The music industry has flourished for decades, releasing albums, tapes, 8-tracks, or CDs whatever you have in your collection the record companies have made money from it. Since humans learned how to record sound, someone has been there to make music and profit from it. However, now with the arrival of MP3s the record labels are confused and scrambling to keep up with this new ever-changing technology. With the ability to record, share, and reproduce CD quality (or close to it) sound on our home computers, consumers are now able to make a choice between buying an album or downloading it. To a company that makes money from album sales this is not good, not good at all.

However this is not the first time the record companies felt the threat of the ever-moving technology pounding on their front door. Back in 1964 the audiotape was patented, thus allowing people to record music from the radio or another media source (vinyl). When this new space age technology was released the music industry feared for its existence. Would this be the end of music as we know it? Giving people the power to record their own compilations, oh sweet heaven how will the music industry survive?

Well, guess what, it did. Not only did it survive the attack of the tapes it flourished. Releasing more bands and more music than ever before. Why is that you might ask, well you see first of all tapes don't have the quality that LPs have and if you're recording music off of the radio the stupid DJ never stops talking so you miss like half of the song…it makes for an awful mixed tape. Sure taping off of vinyl was good for making a party mix or a tape for that special someone, but you needed access to the originals and pretty much if you or your neighbour didn’t have it you were screwed. You had to shell out the big bucks for the album.

Then along comes MP3s. See CDs really didn’t affect the music industry in the way tapes did. They were just a digital version of the 12" vinyl, the report on which has better sound is still in the mail. The MP3 is to the tape what the CD is to vinyl. MP3s don't have the sound quality that a CD has, but it is a much more compact and shareable format. Now, along with Napster type programs you don't need to know whom you're sharing files with. All you need is a computer and an Internet connection. The big difference with the MP3 is that is was not engineered by the industry itself but with a huge audience of music lovers on the Internet. This sounds like trouble for the fat cats at the recording studios or is it just a case of Déjà vu?

The studios want you to think that we will be the downfall of music. That it will be all of our incessant downloading that will make it impossible for new bands to record. That it will be the little guy with the dream of being famous that will suffer and in turn cause us to suffer with a complete lack of music. The record companies want us to believe that it will be the recording studios where all the magic happens that will close and the artists will have no where to go. In fact it’s the big record companies that are going to suffer from this, and already have. Why do you think we’ve heard so much about this? Do you think that if Johnny's recording studio went out of business because of music downloads we’d hear about it through a multimillion dollar ad campaign? Not unless it’s Johnny Depp.

Think of the people involved that stand to lose the most. Remember that nowadays, many record companies are huge corporations that own a variety of record labels. On every album sold it is typical that the artist receives only 10-20% of the sales, usually the former, also keep in mind that this is not 10% of the CD price that you see, it's 10% of the wholesale cost. Not to mention the band must recoup the expenses incurred while recorded said album; this is taken before the band sees one penny. The studios still get paid for time, the label and CD manufacturers still get paid for their effort. In actuality it is the labels that are losing out big time if people stop buying CDs. So if the record companies close down, which I doubt, will we still get music? Of course we will, there always has been music and there always will be. The only difference is the vehicle in which we use to service the industry and distribute the music.

Should we feel bad for the record labels? Hardly, they make money off of every aspect of the music that pours out of their shops that I can't feel bad for them in this one. They spent enough years screwing talented musicians out of hard-earned money. I think it's time for payback. Besides, why should we care if they go out of business? Let's say I owned a business making um...giant foam Cowboy hats. Things are good until one day a guy moves in a block over making bigger foam cowboy hats for half the cost. You think anyone is going to come to my rescue? No. I would go out of business and you would buy all of your giant foam cowboy hats from the new guy. It's business and if you can't keep up to the market trends you fall behind. Well I'm afraid the labels have fallen behind on this one and now that their pants are down they're looking for sympathy. I'm sorry man I don't have any sympathy for a giant corporation that makes billions of dollars a year that can’t predict a change in technology. Shame on Napster for introducing file sharing? No my friend, shame on you for not seeing it coming. You shouldn't be allowed to take it out on John Q. Filesharer for sticking with the times.