Music on the Web

The Newest Boom

Introduction

Music is a favorite hobby for millions of people. Singers and musical groups are world famous, such as the Backstreet Boys and Madonna. Since music is so popular it is a big business gaining billions and billions of dollars worldwide every year. This means that if music could be transferred for free, quickly and easily, it would be detrimental to the music companies.

Until recently the Internet didn't pose any dangers for the music industry. File sizes were too large to download, so nobody cared about file transfers online. Then in the last couple years the file format called MP3 has gained popularity. This file format makes audio files very small (about 3.5-6.0 Megabytes). Now everyone is downloading MP3s online. Is this right?

If you recall, we discussed the issue of copyright recently. Does music fall into the category of copyrighted material? Of course it does. This copyright is owned by music production companies and music artists and they are not happy about all this downloading. This has been hotly debated lately with big names like Napster.com. This Website provides users with a program that allows other people to download MP3 files from your computer and let's you download MP3 files from other people's computers. Napster insists that they are not doing anything illegal, but their program is being used illegally. Professionals in the music industry insist that they encourage people to 'steal' music. Some people in the music industry don't agree with this. They don't see the downloading of MP3s as a problem. They see it as good advertising for their albums and believe that MP3s are comparable to how the radio advertises music.

We are going to begin this lesson by reading two articles. The teacher will divide you into two groups. One group will read "Can Napster Be Stopped? No!" on cnet.com. The other group will read "Recording Industry Sues Music Start-Up, Cites Black Market" also on cnet.com. Both of these are about Napster and MP3 trading on the Internet. When you finish reading the articles one student in each group will present their articles for the class and then we will discuss them.

Surfing For MP3s

Next I would like to take a look at some places on the Web were we can read music reviews, search for MP3s, download MP3 players, and download MP3s themselves.