There are numerous things on a college student’s mind and most of them are monetary: tuition, housing, financial aid and so on. One thing that we should not have to worry about is retribution for downloading music that is easily accessible with the explosion of mp3 players. We as college students are expected to be the brightest the country has to offer. We are expected to take the initiative with problem solving. Knowledge and use of free music databases is one way in which we observe this expectation; music costs money which we don’t have, so to solve the problem we go to free music databases and download the music. Doing what is expected of us should not result in us getting penalized.

It should be legal for college students to download music without restraint. This statement may sound wrong but think about it: who is it really hurting?On one hand, the artists suffer from an insignificant lack of record sales when people across America illegally download music. Though this point tends to serve as an instant justification of laws that prohibit downloading music, lawmakers fail to remember that illegal distribution is still possible even after purchasing an album. Modern computers are equipped with media center tasks such as ripping and burning that allow an individual to copy music from an album and mass produce more. By networking and sharing among associates, college students are ultimately able to obtain any song or album without making a single purchase. If students are able to obtain music while laws exist, why not eliminate these laws all together? We should not be faulted for utilizing our resources.

It should be legal for college students to download music without restraint. This statement may sound wrong but think about it: who is it really hurting?

I am all about making money while doing something you love, such as music. I appreciate the artistry and the fact that it does take a special person to reach the vast majority. However, I do not understand why someone needs to be paid thousands or millions of dollars for singing a song. Let’s analyze a major mainstream singer, Rihanna. She received some notoriety with her first couple of albums but according to Billboard.com, her song of the summer “Umbrella,” made her “a full fledged international pop star.” Then came the endorsements with CoverGirl, Venus, a 20 million dollar deal with Nike and so much more. She is making the majority of her money by selling her brand, not her songs.

The same holds true for other artists. According to digitalmusic.com’s review of the Alman Brother’s lawsuit against SonyBMG, when a music site, such as iTunes, sells an artist’s song, the record company gets roughly 66% of the sales from that ninety-nine cent song, the artist gets 34% of what the label gets, and iTunes gets the rest. Seems like a pretty fair trade since iTunes “developed the infrastructure that makes you able to sell it to millions of people while you sleep” and the record company “paid for the production, and some marketing.” People who download music are downloading the songs, not the brand, so illegal downloading cannot be blamed for a deficiency in the funds that the artists rarely receive. According to the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), “Consumer Purchasing Trends” report for 2005 and 2006, the sales of most musical genres have gone up due to legal digital downloading, which have gone up by .8% and internet downloading by .9%.

The RIAA would like to cite illegal downloading of music as one of the main reasons record companies are losing money, but these companies have become increasingly unnecessary over the years. This insight has caused artists such as Soulja Boy, who at the age of sixteen not only created but produced tracks and advertised himself on a national scale, to use forums such as myspace.com to further their exposure. Bypassing record companies is what is causing the downfall of the recording industry. These companies must evolve along with the times to stay in the game. Maybe college students aren’t breaking the law; we’re just moving a little faster than the record companies. We are reacting to our evolving technological environment by staying on top of the times and using what we have been given. We should not be penalized for doing what we are expected to do, learn and adapt.