We have to change the system completely. We would need to shut down a lot of these services that provide free music. It would be a complete nightmare and would cause people to revolt. I have several ideas, yet this is not something that will happen overnight. I believe the "freemium" model works best, allowing people to get something for free, and then selling it to them later on.
Source(s):
My gut!

Permalink | Report

Legal Downloads Growing Faster Than Piracy
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/illegal-downloads-losing-ground-to-legal-music

It is happening more! I'm so happy to hear that other people are interested in this too, I mean the best thing we can do is continue to decrease the DRM that was driving people away from the electronic downloads in the first place. Wit hteh decrease in DRM more people will reall feel like they are owning the music they buy and will not pirate.

Reasonable prices and DRM free is what we need!
Permalink | Report

People need to be convinced that what their buying is of higher quality than the download, and is perhaps a rare or limited item. For example, what helps DVDs sell is promotional freebies when they release, like a free card or lithograph, limited edition packaging, etc.
Source(s):
http://www.source-promo.com/blog/the-power-of-promotional-products-2008-10-...

Permalink | Report

Even though there are many people out there who prefer to have a hard copy of their favorite artist on a CD, illegal downloading is not going to die out. It's simply putting too much power into the hands of the music industry over something trivial. The internet has always been about the exchange of information.

For one thing, I don't think you can put a price on music or art. It's my own personal point of view. You can get a song off of iTunes for a dollar, I can get it elsewhere for $.10, what's the right price? Is all of it equal?

Sharing music also helps smaller bands gain exposure, making them a cash cow for the "struggling" music industry once they hit it big.

Also, music isn't the only source of revenue, merchandise is also a big part of it.
Permalink | Report

when you did that, you had two choices: 1) buy the cd (pay shipping charges also!) then rip it to mp3 (perfectly legal under the sony decision) or 2) d/l it from a sharing site.

the record companies were dragged, kicking and screaming into selling 99 cent DRMed tracks at iTunes (and other places)

to their surprise, it kinda worked! now, as unDRMed music becomes available at places people already shop (like amazon) the record companies are making close to the same amounts from selling bits (music downloads) as they are selling atoms (CDs)

so we're well on the way to a time when people buy their music online. the pirates are not going to go away.

the content owners are starting to wrap their heads around the fact that sales lost to (name your favorite service) probably were not going to be sales ever. that doesn't make it right, or give people a license to steal, it's a matter of aligning their business model to reality.
Permalink | Report

In short, It can't ever be truly stopped. There is also little evidence to suggest it SHOULD be; in 2004 a paper was released showing that filesharing had no effect on record sales.

People like to share content they enjoy with other people. Digital content is trivially easy to copy and transfer to someone else. Therefore, people will be doing this whether it is illegal or not.

Should it really be stopped? People listening to and enjoying your music is generally considered a good thing to most musicians, whether the people are paying or not.

What needs to happen is the sales model need to be shifted away. CD sales don't usually go mostly to an artist, anyway. They get spread out to the label, the distributors, etc. We need to either directly donate to the artists or go to shows where they are getting a good cut (if they are a small band on a big tour, this is not the case, it is much like the CD sales in that it goes to everyone else).
Source(s):
"The Effect of Filesharing on Record Sales, An Empirical Analysis" - http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

Permalink | Report

One model that seems to be successful is that used by netflix.com. Charging a flat fee for unlimited use is something customers take well to. Virtually every ISP works this way. However, many years ago, you had to pay by the hour of internet usage.

Similarly, the concept of paying per song seems to be no longer working. There is a lot of resistance from the RIAA, but the direction they need to head is charging for a subscription based service.

The benefits are three fold:

1. They could stop spending money on lawsuits and now, tracking down ISPs with users downloading illegal music. Instead, they could spend this money on advertising.

2. It would consolidate music into a single source. There are services that do this now, but you typically cant get all the artists you want and the legality of many of these sites is questionable.

