In a poll conducted by probability/statistics students last month, 23.2% of students polled admitted that the most common way they got their music was through pirated sources.

“I pirate music because I simply don’t like to pay for it,” said freshman Erik McKessor.

With the rising price of pretty much everything essential in our economy, it seems that music is one of the least prominent priorities of our students in terms of where their money should go.

“I pirate because it’s free, and the programs are easy to use,” said senior Pardes Helmand.

There are many different ways to download, but an increasingly popular way to download mp3s illegally is YouTube mp3 converters.  Music is becoming easier and easier to pirate off of websites like this, and this is taking away from the sales of the artists’ works.

“I don’t pirate music, but I don’t think it is bad because even though some people say pirating is cheating the artist, one person pirating isn’t going to make that much of a difference,” said sophomore Jason Probe.

Even though the artists are essentially being stolen from, students prefer not to pay the $1.29 iTunes fee when they can simply get the music for free.

One technical downside to pirating music off of sites or programs is that the sound quality is not always as crisp and mastered as it was originally intended to be, due to the mp3 essentially being put through the ringer.  Another problem with pirating reported by students is transition to a new computer.  Unless you save your music to a flash drive, it is likely that your music library on a new computer will not carry on any music that had been downloaded illegally onto the previous computer.

An ethical concern to music being readily available like this is that it has become very difficult for aspiring artists to become well-known or make significant money from even their finest work.  It is easy to go back and forth on the issue, but the bottom line is, pirating has the potential to slowly cripple the music industry, and should be carefully watched.