Research Paper Abstract

New media technology holds massive potential for world betterment, but it also poses many cultural and societal threats to the creative industries. The illegal sharing of creative content commonly referred to as “piracy” is one of such threats, and researchers in the field nearly unanimously agree that piracy impedes the music industry financially. Much scholarly research has been done in the last decade to analyze the scope and effects of piracy, but most of the contemporary research lacks a solid, stable solution to the ever-increasing issue. Thus, the purpose of this study was to survey young adults first-hand and assess the potential effectiveness for live music revenue to counter the negative financial effects of piracy. Findings revealed, in fact, that neither illegal music downloads or live music expenditures were significant among the sample, but that knowledge of intellectual property law was astoundingly low. Implications of this research are that increased education on file sharing laws would financially improve the music industry more effectively than live music promotion would, thus more industry effort should be put into public education on the issue.