Recording Industry Association of America

     As you all know that the Recording Industry Association of America. RIAA is a trade organization that helps promote the creative and financial problems of the major music companies.  The RIAA helps protect intellectual property and the First Amendment rights of artist and music labels. According to the RIAA its members create, manufacture, and distribute about 85 percent of all the legit-recorded music that is produced and sold in the United States. The RIAA is the organization that hands out the certificates for Gold, Platinum, Multi-Platinum and Diamond Sales. The RIAA collect and compiles information on both shipment and buying trends of the recorded music in the United States.

The RIAA main goal is to help the major labels artist the acknowledgment and money they deserve. On of the ways they do that is by keeping track of intellectual property. Intellectual property is basically creations of the mind, such as artistic works, symbols, inventions, literary works, names, images, and designs that are used in commerce. They also pursue in filling suits against people who participate in peer-to-peer file sharing. They are basically the major record labels backbone and helps out with the things the labels don’t usually have time for or won’t do.   

The RIAA is very important to the music industry without them it wouldn’t be any say so when it comes to illegally downloading music. They play a big role in the artist or producers would not have a voice. In a sense the RIAA acts like a lawyer the help go after the people who refuse to pay for individual songs or albums. The association also in a sense helps award the artist on their accomplishments with their record sales, by giving them certificates for the number units they sold on the album. They provide people to access two years shipment data for free. They recently created a new shipment subscription service the gives an interactive database where users can view, compare, and export historical year-end U.S. shipment stats that can date all the way back to 1973.