Report one: digital music industry

The internet is becoming a larger part of our lives nowadays you can do almost anything on it now, including downloading music. You can download apples iTunes to buy music digitally which is actually cheaper than buying physical copy so it attracts more people. But there are other ways of getting music and for free as well these file sharing or peer to peer websites offer a huge choice of music that is free. But it doesn't stop there because much like iTunes you can download a programme like iTunes but called limewire and on this you can not only get music for free but films and video clips and even documents. This is very much illegal yet when asked around college many people still admitted to using websites and programmes such as limewire. 15% of all music sales were digital and 3/4 of those sales were from iTunes which has sold over one billion tracks worldwide. Myspace used to be a very popular website for the ability to download music off a bands website but this has been removed. Youtube is another very popular website because many people put a bands music videos on there it's not the easiest way to listen to free music because a computer is needed but a few mobile phone now have the ability to go on the internet. There are about 28,000 pirate websites and over 700 million unauthorised music files and in may 2002 99% of music files exchanged over the internet were illegal. Many groups have been formed against illegal music one which has been set up by the GRAMMY music awards which has a community style where artists can talk to music fans and discuss the problems of free music downloads.