Free is a word that often gets tossed around. People are given a free T-shirt, are treated to a free meal or, if they are lucky, win a free vacation. These examples, and all others, are, unfortunately, not actually free.

The person who has them, yes, may have engaged in no exchange, but somebody paid for it.

Maybe a manufacturer or a travel agency paid for the “free” gifts, but regardless of who it was, the fact remains that free was never free.

This concept of free is highly applicable in the music industry today. More and more frequently, news about pirating music and file sharing is making headlines and being reported to millions of people. Yet this problem continues. 

Consider this, in a survey by the University of Hertfordshire, the average person, aged 14 to 22, has 842 illegally downloaded songs on their digital music players. The math from there is relatively simple: at approximately $1 per song, the average person in that age group has $842 of “free” music.

In an era where children are growing up and using the Internet at a younger age than ever before, this has the potential to become a problem. 

The music industry is already losing money because of illegal downloading, but now, according to the 2010 Digital Music Report, in the last six years digital music has gone from accounting to a minimal amount of revenue for the industry to more than 27 percent. 

With digital music quickly becoming an integral part of the music industry’s revenue, music piracy seems to have the potential to bring about the collapse of it.

If these numbers grow, as do the numbers of people who pirate and illegally download music, the events could prove disastrous for musicians and the industry.

Unfortunately for both musicians and music listeners, it does require money to produce songs, record albums and go on tour. How can any of this be achieved without proper funds?

Pirating may be easy, it may be free but it does not make for a viable future of the music industry.