Tuesday, 18 September 2012

Illegal Downloading on Nihal's Asian Network Show



Yesterday Musicmetric released figures in a report about illegal downloading of music. The statistics are shocking. 33 million albums and 10 million singles files were illegally downloaded in the UK in the first six months of this year. Nihal chose this topic for his phone in show on the BBC Asian Network and talked to Foji and DJ Vips about illegal downloading in the Bhangra industry. If like me you were unable to listen to it when it was broadcast, you can listen again here.

There is no doubt that illegally downloading music is morally wrong. If you want to buy a product that someone has worked hard to develop and produce, then you should pay that person for that product. However, there were callers on Nihal's show who tried to justify their illegal downloading. Reasons given by callers included that they couldn't afford to pay for music (even when they could afford to pay for big TVs) and that artists make money by touring and performing.

As with many topics on the phone in show, an hour was too short to fully discuss the subject. The music industry needs to look at why people download illegally and look for solutions to solve the problem. There are also wider issues in relation to illegal downloading such as promotion, quality of music released and the technology used to illegally download

Twitter users also joined the debate and I have posted some of the best tweets on the topic after the jump.


























No comments: