Don’t tell me there’s not ways to hear an album before you steal it, and don’t justify your stealing by your economic situation or by the fact that you wouldn’t have paid for it if you hadn’t have been able to steal it. There was obviously a demand for the product, or you wouldn’t have downloaded it and burned it. THOSE PEOPLE DID NOT GET COMPENSATED FOR THEIR WORK THAT RESULTED IN YOUR ENTERTAINMENT. It’s that simple.
It’s wrong! Respect the musicians, songwriters, publicists, managers, engineers, producers, and their families. Don’t do it! Don’t steal music.

I am an artist in a small non-pop genre, my band is signed to a non-RIAA small record label, and a good part of my living comes from record sales, along with merch, and ticket sales. We probably sell around 15,000 albums a year, we play 150 dates a year, and I spend most of my life driving, flying, sleeping in a bunk, or loading in. I’m not complaining about it… music is my LIFE. It has been since I was a child. Sometimes I feel like a slave to it, but it’s my choice.
I have practiced, trained, written, and busted my ass on the road since I was a teenager, and I’d like to be compensated when someone enjoys what I do.
I don’t give one shit if someone uses the argument that they would have never bought my record if they couldn’t steal it. I don’t want you to have it. I worked hard on it and if you want to hear it, you have to pay me so I can eat.

It’s that simple. And yes, commercial radio sucks, but there are places like satellite radio, college radio, myspace, and internet radio where you can hear all kinds of new music.

I’m sure you’re an ok guy, and we’d probably like hanging out with each other, but you really need to see the flaws in your reasoning. I’m not an “RIAA zombie”, and honestly I’m a Libertarian, but I don’t feel that it’s wrong for people to get paid for their creations, and it’s not wrong for people to get rich off of music that’s popular.

Right or wrong, when P2P is used for what it should be used for, good things can happen, and it does in most cases. Sure, there are those who just take, and buy nothing, but in reallity, they probably weren’t going to buy anything anyway. What harm is done in them hearing the music? None, as these sort of people never were even a potential sale. It still doesn’t mean some good can’t from them either, as the music could be heard by their friends, who in turn buy an album.

The only ones that get hurt by P2P, are those that make a less than average product. THose are the ones who don’t want you to try before you buy, as they depend on blind buy sales to push their dreck.

In 2007 I downloaded around 200 albums in .flac format. Of those I burned 126 to CD-R.

In 2007 I went out a bought, with my hard earned cash, 136 CD titles(most from non RIAA smaller labels). Some box sets, and some double disc sets. Some of those being ones that I burnt to CD-R. To say I havn’t done more than my share, woud be just absurd. I spend what I can while providing for may family, so I see no harm in hearing music that I would otherwise never be exposed to.

Your right though, it is copyright infringment to download for free without the artists permission. The thing is, I will never feel any guilt. I do my best to show my support. Until the industry can find a way for me to truely discover good, new music, I will have to go down the free download road.

Really, P2P is a bigger threat to corporate radio, as it is no longer a good source for music discovery (really never was). Most of the die-hard P2P users, are music fans, and music fans collect, and buy albums. The rest of the lot are potential customers, but they are not lost sales, as one can not say if they were going to buy anyway.

In the end, if you want to sell more CDs, you better put out a good product. It is a try it before you buy it market, so the bar has been raised a lot higher. Two songs and a bunch of filler isn’t going to earn you a gold record anymore.

Like it or not, P2P is here to stay.

Besides, most of the artists I listen to are dead. If I bought their CD, I wouldn’t be supporting the artist. My money would go strait to the record executives, and I see no point in doing that.[/quote]

The artists sold their recorded music to these “executives” that you folks hate so much.
And by illegally downloading, you’re not just stealing from the “executives”, you’re stealing from the songwriter.
Not all bands write and record their own stuff, and there are a lot of songwriters that depend on royalties from these albums to make a living creating the music that you want to listen to.
I understand the arguments on all sides, but I don’t think that there’s any way to justify downloading people’s songs. You’re just justifying a wrong to keep yourself from feeling guilty.

Downloading music is no more ethical than going into Barnes and Noble and copying the pages of the books that you want, putting the books back, and leaving.

Of course you didn’t steal any physical property, but the books aren’t worth anything with out the words that are printed in them and there’s obviously a demand for the information in the book. That’s how our economy works! Someone works to create a product, and if you want to use it, you pay that person.

While I see that it’s a fun argument to make so that your actions don’t seem so bad, it’s just NOT ethical to steal intellectual property that you’re consuming.
Because after all, every “product” other than food started off as intellectual property. All industries are based off of bringing you comfort, convenience or entertainment, and just because you’ve figured out an easy way to steal from one, doesn’t make it right.

Say I own 800 LPs, which I replace with CDs. I sure as hell am not gonna do this more than once. So the “statistics” that show dropping CD sales are pure bull. People with large collections have probably converted all their stuff, so now it’s back to Joe Sixpack buying CDs. Of course you’re not going to get the same kind of sales figures.

Not to mention there are bunches of other reasons, like people starting to shun Big Music (there was not this animosity before, back in the day we just stfu’d and paid up), the fact that a lot of music you hear over the radio/mtv IS garbage, the fact that you can now buy online from many different sources, etc.

