Music Downloading – What Are the Reasons People Downloading Music Legally and Illegally?
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I decided to choose Music downloading as my research topic. I chose the following three questions to research on music downloading. What international organization is being affected by music downloading and why? What are the reasons people downloading music legally and illegally? How is music downloading changing the nature of the recording industry? A lot of people are abusing the use of internet and using it to download music illegally. I wanted to research further into this subject in order to get a full under standing of the loss illegal downloading has caused. I organized a survey to be done my teenagers at Rangitoto College. This primary source helped me answer some of research questions along with the help of my secondary research which was done by using the internet to research and answer my research questions. Music downloading is a much faster and easier way to access music but downloading illegal affects the music industry and causes them to loose billions of dollars.
The focus of my inquiry was the act of music downloading and how it is changing and affecting the nature of how and who we get music today. A music download is the transferral of a song from an Internet-facing computer or website to a users local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment if required.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_downloading
What are the reasons people downloading music legally and illegally?
There are many reasons why people decide to download music legally and illegally. Some of these reasons I research through my primary research and came up with some answers to this question. Music downloading is becoming more and more popular every year because it is a fast easy way to obtain music with out having to leave the house. First I will show the findings of my primary research. I tallied my survey answers for a question which was If you download music legally, what are your reasons for doing so. The results that I graphed came up with the following results. Five percent (5%) of the people I surveyed felt that they should stick to the law and download their music legally, 5% downloaded legally because the music was better quality, 10% said they download legally because it was fast and easy, 30% said the download legally because they wanted to be honest and did not like downloading illegally because they felt dishonest and 30& of people said that they downloading music legally because more music is available to them on legal downloading sites then illegal downloading sites. This was not surprising to be because most Rangitoto College students are honest and reliable. I would have thought that the law would have been a larger contributor to the reason people decide to download legally but this was not the case. Availability was a large contributor to this survey question, I know trying to find something and being unsuccessful is frustrating.
Legal downloading sites offer a larger variety of songs and albums and therefore are more accessible. I also had a question in my survey which asked if you download music illegally, what are your reasons for doing so? The results for this were 63% of people download music illegally because it its free and 12% of people download music illegally because it is easy. I can understand why people would not want to buy their songs because at $1.29NZ per song and with an average of 1770 of songs on each iPod or MP3 it would be very expensive to buy all the songs you wanted.
Another reason why people would choose to download music illegally is because they do not have access to a debit/credit card. This is showed clearly in the survey I did. I combined two questions in order to see if owning a debit/credit card affected the type of downloader they were. Sixteen illegal downloaders did not have access to a credit/debit card and therefore could not download music legally even if they wanted to where as three illegal downloaders were unaware of the consequences. This is concerning because the sixteen people I did survey that are aware of the consequences think that they wont get court or that they are above the law.
I asked the people I surveyed how they downloaded their music and what programs they used. The highest percentage was for downloaders that downloaded music both legally and illegally (42%). This beats the other data which only focus on one type of downloading. I was surprised that my results showed that 19% of the people I surveyed had iTunes but did use it for downloading purposes, they were illegal downloaders. I was not surprised by the outcome. I think there are a higher percentage of people that both download music legally and illegally because it gives them variety of options in order to get music. Therefore increasing the chances they will find the song they like.
I surveyed two16-18 year old females who have two different reasons why they download legally.” Because it is honest and right. When you download something legally it has more value to you” and “Because I cant find the song on Limewire. Usually and unknown song. Or the files on Limewire are too corrupt.” An illegal female downloader stated her reason for downloading music illegal was “it is cheaper and easier.”
In Summary the information I have gathered from my primary data/ survey have made me come to the conclusion that the reason why people download legally is mainly based around availability, honesty. Whereas the main reason people choose to download illegally is mainly because it is free therefore money they do not have to spend any money songs which you would get sick of very easily. I was surprised that the legal downloaders I surveyed did not take law into account whilst answering my survey question on why they chose to download legally. This made me question their knowledge on the effect that music downloading has on the music industry. I was no surprised that honesty had a higher percentage of 30%. This was because Rangitoto students are mostly honest reliable people that acknowledge that what illegal downloaders are doing is wrong and do not participate in these actions. They also took into account that it is stealing if you download music illegally which would most likely question their morals if they did download illegally.
I found that almost all my legal downloaders had a debit/credit card which they can use to download music legally off of sites like iTunes. I was not surprised to see that the people that downloaded illegally did not have access to these types of cards and are therefore unable to download legally. Therefore I make the assumption that online music downloading is influenced by whether a person