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Originally Posted by Kevin-SFBucks
I don't download music... so I am not being hypocritical. I don't download anything. If I want it, I buy it. I expect others to do the same.
Supporting the industry is great... rationalizing that you buy enough, so at some point you are OK with getting it for free is not. Would you use the same rationale at your local grocery store? Hey.. I buy $800 in groceries from you each month.. it's not that big of a deal that I get some for free every now and then. Theft is theft.. plain and simple.
People have a right to protect their product. Just because it is mainstream and everyone knows about it (in the case of music) does not mean that RIAA or ClearChannel or others must adapt to the thievery market. They have a right to sell their product to legitimate users and to control the distribution. Why create a product otherwise?
You are wrong in that p2p or torrents don't really hurt the industry. Of course they do. These are all users that are potential purchasers which are now getting the product at no cost. Unless that usage is checked and stopped.. it will continue to increase, thereby decreasing legitimate purchasers. Everyone gets hurt except for the leeching users who say.. what's the big deal???? it's just one song.
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And this is the argument that they will continue to use until they realize that suing their customers is only hurting themselves.
The grocery store example does not translate to the Music industry where the cost of production is relatively low these days if we are talking about production. The act of recording songs would take place if recorded music is sold or otherwise as it is a necessary step in the songwriting process. If I steal food at the grocery store I have physically taken something and not paid for it whereas when you download a song you do not have the physical product (the album with artwork the cd or record) what you have is a relatively poor quality copy of it no different from copying a movie on VHS back a few years ago.
The main problem is that artists no longer really need the industry to support them as they can do everything by themselves over the internet at a very low cost which Radiohead is about to prove (and Pearl Jam already did by selling their live shows for $10 for a digital download). The record companies are just not too happy about this fact and are trying their hardest to stay in business. Their great plan to accomplish this is by suing the people who are supporting their artists.
Bands make their money mostly through touring and merchandise sold at those events. They make very little on the actual album. So downloading songs and telling your friends about a band is actually helping them because it means the difference of doing a small tour at small venues or doing a bigger one at larger venues. And it also gets people like me who like to collect to buy the album. For example, this summer I saw Dispatch. They rose in popularity because of Napster. They never sold that many albums and haven't made a record since 2000. Yet they were able to sell out MSG for three nights in a matter of minutes. So there is just one example of p2p helping out artists.
On to Myspace...why do you think bands are so active on there and put up songs for us to listen to? Because radio is all but dead (because of Clear Channel) and MTV and MuchMusic choose to play reality TV instead of music. So where are bands supposed to promote themselves? Why do you think NIN and Prince are also giving away albums for free? Because they understand that for them getting their material out there is more important than making sales off of it (so they can sell out huge arenas and stadiums).
This is not an argument that is going to be won by either side. But it is a changing of the guard and that much is obvious. It's like any industry that goes through change for any number of reasons...you have to adapt or risk going out of business.