3. It would benefit the artists. They would be able to monitor which songs are the most popular and actually pay artists what they deserved for online sales. Currently it is very difficult to track royalties online but with a consolidated RIAA approved system they would be able to track song downloads and actually pay artists based on the popularity of songs.

Any other plan at this point is a lost cause. People can get the music for free. They are not going to start paying per song. What they will pay for however is a system where they can get all the songs they want easier than they can now. The fact that consumers know that artists are actually getting their share will also help drive sales.
Permalink | Report

This answer has been voted unhelpful by users. Please click to view

Unfortunately I think the only remedy to the problem is to increase the public lawsuits against downloaders to the point where the risk isn't worth the reward, and also couple that with increasingly cheaper music to buy. Another method is for institutions to pay for music programs such as napster, that allow you to listen but not download without individual payment, and offer that to their users.

At my university they monitor all their server traffic for illegal downloading through limewire/bittorrents/etc. If they catch you they shut off your internet for the whole dorm room/your internal ip address without warning. When you go to the tech center to get it turned back on they threaten you with a lawsuit if caught again. I think they've filed several against students already for illegal downloads. If these lawsuits are more publicised, I think it will and has detered a lot of students from using things programs like limewire at least. My university also offers an already paid for napster account to listen to music but not download the songs (which is impossible to get by...i've tried).

That won't necessarily stop exchange between friends, or CDs being coppied, but it will at least help a large part of it. From a technological standpoint, developers need to come up with increasingly hard to get around ways to embed security measures to mp3 files and CDs. There is no challenge right now really to stealing music... if you make it so you need a few extra steps to try to get around security features built in..less people will bother to do this rather than pay for songs.
Hide

Permalink | Report

Very simple if you ask me.

Start promoting the fact that there are better and more clearer and cooler formats out there to get the content people want.

Such as the new SRS and Dolby based schemes.

Same thing with movies.

Instead of downloading pirated movies..

Start promoting the fact that blue-ray and HDDVD look a hell of allot better then a burned copy.


Eventually people will realize.


....You really do get what you pay for.
Source(s):
My Entorhinal Cortex.

Permalink | Report

I feel there would be a massive shift in music piracy if iTunes went completely DRM-Free. A lot more people are finally discovering the implications DRM has on how they can use their media, and as more and more rival companies are making MP3 players of higher quality and lower price than the iPods they want to be able to use their downloads on anything they want. iTunes is the largest music retailer online and offline, if they allowed all their music to be DRM-Free a lot more people would be willing to buy. Last year I got an iPod touch and that's when I began to buy music online instead of downloading via P2P. I'm tired of being punished by the actions of illegal downloaders (i.e. the rise of DRM to try and control distribution) and I'm sure a lot of people agree with me.

In short, DRM has actually caused more piracy to occur, because people don't WANT to be controlled in such a way. If you remove the DRM, you can more easily remove the piracy.

Oh, and I want to just add that CD sales hardly make record labels or the artist any profit at all due to the massive production costs involved, on top of the actual recording budgets. An artists money mainly comes from publicity of the CD sales causing people to watch them live in concert. Distributing media online at cheap competitive prices (as there is no need to try and break even by producing physical media) will generate more publicity than ever before and it also allows the record company or artist to update pricings as they see fit, instead of running it through with the store, etc. This in turn will mean more people than ever will go and see them perform live, causing more profits for all the parties involved.

