Notes

Were the Penalties It Sought Unjust?
For the music business, 2003 was a 12 months of many milestones. On one hand, Metallica's 1993 video for "Binge and Purge" was certified 15 occasions Platinum, making it the highest certified music video in historical past. Then again, a 12-year-old lady, Brianna LaHara, joined 260 other people who have been sued for downloading copyrighted music from an Internet service; LaHara grew to become the primary to resolve the litigation, settling for $2,000. What is the connection between these two landmarks? The group that handed out the award to the metal veterans was the same one which sued the preteen. It's all part of the usually controversial saga of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the trade group that tirelessly promotes the music industry and ruthlessly polices music piracy. It tracks the gross sales of recordings and compiles statistics on tendencies by format and style. It certifies gross sales so as to award prizes, together with Gold and Platinum awards, for top-selling information. It bends the ears of legislators to pass legal guidelines that help musicians and report corporations.

It units the standards for the technical facets of the recording industry. It promotes the trade by means of public relations and training initiatives. Since then, the music trade has had to navigate a protracted stretch of white water as recording know-how has modified and adjusted once more. In any case, nobody today listens to music the way in which of us did in the 1950s. From legal digital downloads to music piracy, the affiliation has its work reduce out for it because the business continues to reinvent itself. Having music in a digital format made it easy to create a perfect -- and perfectly free -- copy of a recording, with no loss of quality. The RIAA noticed that counterfeit CDs may carve an enormous gap in members' earnings. Then, situs slot and other online music stores came alongside. Downloads quickly started to compete with physical recordings in terms of gross sales. Today, greater than 11 million licensed digital recordings can be had at the press of a mouse button.

What's extra, a single hit can generate all the pieces from DVDs to cell downloads to ringtones. They pull collectively statistics to track sales in the varied codecs -- including CDs, cassettes and mp3 downloads -- by items and worth. The RIAA also conducts special studies about things like the economic affect of the music enterprise, and its databases intently observe trends in numerous genres of music. International Standard Recording Code. This assigns each recording a singular quantity in order that it can be recognized. Watermark Payload Program. This is a code embedded in a recording that signifies any parental advisory, the copyright status and owner, and the distribution channel. Global Release Identifier. This code identifies the source and distribution channel of digital copies of music. Digital Data Exchange. This units standards for environment friendly exchange of digital music in order that recording firms can simply make music obtainable to retailers. Another more recent addition to the RIAA to-do record is overseeing streaming music companies.

Internet companies like Pandora and Spotify go on music to customers in a type that they can hearken to but not copy. These companies pay a royalty for each song they use. Radio stations of course provide the same service, but pay a much lower royalty. In addition to these routine issues, the RIAA has needed to grapple with one trendy-day issue that poses a menace to the very existence of the industry: music piracy. Sales of vinyl recordings peaked in 1977, then declined via the 1980s and 1990s as CDs took over. But just lately, file sales have picked up. Audiophiles love their rich, nuanced sound. It additionally could be illegal. Digital recording has made counterfeiting and sharing technically easy, however solely the owner of the copyright can legally make a copy. Another copying falls into the generally murky territory of music piracy. Because the RIAA readily factors out, the penalties for stealing copyrighted materials are no joke.
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