Threatening The Music Industry

Within the music industries a threat to music institutions and digital music sales is music piracy. Online music piracy has caused some record sales to drop by 20% every year. Online music piracy is responsible for 2.6 billion downloads of copyrighted files every month. Music piracy is a serious issue as it equates to loss of revenue.  

Another key threat to music instutions at the moment is breach of copyright. Copyright, is a legal concept used by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it usually for a limited time. Copyright began in 1662 and was later established in 1790. The process of copyright ensures that music is protected for the whole lifetime and 50 years after the death of the singer. However the most common example of breaking the law worldwide is breach of copyright.

I emailed the band ‘Dog is Dead’ to ask for permission to use their song; ‘Two Devils’ for my music video. The response I received was that we are allowed to use their song. It is important that we received copyright from someone in association to the song, as we will be broadcasting our video onto YouTube and if the video is not what they approve off, this could cause them loss of fans, and loss of marketing.  However a benefit for the band is that our video will be free advertising for them, as we will be sharing our video with others. Due to a key issue of breach of copyright it was extremely important that we got permission to use their song to ensure that we were not going to break any legal restrictions.