It was once considered to be the killer of the world's music enterprise. But now it has become the forerunner of the industry that once hated it. The transition was as fast as you can play a single MP3 on your music player. But before you can play it, you have to download it first.
A few years back, the music industry had its slump, what with this so called "illegal sharing and distribution of copyright". Many times they have sued companies that develop file sharing engines (or peer to peer sharing) like Kazaa and Limewire, among others. Yet they lose time and again. It's either that the law is loose on music downloading or the authorities are not ready to incriminate the millions of people who download music over the internet. The truth is you can't blame file sharing softwares because as the adage goes, "it is only a means to an end." While they blatantly do their business—which is to let people share whatever file they want to share—they don't actually promote illegal activities that would violate any law. It is still up to the users.
Let's put it this way. If bank robbers used a sports car like Porsche as a getaway vehicle after robbing a bank, would the authorities blame the carmaker because the car is so fast they failed to catch the criminals?
With the case of music downloads, it is slightly different. Because even if they can catch people who download stuff from the internet, they just could not persecute them. These are the same people who go to record stores to buy CDs and DVDs, the same persons who buy front row concert tickets to watch their favorite artists live. For them, downloading is not a crime, but an evolution of music. It took the music industry some years to realize that digital music is indeed the future of the music industry. And while there are still file sharing softwares out there—not to mention some web sites where you can directly download music files for free— record companies made a bold move to keep up with the modern times. Now they have their own music portals where people can get free music samplers or pay a reasonable amount for newly released singles from different albums from their favorite artists. They even partner with some music player manufacturers like Ipod.
Music downloading soared to greater heights, bringing the music industry back to the top. There are even artists like Coldplay who release their music in digital format weeks before their albums come out.
This is how the music industry "rolls" these days. No more blaming, no more suing—just good music all year round. It doesn't matter whether people buy CDs or download MP3s. In the end, everyone benefits—the people, the artists and the record companies. The good thing is that downloads now form part of the total sales of any music record. After all, music is there to be heard and shared.