Literature Review

Phillip Monier

English 202

Marlen Harrsion

1-16-10

Lit Review (1^st Draft)

As I began my research I came across and article entitled “Do Artists Benefit from Online Music Sharing?” in which the writers explore whether or not today’s artists are being helped or hurt by online sampleing and downloading of their music. The article begins with both the opponents and proponants arguments over online music downloading. One side claims that “that there is little evidence that online music sampling has actually decreased overall sales. Such sampling also potentially benefits artists by helping newartists to become ‘known.’“(Gopal) While the other side argues that piracy “threatens the future of artists, composers, and record producers.”(Gopal). They say that they don’t know how the industry will continue to make money if online filesharing continues to undermine CD sales. Now that I have brought up the topic of music piracy and filesharing someone may ask whether or not that music piracy is ethical or not. In the article “Music Piracy – Differences in the Ethical Perceptions of Business Majors and Music Business Majors” Susan Lee Taylor explores the question of whether or not there is a difference between the ethical views between regular business majors and the music business majors who plan on working in the field being “pirated”. Taylor found that 35% of her repsondants said that pirating is not ethically wrong at all, 25% said that they couldn’t make that judgement call, and that neither major believed that downloading music was really that unethical.(Taylor). So with that being said it is pretty safe to say that if an artist is going to put music on the internet that it is almost definetly going to be illegally downloaded for free.  In the article “Internet Music: An Introduction” Andrew Hugill takes a look at how the music has not only furthered how people have obtained music but also how it has created its own sub genres. He says about music and downloading that the music industry is having a hard time trying to keep up wwith the internet and how music is so easily shared and created without the industries help at all. He goes on to say that many people see this as the industries “just desserts” because the relation ship between the artist, label, and consumer has become much more complex.(Hugill).

Now the question becomes how does this effect artists just starting to put out their music or hopinhg to get big. The Billboard chart has been used to judge an artist’s or song’s succes for decades now and in the article ‘‘Now We’re on the Top, Top of the Pops’’: The Performance of ‘‘Non-Mainstream’’ Music on Billboard’s Albums Charts, 1981–2001 Jim Sernoe takes a look at the success of artists starting or just lesser known artits to cross over into the “mainstream”. One example that Sernoe gives is that od the band Evenescence, the band asked Billboard to remove them from the christian rock genre in order to gain more fans. This means that the label that bands are put under also effects how succesful they are, so how does it effect an artist or band to be labeled as something other then pop or “indie” or “underground”?(Sernoe).

In the article “Copyright Issues in Internet Music” Andy Harrower attempts to clear up any misconceptions about what exactly copyrights are and how they are used along with what they are used for. Harrower begins with the simple explaination that “From a copyright perspective, the use of music on the Internet is no different to any other so-called ‘offline’ uses (e.g. a recording made for a CD or album, music used in a television programme, a radio broadcast of a concert). In most cases, there are two ‘copyrights’ to be considered: the one in the musical work (the song or composition), and the one in the sound recordings of the song, composition, etc. Generally speaking, songwriters and music publishers own the copyright in musical works; record labels own the copyright in sound recordings. These are not firm rules—an unsigned band, for example, are likely to own the copyright in their recordings as well

as their musical works.”(Harrower).What this means is that unsigned bands are making more money from owning both forms of the copyrights then bigger bands do because bigger bads and artists have to share with their label. He goes on to say that the internet has changed the way that people are recording and it is helping smaller artists or starting artits create really good recordings and not suffer the downfall of crappy quality with their releases because they don’t have the backing of a label or the cash to pay for a studio. (Harrower).

Works Cited

Gopal, Ram. “Do Artists Benefit from Online Music Sharing?”. The University of Chicago. 2-17-10 http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/500683

Taylor, Susan Lee. “Music Piracy–Differences in the Ethical Perceptions of Business Majors and Music Business Majors.”. Journal of Education for Business June/May 2004: 306-310.

Hugill, Andrew. “Internet music: An introduction.”. Contemporary Music Review 2005: 429-437.

Harrower, Andy. “Copyright issues in internet music”. Contemporary Music Review 2005: 483-488.

Sernoe, Jim. ““Now We’re on the Top, Top of the Pops”: The Performance of “Non‐Mainstream” Music    on Billboard ’s Albums Charts, 1981–2001.”. Popular Music & Society December 2005: 639-662.

Pre-Writing:

With this literature review I hope to again gain a better understanding of my research literature that I have gathered and to help myself along with the structure of my actual final product. As for how It wil help the reader I hope that it will give them a better understanding of my research topic and clarify any question that they might have before even reading my research. It will differ from the other parts of my project because it hopefully won’t have any of my personal opinions in it, just the facts that I have gathered and the background information that I have found pertaining to my research. By the end of this paper I hope to clarify exactly what I am trying to get at with my research and inform who ever my readers are about the background information. My intended audience is people that are interested in how the internet is changing the way the music business is being run and artists who are looking to put their music out there and want to inform themselves on the dangers and the possible benefits of putting their music on the internet with or without a copy right. The language that I use in this review will me very laid back and almost on a personal level so as to retain the readers interest and not bog them down with technical phrasing and dry text.

Post-Writing:

I think that I actually did pretty well with all of my objectives for this lit review. I think that it helped me sift through more information and pull more details from my research literature. I think that my lit review will help my readersget a basic understanding about what my final product is going to be about. I also think that I did a pretty good job keeping my opinion out tof the paper and sticking to what the previous research said. I think that I clarified even further what extly my research is about by pulling more from my articles and showing really what I am trying to do. I know that I did a pretty good job with the language and audience.. I stayed pretty laid back and refrianed from any really dry speech and technical speak.

This is the properly formatted version of this paper: Lit review (Rough Draft)