research study, the researcher will choose the interpretivism philosophy. This philosophy is based on the observation and interpretation skills of the researcher to explain the elements of research. In the study of social science, many elements of human behavior or interest cannot be established by using scientific calculation, and in that case, interpretivism paradigm is applied, which allows the researcher to study and interpret the human behavior (Ryan 2018). Regarding the impact of internet and digital downloading on the music industry, the researcher needs to interpret the observation regarding people’s attitude towards awareness about the copyrights on music and violation of the rules by indulging into the illegal downloading of music. This behavior affects the music industry in any ways which will be addressed by the researcher.

The researcher will adopt the qualitative research method with the aim of interpreting the human behavior towards violating the IPR rules by applying qualitative analysis process.

Research logic

There are three types of research approaches, namely, inductive, deductive and abductive. Under inductive approach, the researcher solves the puzzle or answers the research question and generates a new theory from the findings, that is, inferences are drawn from the observations and their analysis, while in the deductive approach, the researcher tests the research hypothesis on the basis of already established theories (Stephens, Dunn and Hayes 2017), that is, inferences are drawn from the literature and established theories to reach to the conclusion. Abductive approach of research involves the decision on drawing the most probable inference that can generate from a particular set of observations (Walton 2014). Since, there can be infinite number of probable explanations for the research phenomenon, the abductive logic helps in deciding the closest or most possible explanation.

The researcher will follow the inductive approach of research. In this research, inductive approach will be followed as the researcher aims to find out the impact of human behavior from a new perspective to throw a light on the effect of technology on music industry (Ary et al. 2018). There is no established theory that can help in drawing the inferences about the research topic, as required in the deductive approach and there is also no need to choose one from many possible explanations of the impact of internet and digital downloading on the music industry, as needed in abductive reasoning. Hence, inductive approach of research is most suitable in this case.

Literature Review

Research method

Research strategy refers to the plan of the researcher on how to move ahead and which steps to be followed to get the desired outcome of the research paper. There are two major types of research strategies or methods, namely, qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative research method is majorly based on exploratory research. It helps in analyzing the underlying opinions, reasons and motivations of people. This method is used to provide insights into the research problem or to help in developing hypotheses for the potential research. Usually small sample size is taken and interview method or focus group method is applied for data collection under this process (Brannen 2017). On the other hand, quantitative research deals with numerical data and application of statistical calculation tools to get the result. The opinions, attitudes, behavior are quantified for the purpose of data calculation. Data is usually collected from large samples, majorly through surveys, online polls etc. It mainly follows the explanatory research approach, where the research phenomenon is explained on the basis of established theories (Hussein 2015). 

As the researcher is following the interpretivism philosophy, with inductive approach, the qualitative method of research is most suitable. According to Davies and Hughes (2014), the attitude or behavior of the people and their perception about the research topic can be best understood by applying qualitative method.

Data collection methods

Method for gaining access to sites, data and or informants

Primary data will be collected for this research. The researcher will be adopting the interview method to collect the primary data about the research topic. As exploratory and qualitative method of research will be undertaken, the interview method of data collection would be most suitable, as it is necessary to understand the research problem from the observant’s point of view for unfolding the meaning of their experiences and uncovering it before conducting scientific knowledge (Alshenqeeti 2014). Its major strength is to evaluate the perceptions of people with intellectual understanding and the major weakness is that it does not help in scientific analysis to prove a trend or find a pattern in the data (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault 2015).

Interview questions are generally open-ended. The potential problem that can arise in this method is the larger amount of time taken and the answers can be vastly different and difficult to interpret due to their wide horizon. This can be handled if structured interview method is used where there will be closed set of questions for all the participants, which will be easier to interpret (Levashina et al. 2014). Hence, interview questions will be the best method to bring out the idea on people’s attitude towards illegal downloading of music and its effect of the music industry.

Evolution of the Music Industry

Sampling

The researcher aims to conduct the interview on 5 to 7 participants, as taking large samples is not feasible. It will not only take much time to conduct, but will also be difficult to interpret the answers, which will make the data robust and complex (Robinson 2014). Hence, small sample size will be taken by the researcher by applying purposive sampling method under non-probability sampling technique. This method is chosen on the basis of the characteristics of the population and the objective of the research (Palinkas et al. 2015). In this research, the interviewees will be chosen based on their knowledge about the digital downloading and its effect on the music industry.

Data analysis

Structured interview questions will be helpful for analyzing the responses in an easier way. Narrative analysis, under the qualitative analysis process, will be adopted. In this process, each response is analyzed to get the meanings and insights of the participants, compare and contrast the different answers for interpreting the underlying motivations, reasons and opinions, and create a new story connecting the responses in an insightful way (Silverman 2015). Narrative analysis will also be suitable for inductive approach of research, where the researcher aims to find out a new perspective on the issue of the research and generate a new theory based on the interpretation of the data. In this research, small sample size and closed set of questions will help the researcher to analyze the interview responses in an easier manner by narrowing down the observations and interpreting them to find a new inference to meet the research aim and objectives (Cortazzi 2014).

Anticipated Challenges and Limitations

The anticipated challenges for this research may include the lack of willingness of people to participate in the interview. They might not feel interested or motivated to participate in the interview process. To overcome this challenge, the researcher may want to make the questions interesting and also less time consuming. While convincing the participants, he must mention that the questions will take very less time to answer, so that they do not feel like wasting their time. 

Limitation

The research only focuses on the qualitative study. Lack of scope of quantitative study is a limitation for this research, as the study should also take into account the trends in the digital downloading of music and the impact on the music industry. This would have helped the researcher to validate the findings of the qualitative data analysis with the support of scientific analysis of the trend data, which would make the conclusions of the paper more convincing. 

Different Aspects of Internet and Digital Downloading

Ethical and Professional Issues  

Like any other research studies, this paper also has some ethical and professional issues. Since, the researcher will be collecting primary data through face-to-face interview process, the privacy of the participants and confidentiality of the data are very important to maintain the ethical issues of the research. During the interview process, the researcher will agree to the conditions that the data will only be used for educational research purposes and the personal information of the respondents will be strictly confidential. The names of the participants and their organizations and their job descriptions will remain off the record. The researcher must ensure that none of participants gets harmed in anyway due to the participation in the research studies. An agreement will be signed by the researcher and the participants on these matters to maintain deal with the ethical and professional issues in the research.

 Table 1: Timetable for the research

(Source: Author) 

References

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