Date of Award

Spring 5-2013

Degree Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Mass Communication and Journalism

First Advisor

David R. Davies

Abstract

With advances in technology, music consumption among listeners has vastly changed throughout the years. These changes in technology have allowed piracy to thrive and prosper while physical sales vastly decreased. Previous studies have explored how music piracy effects music consumption. This study goes beyond the work that previous studies have explored by examining a new form of music consumption—cloud-streaming websites. This thesis examines how cloud-streaming services have affected music consumption and music piracy through an analysis of an online study distributed to music consumers. The results showed that cloud-streaming services do change the way that people consume music. Respondents demonstrated a decline in piracy after their use of cloud-streaming services as well as a slight decline in amount of music purchased. Furthermore, respondents believed that cloud-streaming services would reinforce consumer’s acceptance of music piracy, although their own actions indicated the opposite.

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