• The Ease of Downloading
• Stage is Set For Napster
• Napster's Copyright Troubles
• Better P2P Technology
• Other Aspects That Cause Decline in Music Sales

The ease of free downloading of music first started with Napster™, this file sharing service was started by Shawn Fanning in the year 1999. Before the author of Napster brought ease into the field of free music downloading, an internet user had to browse through hundreds of thousands of websites and find the ones that claim to provide free music. Often many times these internet surfers would run into registration requirements, broken or phishing links and even corrupt files on these sites. Napster’s revolutionary techniques established a way to share files without the need of a single solitary host. Napster created a network of more than 70 million registered music collectors. Although Napster created this great worldwide community, none of its success would have been possible if it was not for the technological advancement to the use of compact discs (CD). The compact disc played a major role in file sharing communities due to the fact that the data on these discs was stored digitally and was easily copied. Anyone with a CD-ROM drive could copy the data onto their computers and make it easily downloadable through the Napster network.

Now the floor was open for Napster to begin its immense distribution of music to the worldwide audience. All the users had to do, to gain access to this vast library of free music, was to download and install the Napster software. Once installed they designate the files and folders they want to share and that is it. Napster then handled rest of the work itself. Since Napster was a type of peer-to-peer (P2P) network, which basically means that there is no one sole host of the files, alternatively the files are shared from the users’ computers where they reside. Napster’s software mainly indexed all these files, and when a user searched for a song, artist or album Napster queried its collective index and provided results that indicated the users who are sharing these files.

Even though Napster was a great success, it could not avoid the fact that its processes infringed copyright of artists and companies alike. Although Napster claimed that it did not infringe any copyrights because none of the files were stored by Napster, and that the users were solely to blame for sharing copyrighted materials. Still the RIAA sued the Napster network, and a district court ruled to shut down Napster. Even with the shutdown of Napster, the impact that it had, while Napster was in existence, on the relationship between music industries and its consumers was so enormous, that it changed the way people would illegally share files in the future.

Napster’s doing set the stage for today’s peer-to-peer services, which now not only deal with illegal sharing of music but to all types of data available to consumers. Since these P2P services now dealt with more formats of media, industries such as the Motion Picture Associations of America (MPAA) were now also involved. Nowadays technology has furthered this process so much that it is harder to crack down on company’s providing such services. Also now as the typical internet connection gets faster, it provides more attraction towards these peer-to-peer services.

Now there are also certain factors that affect music sales besides the peer-to-peer influence. Some of these factors can affect the sales of music as much as P2P services, so we must account for them as well when considering decline in music sales. Some people argue that the price of CDs has an effect on the sales, but considering the cost of inflation the sale prices for CDs have remained virtually the same. Consumer income is another topic many argue about when considering the sales of media. Although the sale of music depends on if the listener has time to enjoy the entertainment they have purchased, some research does show that consumers with higher incomes are more likely to buy music. Music quality and consumer taste are some more factors that come into the equation when considering music sales. The liveliness brought in by accidental discoveries of new music has certainly been condemned by the music industry lately, which leads to less interest by consumers of today. “The market research firm NPD group released a press statement claiming, “Nearly half of [age 36 and over] consumers report they are purchasing less music because there's less music they're interested in buying. Plus, fewer than 10 percent of this age group report purchasing less music because of downloading.” When the music industry is in decline, people often blame the hard-to-measure factors of music quality and consumer taste for the changes in sales.” (Boorstin)