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Is Adele Rolling in the deep after the leak of her ‘Skyfall single’?
Wednesday 3rd October 2012 | Philip
An investigation on the digitalisation of the entertainment industry.
With the latest James Bond theme ‘Skyfall’, sung by Adele, leaked online. The question has surely been brought to everyone’s mind of whether digitalisation of the music industry has been good or bad for music artists, and what effect is it still having on the entertainment industry.
Music for the last few years has become more and more digitalised with the introduction of Mp3 players meaning that everyone could carry around music in their pockets. With the introduction of the iPhone, music became a second nature of life, so to speak. People carried around a mobile phone that could carry around more music than the amount needed to fill a day and could share the music within seconds. You can go on the underground at any time and you can be assured that there will be someone listening to an iPod or iPhone, with this digitalisation of how the music was played brought about a change in how the music was processed, stored and even created.
Music production can be much easier now, a new album being able to be fully recorded in one week. This raw recording is stored and edited on a computer till finally the finished product is produced and stored digitally. Gone are the days of big recording reels and gone are the days of manually cutting and pasting the wheel of music. Music has also begun to digitalise when it comes to movies, each soundtrack piece having a BPM (Beat per minute) suiting the film down to the second.
However due to this change in how music is handled and stored has come the internet piracy that has led to whole albums being released online illegally, available to download up to a year before the album is out. As soon as the music is recorded and edited people look out for the way to download their music, this is evident with the presence of websites like hasitleaked.com.
This digitalisation has had a good effect for a number of reasons; anyone who thinks they have a good singing voice can record their own tracks or other peoples tracks and put it on free websites like youtube and soundcloud for people to hear; any artists can produce an album or single which they can then apply to have put on iTunes making a small amount of money for them; and imported albums can now be brought at the click of a button. But these benefits have come at a cost; the music Is possibly worse in quality some people still preferring the sound of vinyl’s over cd’s and mp3’s this is evident due to the amount of vinyl shop’s still on the high street and also the availability to buy vinyl’s on amazon and other website pages specifically for vinyl’s; and internet piracy, this being evident with the case of ‘Skyfall’ the latest James Bond theme, four days before it was supposed to be revealed, one day after it was announced that Adele had sung the theme it had been leaked online, potentially resulting in Adele losing money from people illegally downloading the single instead having brought it.
There was an attempt to stop people downloading online with the shutting down of piratebay; however there has been another website ironically called unblockedpiratebay which has the same folders and works. This piracy is not just limited to music however, if you look hard enough online you can find computer files, books, audiobooks and many other things online. You can even view box office hits online without downloading anything. This must be causing a problem for the entertainment industry potentially losing millions from people downloading their books, music and movies. There is even software out there worth over a hundred pounds which you can download and whilst you may save money, this piracy means that they don’t get the money they might need to update the software or even to continue to stay afloat in their industry.
Whilst the government are trying to stop the piracy, it must be asked, if they are trying so hard why is there albums and movies still being released online easy for you to download? And will there will always be people who will download the music illegally whatever the intention; whether to save money or to get that one thing they can’t find in shops? Whatever the answer, it is the entertainment industry that will pay for these mistakes allowing pirates to gain the upperhand, and only time will tell how much these pirates might cost the entertainment industry.
By Philip Domingue
