A point i think is indeed important in this situation, is the freedom filesharing of music gives the users – one can download albums to find out whether it is worth buying or not, and then buy what IS.

This is exactly what i do, and i believe there are several others sharing my point of view. Another aspect is the fact that you still have the same amount of money as before, but the differance is that you can spend it the way YOU want, not the way you are influenced by media to do, and as you say, this gives benifit to those smaller artists unable to buy commercials on TV. YOU can decide what artists you want to support, or in other words, what artists that deserve your money.

In the end i just have to thank you, Ernesto, for sharing this, but please post this on other forums, or send it into a newspaper in order to bring the message through to those not-pro-filesharers!

Cheers, Teodor

I do the same thing with music. My favorite genre is _extremely_ niche (filk – science fiction folk songs). I can find quite a bit made available by the artists online (filkarchive.org, for one); I also get some from filesharing. I’ve found quite a few of my favorite artists because someone had some of their songs in a share folder along with songs/artists I knew.

I buy their CDs (or tapes) when I can, usually from the (small) publisher or direct from the artist. But a lot of the songs on various fileshares are out of print or never were published, so the sharing is the only way to hear and learn these songs.

There are people who get noticeable income from filking – not many, but a few. And even fewer who make a living off music, though usually not just filk – they’re usually primarily marketed (self-marketed) as folksingers. The Internet, in many different modes, has been an absolute boon to these people – anyone who wants to can hear their music and buy it if they like it. And tell friends, and go to concerts…word of mouth is the best marketing there is.

The “music industry”‘s attempt to hijack that and make whoever they’re pushing this month “cool” is now failing, thanks to the Internet, and I’m delighted. There still needs to be a better way for listeners to directly support artists they like – there have been a couple micropayments-to-artists sites started, but they all collapsed as far as I know. But artists – real artists, who sing/play/write songs because they can and they want to, not the overhyped product of the “music industry” – are still going and will still go on long after the “industry” has collapsed.

Does anyone else think that the term “music industry” is the whole problem in a nutshell? Art shouldn’t be an industry.

More generally, the phenomenon of the past decade has been too clear: peoples’ tastes have been more sophisticated. Big breweries are suffering declining sales as microbrews take a larger share of the market. High end chocolates and cheeses have emerged as genuine forces in the marketplace. Wine and specialty liquors have exploded in interest. People were never as homogenous as they may have appeared in the ’50s and ’60s, when everyone had to listen to Elvis and the Beatles or whoever was the latest thing available in record stores and on the radio. People are far more diverse than corporate America finds convenient for marketing purposes.

Technology has undoubtedly driven or enabled much of this, the ability to be who you want to be. Not only can I go to digital radio or the internet to hear virtually any style of music I want (not just generic pop/rock), I am now listening to self-produced acts that are amazingly good and can compete with any major label for the time I spend listening to music. And when I’m in the mood for Celtic fusion art rock, or whatever, things that are inherently niche markets, I can do that. It used to be that I could only pick up that stuff once a year at the annual Scottish festival in town. Now it’s all available on-line, just pennies a track, with free listens on Myspace.

Arthur C. Clarke used to note, the impact of technology is overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term. In the long term, no matter what they do to try to police piracy, corporate music has a market problem, made possible by the spread of technology–not just at a few studios, but with garage set-ups that can make any creative person, and their unique/niche flavors of music, sound like a million bucks. They no longer possess the sole means of producing and distributing the sound of music. And people everywhere are better off for it.

NO I WILL NOT BUY THE CD! I HAVE BEEN BOYCOTTING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY FOR THE LAST 20 YEARS. My absence of buying music from those record co mpanies is my protest. I grew up listening to the crap that was churnned out by talentless musicians who where marketed heavily. Most the CD’s that i have bought in the past are now just junk thrown away. After the media blitz faid away, you hear the music as it is and may decide this is not worth $18. No way i would pay $30 for a CD. I will pay over $100 to see my favorite band live. I would pay for DRM-less, lossless digital audio of my favorite band . But no more price gouging. I will not pay for 3 songs on a CD that are “trendy” for a month and then later realise that they are lacking talent. If a musician is talented, then they should tour and make their money honestly, cutting out the music industry. “Getting Signed” was always the lazy way of making it big for the new rock star. But a majority of them are not around. Why? because they are not real musicians, do not tour, do not write their own music (ie American idol “actors”). Yes, I would pay for a CD, but it is well known that the artists only get about a $1 per CD. It is also Well known that it cost about a $1 per CD. Were is the other $28 bucks going? The record companies who leech off the artists and fans. WE ARE NOT THE PROBLEM, THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND THE WAY THEY “CREATE” AND PROMOTE THEIR SALES ARE THE PROBLEM. But the little man, who does not have the legal power of the RIAA, are powerless. Except for not buying this overly inflated product. What is the alternative? No music, radio (which is crap), download live concerts which are not copyrighted, trading live music from the fans who “tape it” from the soundboard of the concert. I do not download copyrighted music anymore, not because it is wrong. because i do not want to be sued. but the joke is on them (record companies); Most of the music available is rubbish anyway and i would not listen to it for free! The big business of music is going thru a grass-roots revival and those with the true talent(real musicians) will be ok. File-sharing only hurts the non-talented musician who relies on the music industries complex sound studios to make them sound good. The real musicians will be fine, touring and selling their music on the road to their fans. THE MUSIC INDUSTRY DOES NOT ONLY OVER-INFLATE THE COST OF MUSIC BUT PROMOTES “BAD” MUSIC, WHO THE ARTIST DOES NOT WRITE, PLAY INSTRUMENTS, OR TOUR. The decline of CD sales and the decline of the music industry is a good thing for the quality of music that comes out!