Digital Music Downloads: Making CDs and New Music Obsolete?

Over the past five to six years, digital music downloads have seen a dramatic increase while CD sales have seen record losses. There was a time when a person had to go to their local mall or record store in order to obtain their favorite music. Now a days you can simply go online and download your favorite songs for a small price or even for free. The massively increasing trend in free music downloads have been a serious problem for record companies and artists because if people are stealing their music, then they aren't getting paid. At some point in the future, you can expect that almost all music purchases will be done through digital downloads.

Digital music downloads have also created some controversy over the years, beginning with Metallica way back in April of 2000 when the band sued the ever popular "Napster" for violating massive amounts of copyright laws. The bottom line of the lawsuit was that the band was unhappy because millions of people were downloading their music for free and it was hurting their record sales. A band like Metallica does not need to worry about how much money they are making from record sales but the bottom line is they are right. How do people expect up and coming bands to ever fully make it or make a living out of music when people basically just steal their songs? How can people expect their favorite groups to continue when they aren't making money off of anything they do? Downloading music online isn't all bad but when people do it for free, it can have a severe effect on artists of every genre.

One of the major trends for digital music downloads is usually from hip-hop artists putting their emphasis on creating big hit singles. When people hear these singles, they simply go online and download the song they like and completely ignore the rest of the album. A lot people are basically going and either paying $0.99 for a song they want instead of paying $15 for one song and an entire album they don't want. A massive amount of digital downloads for these groups can be good but your album will never get a whole lot of recognition. You will find the bulk of digital music downloads will come from hip hop groups and other mainstream type music. Not all digital music downloads are bad but the free music downloads are causing massive issues with bands and record companies.

It is a fact that someday CD's will be obsolete and that all music purchases will down through digital downloads. This won't be anytime soon since there are still massive groups of people out there that would rather have a physical copy of a CD instead of just a digital download. Not to mention there are still millions of people out there that have no computer knowledge what so ever so I wouldn't be expecting a full blown swap over to digital music downloads anytime soon. Unless CD sales in the next few years go to almost nothing.

Even though digital music downloads are looking to make CD's obsolete and even harm all of the music talent out there, its still not all a bad thing. These artists can still make massive amounts of money through digital music downloads by using programs such as the ever popular iTunes. It's the free music download sites that are killing artists and record companies today. In the future, there needs to be more of an emphasis to stop these programs and help promote legal music purchases so we can always have new fresh music each year instead of having the freebie music sites putting them out.