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The whole downloading music thing...

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StaedlerMars:
Punknews



--- Quote ---We have sold around 200k records across 3 releases. We’re not ‘huge’ by any stretch but do alright and live off (and ON subsequently) the road. Fans and friends ask me all the time how I feel about "stealing music." I just told someone yesterday "I have a hard time seeing it as stealing…when I don’t see any money from cd sales to begin with. What are they actually TAKING from me?"

If you want to squeeze an opinion on theft out of me, ask me about the dude that grabbed our tshirt off the table tonight in Detroit or better yet.. ask me about record contracts.

I encourage our fans to acquire our album however they please. The philosophy I’ve adopted is that if you’re supporting disc sales, you’re keeping the old model around longer…the one that forces dudes like me to tour 9 mos/year if they want to make ends meet with a career in music. If you wanna really support a band, "steal" their album….help bury the label….and buy a tshirt when you show up at their show and sing every word.
--- End quote ---

See, I always figured that small-time bands don't make that much money of records sales. And that it was their shows that most bands really make money off, but I've never been in a band that actually produced something, so I'm not sure.

If a band is telling me to download their music illegally, what's stopping me?
How much do bands rely on cd sales (big bands and small bands?)

RockabillyLove:
All I have to say is that I really don't give a shit. I download anyway, if that is what I get arrested for, I will just laugh at fate. You know, the bands that make the biggest fuss about downloading are bands like Metallica. As if they need the extra cash from a few post-craze cd's being sold. The bands that could actually use the money know that they're going to make more money off of selling t-shirts and stickers than their CD's at shows anyway.

Besides, if I like a band enough, I still buy their cd.

GenericName:
That's probably the best argument I've heard for music sharing.  Although, one could argue that you're taking revenue away from the record industry by downloading, so someone still loses even if it's not the band.
People that argue this show the fact that the RIAA is slowly making less and less money as the years drag on. It was something like 13 billion dollars in the '90s, now it's down to 11 billion. They ask, can we send an industry into the ground in the name of progress?
Are self-producing bands (over the internet) the music industry of the future? I can see music becoming something like the art industry, where people could have steady jobs and make music in their free time. Perhaps record labels, simply because of their concept, are doomed to failure soon in the future.
No one can get around the fact that online music sharing is unarguably illegal. We can justify it by stating some of the RIAA's more ethically questionable practices, but recieving a digital copy of the music without permission from the artist (when you don't already own a copy, and you're not just sampling it before you buy the album) is against the law. I may be a hypocrite because I'm listening to illegally downloaded music right now, but I do have to point out that no matter who condones it, by US law music sharing is illegal.
For more on this, try reading Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture. Ironically, it's available for download online if you just google it.

a pack of wolves:
People already do have steady jobs and make music in their free time. I know a lot of musicians but I don't know any that make money from it and only a couple who ever hope to or have, and in most cases wouldn't even if the opportunity arose. DIY bands have been self-producing and distributing their music for about thirty years now, long before the internet came along. That's just made it even easier.

Bad as the music industry is, the art world is not a good model to follow. With the art industry in order to make a living you have to produce work which appeals to certain narrow groups with a large amount of capital. Since the production of art is so time-consuming and only certain kinds of pieces lend themselves to mass production artists don't have the luxury musicians do of being able to appeal to large amounts of individuals with little capital.

I've never had a problem with downloading music myself, I have little respect for the idea of property anyway. If it has a knock-on effect of destroying the music industry then so much the better.

Thrillho:
I make music because I want to, just like I write and draw because I want to. I don't make money from any of it. Doing any of it for a living would be great, but the majority of people don't make much of a living off it and so work as well.

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