Research on Music Piracy

Research on music piracy A Proposal Submitted to Ms. Rupal Khambhati Faculty (S. R. Luthra Institute Of Management) BY Farhan 14 Divyesh 23 Huzefa 15 Pratik 31 Bhaumik 58 Hardik 05 November 13, 2011 Executive Summary: In today’s technological era, the music industry is in a crisis. Music is being downloaded illegally more than ever . Rising costs for music coupled with a lack of guilt for pirating music has caused music piracy rates to skyrocket. Be it classical, typical , rock and roll or pop. The research is also about that every student has the ability to access free music through music piracy because of the wide variety of sites offering it. The problem: The real problem in the music industry is the fact that music costs more than what people want to pay for it. The problem of piracy has arisen with the rapid advance of technology. There are various sites offering free music to people so why pay for the thing which you are already getting it free of cost. The lack of proper patent laws or more correctly, the enforcement of these laws allow the perpetrators of this crime to get away scott-free. Due to this rampant piracy, the government is deprived of tax revenues, jobs are lost and research and innovation never take place. The maximum amount of illegal downloading is done by youngsters in the age group of 20 -25 years. As long as this group does not take note of the losses suffered by the artists, music companies and the government due to this menace, no concrete step can be taken to counter the loss. Research objective: Our research objective is to collect information from students that why do they prefer downloading music illegally rather than purchasing it or what would induce them to obtain music legally. We believe that most students in questionnaire will say that they have downloaded music illegally and a significant amount of their music is pirated. The interesting part of our research will be the part about guilt and which alternative method they prefer. Another very interesting result will be the final question, which method of distributing music would cause people to be more likely to purchase music legally. .Literature review: One study conducted by Alejandro Zentner found that because of the easy accessibility to free illegal music, the likelihood for someone to legally purchase music decreases between 35-65% (Zentner 2005). Music piracy is relevant to students because it is found in that illegal music pirating is highest in College and High School Students. There is also an almost peer pressure to pirate music because it seems as if everyone else is doing it and there are virtually no consequences. (Ingram 2008) (Mallin 2009). Boorstin (2004) collected data from the Census in three different years from various cities and regresses the CD sales on each city on the number of people with internet access finding that people who are under 24 with internet access tend to decrease their CD consumption. Peitz and Waelbroeck (2004) build their data from 16countries and they try to figure the effects of digital downloading on physical music sales. In their findings they conclude that among the factors that influence sales is the GDP growth, Mp3 downloads and the availability of broadband. Levi, Dato-on and Rhee (2004) try to identify how consumer ethics are connected to music piracy by conducting both qualitative and quantitative research to a sample of college students. Their findings prove that people who download have little ethical concern and they also believe that their action will harm neither the record company nor the artist. Benefits Of Study: ? To increase public education and awareness regarding piracy. ? Finding various alternatives to curb piracy such as creation of separate music websites which will reduce the operating cost for distributing and can make very large profits by putting advertisements on the website. ? To get opinions and ideas from people as what steps they think should be taken to stop piracy and design a suitable system to curb piracy on the basis of that. The items that counterfeiters and pirates produce are often substandard, sometimes endangering the lives of those who purchase them. These illicit activities steal market share from legitimate businesses and undermine innovation, with negative implications for economic growth. ? This research is important because when finally proposing a solution, the approval of the populations that download music at the highest rates, which is college students, should be taken into serious consideration. Also since there is so little research as to the correlation between different demographics besides age done, my research can help to find if there is a correlation and if there is, it can be useful to target certain methods for eradicating piracy within a population. Research design: †¢ Data collection design: ? Type of study Informative study It helps us to find solutions to the problem through various suggestions and answers obtained through questionnaire ? Data type Primary data The data which we are going to obtain is fresh as various students will share their suggestions and answers through questionnaire prepared by us. ? Data collection tool Questionnaire †¢ Sampling design: ? Sampling frame As the survey is related to music piracy, so mainly students from college background are surveyed ? Sample size In sample size we would like to take 50 students Bibliography: Frost, R. L. (2007). Rearchitecting the music business: Mitigating music piracy by cutting out the record companies. First Monday, 12(8). Retrieved from http://firstmonday. org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index. php/fm/article/view/1†¦ Ingram, J. R. & Hinduja, S. (2008). Neutralizing Music Piracy: An Empirical Examination. DevianBehavior,29(4), Kusek, D. , & Leonhard, G. (2005). The future of music: Manifesto for the digital music revolution. Boston: Berklee Press. Malin, J. , & Fowers, B. J. (2009). Adolescent self-control and music and movie piracy. Computers in Human Behavior, 718-722. Retrieved from http://www. sciencedirect. com/science? _ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VDC-4VHXDV8-1†¦