Illegally Downloading Music
Thanks to the Internet, college kids have gone from one of recorded music's biggest customers to perhaps its biggest pirates. Anthony Mason reports.
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They used to be the music industry's best customers, now they're its biggest pirates:college kids.
Instead of buying songs for 99 cents each, legally, on sites like iTunes, the Internet has given them instant access to free music.
"It seems so easy that it's almost not like stealing. "
"You basically illegally download all you music?"
"Ah, not all of it." But most of it, say these University of Southern California students, even though the recording industry has sent threatening letters here.
"So these letters don't scare you?"
"No matter what they do, it's never gonna stop completely."
See for youself how big the problem is. You're watching a real-time readout of illegal downloads.
"We're looking for what songs and other entertainment media people are seeking out for free on line right now."
They go by in a hundred per second—requests for Buddy Holly, Miles Davis, Avril Lavigne.
"These are big numbers we're looking at here. "
"Yeah, they're terrifying numbers to the recording industy."
Eric Golen heads Bihchampagne(), a research group that tracks illegal traffic. Today alone, Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run" was downloaded illegally more than 137,000 times.
"For every song that is downloaded legally, how many are downloaded illegally?"
"At least, very conservativelly, at least 20".
That's right, 20 to 1. It took iTunes five years to sell 2 billion songs, but there are a billion illegal downloads every month.
"The world now, more often than not, gets its music for free, gets its music online and gets its music without permission. That's broken. That is not a market place. "
And if the music industry can't find the solution, it's looking more and more like the song is Over.
Anthony Mason CBS New, Los Angeles.