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Like dial and others I have been in and around the music biz. there is a lot of good info that is mostly correct in here. But there are a few things that are not correct.
1. yes music sales have been on a decline and that started before napster. It is what is commonly called the Chumbawumba effect. If you know that band you know they are the band that put out the song that goes, " I get knocked down, but I get up again/they'r never going to keep me down." It was huge hit ( a decent song ) and was everywhere. So they release a CD and it sucked ass. There were people demanding their money back. The band disappeared. Now people are wary. They hear a song on the radio and they don't just run out and buy the CD. however, since napster and P2P got big sales have gone down even more. This can be explained in many ways but the bottom line is that even when you addin sales of dowloaded songs off places like Itunes sales are down across the board at a much sharper rate than before.
2. Most big acts, unless they have some kind of kick ass deal, could care less if you buy the CD. sure they like to get platinum records and stuff like that, but they get big advances from the record company and know the company is going to screw then out of royalties so they don't care if you buy it. they do care if you hear it then buy tickets to their shows and T-shirts and stuff like that.
3. downloading hurts small bands. This is a half truth. Yes if everyone who liked a small band went out and bought the record it would help them, but the bottom line is that most young bands sign very bad record deals and would never see much - if any - money from the record company. Most young bands need to hope for a radio hit so they can get performance royalties, licensing thier music to commercials and TV and building a fan base to sell concert tickets to make it. Take a band that sells 5 million albums and never tours and never has their music downloaded for free and I'm willing to bet they make a lot less money than a band that sold 1.5 million albums toured like mad and had thier CD downloaded millions of time.
4. I agree that the same people that think it's okay to steal music or software are the very ones that would lose it if they saw their entire members area for download on a torrent site.
In the end, of course, it is theft and should be look at as so. If nobody buys the records eventually the bands will get dropped and will have a hard time finding a market for their music so if you like a band go buy their CD then go see them play when they come to your town.
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