If you look at what recently happened in my country (UK), where Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah was actively competing with the X Factor winner's version due to a massive rally from fans of the Buckley song, caused Hallelujah to be not only in the top 10 once, but three times. Such opportunities are only available in the online world, where it is more convenient to buy singles and MP3 instead of trailing to the stores to find the single or album you want.
Permalink | Report

Stop suing them for no reason and give them what they want. Stop clinging to a dying and outdated business model and update with the times to let people enjoy music. The artists and industry people claim that music is freedom of expression and then lock it all down super tight? It is completely backwards from how people want their music. I personally will not listen to an artist who condones DRM, it means that much. I listen to artists who want to get paid but don't cram arbitrary impositions down my throat. I support every musician by buying their stuff if they will be slightly open-handed about it.
Permalink | Report

Plain fact is unless you improve on the content an decrease the costs, this is not going to happen. For eg. generally most of the albums have got one or two good songs, but rest all are like bad. I am not going to waste my money buying a costly album for those two songs.
Permalink | Report

It's really easy. Sell the music for what it is worth.

What the industry doesn't understand is that, for the most part, the stolen stuff on the web is stuff that people would not pay for anyways. But if you made it where it cost what it is worth, people would buy it.

Also, get rid of the drm, completely. And have a place that keeps track of what songs I do buy, so I can redownload if something ever happens to my music. Encrypt it if you're really nervous about people using it to police you.
Permalink | Report

The obvious solution is for artists to sell their albums one song at a time. The problem for a long time, which caused people to go to Kazaa and Limewire, which I've used both of, is that people didn't want to pay 20 bucks for a CD with 2 good songs and a lot of filler. Now they can buy just the songs they want for a great price. With the government crackdown on piracy and filesharing, etc. I think fewer and fewer people are illegally trading music these days and the popularity of programs like Kazaa are fading away.

Real Player's Rhapsody made some really smart choices that I think will really help. You can play streaming music of any song in the world that you can think of. If you want to download it to burn it to a disc or iPod, you'll have to pay for it, but when you're sitting at your computer, you can listen to anything, anytime for free.

But getting people to pay for music is tough, and hopefully it will just become the norm as more and more options for purchasing music reasonably become available.
Permalink | Report

Lower the price of music CD. What is too much for an "artist/musician" to earn? Some of the music that comes out, is mediocre at best. Let the people decide what to pay.
Permalink | Report

Make their CDs more affordable.
Permalink | Report

1. Get over the fact that you can't control possession anymore now that things are digital.
2. Realize that since you can't control possession anymore, you can't control access either.
3. Understand that this means that more people will be producing and consuming content entirely outside of your awareness.
4. Make friends with these people.
5. Work with them to promote and distribute through channels they want, not through channels whose only virtue is that you've got an ironclad grip on it.
6. Profit, but not as much as when you had a monopoly.
Permalink | Report

Like, you @filmkid, I used to download music illegally. I don't think buying music, either online or on a CD, has to do with our times. It's just archaic. There are better and legal ways of getting good music, without giving money at all, like @johnsonaaron said. Another good example, that I invite to use, is www.jamendo.com. You have more than 14000 free albums to download, with a CC license and don't have to pay anything if you don't like what you get. In fact, you don't have to pay anything even if you like the music.
If you do, you can donate money directly to the artist or through Jamendo.
Since I'm unemployed, I download music and pay my favorite artists in a different way: I write a review at my blog with a widget included, so my friends can directly listen and download their music or I simply share it with a CD within my closest friends.
Plus, since I use Ubuntu, Rythmbox is connected to Jamendo out of the box... Free OS, free player, free music! (Perhaps there's an app for Windows and Mac).
Record companies have to get adapted or disappear. It's happening already and it's unavoidable. With old record companies everybody looses: The costumer, who has to pay a lot just to find out if he'll like what he pays for, and the band, that keeps just a small part of the profit. Now it's time for record companies to loose and leave the niche free for smarter business models.

Edit: It's not about preventing illegal downloads. It's about preventing old companies from ripping you off!
Source(s):
http://www.jamendo.com

Permalink | Report

There is no prevention to downloading music illegally. it is up to the downloader to realize he is stealing someones hard earned money. but making him realize this is nearly impossible. it has to be done by himself. not everyone will understand. which is why it will never be preventable.