Big Music needs to go fucking die. Why the F*** are CDs so much more expensive than cassette?

Los resultados de este estudio no sólo son importantes por ellos mismos, sino porque nos permiten entender la verdad detrás de los actos de la SGAE. Señores, la SGAE es como las mujeres. Cuando dice "no", es realmente que "sí". …

1) Small Lies

2) Big Lies

and finally,

3) STATISTICS

what this survey is about is testing the correlation between downloading music by p2p and buying music CD’s

the results show a positive correlation but statistics do not offer an explanation for the relationship

statistical interpretations are performed using multiple regression analysis which would require a much larger study with a bigger sample over time

therefore this study is open to interpretation as to why higher downloading does fit with higher purchases of CD’s

Record stores used to let you sample LP’s in the store. I haven’t seen that much done since I bought my first CD in 1884. A few have little machines that will let you play a few seconds of a track, but that is it. The price of CD’s have dropped quite a bit though, about half.

I dont really see peer-to-peer any more of a threat to record sales than when FM stations used to warn they were about to play a full uninterrupted album so you could get the ol’ reel or cassette recorder ready.

I do see a threat to musicians in niche markets, as copyright law was really meant to protect them, not Big Records, Inc. As a niche musician myself (Irish folk) I jealously guard my copyrights. I have to sell my own albums one at a time, and peer-to-peer can destroy the tiny little market for my music I have made.

(my guess is not that much better)

So there was this Canadian study (cited here, here, here, here and well, you get the point) that found people who download illegal music are more likely to buy music as well.
It makes a lot of sense. People download music to discover it. People buy mus…

Btw, I too download music, and then buy CDs of my favourite among them. I did not buy as many CDs before downloading…

http://goobimama.blogspot.com/

However, all this changed when the RIAA started pursuing downloaders. As a result of their actions I have decided to not purchase any further CD’s from non-independent labels until the RIAA change their policy.

So far, by my calculations, they have lost 2000 dollars of my money. I don’t suppose it is very much, but enough people do it, the message will soon get to the labels wallets, which is the only thing they understand.

Sometimes I’ll buy something on iTunes then download a better quality mp3. I did this with the most recent Behemoth and Dimmu Borgir albums – the iTunes quality sucked so I downloaded FLACs from Usenet, which are way better.

I recently gave GB£20 to Radiohead, not because I thought their ‘free to download’ album was worth that much, but because I downloaded their entire back catalogue the night before I bought it. Most of that has now been deleted

Filesharing directly causes me to buy more music. Without filesharing I would not have discovered 80% of the stuff I’ve bought over the last year.

No doubt a great many lawbreaking music thieves like me work exactly the same way.

This story has been submitted to Stirrdup. Your support can help it become hot….

> statistics, which are sweeping at best

The study is specific to Canadians with a sample size of 2,000 p2p users. Within that context, their finds are possibly accurate. You can’t apply the results to users in other countries. It would like surveying favorites foods in China and touting that as the same as the rest of the world.

Even in Canada a sample of 2000 people is hardly representative of the population of people in canada alone who pirate AND buy CDs. What kind of questions were asked in the survey? Did they leave room for answers? No, because you can’t conduct a survey like that, you have to give a person a few answers from which to choose, since this is the only way to compile any consistent data, but that means that all your consistent data is non-reflective of people’s opinions, because you have given them answers to choose, and not answers they would give… THAT is why I say statistics are meaningless… 2000 people in Canada choose from five abcd answers in a questionaire and we are supposed to believe that this is a representaion of consumer trends in Canada? you must be joking!!!!

“In the US CD sales have been down a significant figure though. From about 13 billion in 2000 to a little over 9 billion today. That’s around 45% less than from a few years ago. It would be nice to say that P2P helps increase these figures, but it’s not true.”

How can piracy be blamed for that?? Look at the release groups that are spreading most of the pirated information first: Most of the best ones have been around since the 80s, piracy has been around even longer. It is just becoming more accessible along with everything else, thanks to the internet…

Most new car manufacturers are putting in mp3 players: ipods and the like are having soaring sales. CDs, are dead, just like tapes and VHS and whatever. THAT is why there are declining sales. Are the same studies that show declining CD sales, looking at the link between this and rising mp3 sales, on sites like iTunes?

This whole thing is turning into more of a flame war than anything else. Officials and companies are taking the moral high ground while doing dirty things themselves. It’s the oldest trick in the book… Until I can support what I think is good music, without watching people like Britany Spears et al, become multi millionaires, I’m not interested in purchasing a damn thing. How much money does the CEO of Warner Bros. or Sony america make? People always complain about the exploited third world workers making nikes and whatnot for 2 cents a day while the CEOS make 100 000 dollars a day. what is the difference between that and a small band from idaho getting 3 cents for every cd sold, while the CEOS play golf 3 times week? What is the difference?

I’m for Piracy, as long as it’s not my content – if it was my content then of course I’m going to get angry and I’d probably do some of the stupid things that the RIAA did/are doing. Anger blinds you, and clouds your judgement and otherwise rational people become complete idiots.