The RIAA just released news recently that it would stop its pursuit on individuals for downloading music. RIAA is now working with ISP's to resolve the spreading of illegal music.
Source(s):
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/riaa-says-it-pl.html
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/19/riaa-finds-its-soul-will-stop-suing-indi...

Permalink | Report

Make iTunes compatible with all countries. I'm from Asia and cannot buy iTunes songs, TV shows and movies, because of this some people resort to illegal downloading.
Permalink | Report

This question means a lot to me. As a musician/songwriter I have a huge level of respect for the effort it takes to write good tunes. And I know that the musicians rarely get much of the proffits for their efforts. I also worked with teens in my earlier years. And I would really struggle on how to make them think about what they were doing when they freely swapped tunes with each other without paying the artists.

Over time I found that the best thing I could do was to not let people have copies of my music, not let them burn my CD's, not swap MP3's with them. It was hard to say at first, but I would tell them that I personally couldn't do it because I felt like the artist deserved their pay for their songs. It didn't make me popular, but it did influence a few people at a time. And I hope they influenced a few more... etc...

Now with iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.. there is no reason why people need to rip off music. For the cost of a handful of CD's you can listen to almost any song you want to at anytime on any computer... and even load them onto your MP3 players.

How do we change society's bad habits? One person at a time...
Permalink | Report

In order to get people to purchase music legally, we have to offer incentives. We need to make legal music of higher quality. This will not solve the problem completely, because we are competing with something that's free. We can solve this problem by offering free music with advertisements. This the way the consumer gets their free music and the artists get their money.

Google shows the success of free stuff with advertising. Advertisement is the most viable solution.
Permalink | Report

You will never be able to stop illegal downloading. As long as it free, it will be used. I have admit that I partake in illegal downloading but at the same time I pay for different types of medias including music and movies. I download stuff because I find it more convient for me. I stream movies to my Xbox 360 and listen to all my music from my computer. When I download, the files are already in format that can be easily streamed. If I buy a DVD, I have to rip it myself and place in on my external. And yes sometimes I do this, but most of the time I am lazy. And there is the option of me purchasing the movies from iTunes or the sort. The problem with this, is these are all DRM locked. I despise DRM. It is a main reason why people pirate. If I pay for something I should be able to use it where and when I want. Sadly, I cant stream a iTunes bought movie to my Xbox. I dont want to pay for stuff that I cant use to my liking so I get in other ways. Take away DRM and I would seriously consider paying for movies as long as the quality is good. Quality is another problem. A lot of the time the quality just isn't par for me (mainly for music). Yeah most people can't hear the difference between 192kbps and 320kbps, but there are people who can. Why would I want to pay for something that is lesser quality when I know I can get it for free in a higher quality. Give me quality stuff, don't make consumers out to be stupid. Then there is also, I get stuff for free because I wouldn't have paid for it anyways. And this is true for the most part. There isnt a lot of things I wouldnt pay for. Now maybe I shouldnt be able to use it then but its there and they would have never gotten my money anyways so why not use it :P

But yeah. Those are my reasons. Quality and convience.
Permalink | Report

I think it's a major issue on university campuses. If an all-you-can-eat option was available to students at an affordable rate from a service that hosts popular content (itunes). I think that most students would opt for the service to avoid any legal issues. It would also be easier if it was incorporated into tuition.
Permalink | Report

Read The Pirates Dilemma by Matt Mason.

In it he says there will always be pirates but companies can win through competition. Play to their strengths. Pirates are unorganized and poorly funded compared to major record labels.

Also shameless plug for a blog that I write for about DRM and piracy. Is linking to self promoting site Kosher for Mahalo? If not sorry.
Source(s):
Pirates Dilemma: http://thepiratesdilemma.com/
Everything I've ever written about the subject: http://www.davidjderus.com/blog/?cat=3

Permalink | Report

Shut down YouTube?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWtHEmVjVw8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HWeKrm3Kqw&feature=related
Source(s):
YouTube

Permalink | Report