piracy! Arrrr
Pirate music! In my opinion it does the artist good in the long run... I say this as the husband of an up and coming musician.

Copying music for your friends spreads the word about good music.

You're more likely to spend your cash on albums from less well known people that you can't get hold of.

Finally, use some of the stacks of cash you save to go and see a few people live. It's a much nicer way of supporting musicians and they get a bigger cut too.
(teasus likes tea, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 20:07, 12 replies)

For quite a while now
I've been thinking that all this music "piracy" will probably turn out to be a good thing for bands and audiences. But not for the labels - they've had their century or so of the recorded music cash cow. Everything comes to an end.
Let the live music live on!
( P-MONKE We're all fucked, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 20:20, closed)

Home taping is killing music!
And funding terrorism, somehow.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 20:28, closed)

photocopying fucked libraries
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 20:31, closed)

photocopying the coalition government

Littlebitapolitics,ladiesandgentlemen.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 20:35, closed)

photocopying the coalition government Labour run councils
(Vigilante Man weeps because you're stupid., Tue 15 Nov 2011, 1:13, closed)

I spy a hole in this argument.
If you like a particular artist's music and copy their CD for your mates, what's going to happen to it? They'll rip the MP3s off the CD and put them straight into the music library shared by their P2P software. All of their friends and even random strangers on the internet will then be able to download it without paying for so much as a blank CD.

Even assuming they don't immediately rip the CD, they'll get together the next time the artist brings out a CD and say "Let's all chip in a quid, buy the CD between us then copy it for everybody." Result: twenty different people are listening to the one and only CD the artist has sold.

Granted, some people out there do have a conscience and will gladly support up-and-coming artists by buying their own copy of their albums, but they are outnumbered I don't know how many million to one by those who have grown up half-genuinely believing that music is a free resource provided for their entertainment by people of independent means, and they almost certainly do not constitute a sufficiently numerous public to support an artist full-time. This is exactly why concert tickets, which used to cost £30, now cost £150.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 21:49, closed)

Concert tickets that cost £150
are sold to the gullible twats who don't understand what real live music is about. The huge monies are for all the poncy lighting, pyrotechnics, inflatables and hangers-on that are required to entertain the brain-dead in stadium sized "venues". These distractions where the performance is either completely manufactured or so impersonal because you're 100 yards from the stage as to make it pointless attending. I know, because I've been to a few of these "concerts" and have almost invariably left with the feeling that somehow my soul had been diminished, rather than enriched, by the experience. There are, of course exceptions to this rule, but I won't digress any more atm.

About 5 years ago, I saw Franck Black (even if you don't like him, he's still "big" in the music scene) at a local venue, playing to a crowd of about 800 for a tenner. That's right, a tenner.

Why on earth does anyone think that a musician, even a very, very good one deserves untold riches for the rest of their lives for performing and recording a few songs just a few times?
( P-MONKE We're all fucked, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 22:15, closed)

quite so
quite so
(teasus likes tea, Tue 15 Nov 2011, 15:33, closed)

yeah but
the more people listen to the music, if it's good, the more people are likely to go and see the band. Even if you don't pay to see them the venue will be paying them. This is usually based on either the size of the crowd they can pull or the drinks takings at the end of the night.

Also, I've noticed that I haven't spend much less on music when I've pirate it. I just buy stuff that's less well known.
(teasus likes tea, Tue 15 Nov 2011, 15:39, closed)

Please, spare a thought for the lawyers who take a 99% cut of all the artists' revenues.
If folk seriously start endangering their livelihoods, these wonderful intellectuals might leave our shores in a mass brain-drain and suck the blood out of a different nation.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Tue 15 Nov 2011, 1:37, closed)

My take on this is that it's a simple case where technology has made an industry redundant: vinyl and CD's etc were a physical means of distributing music, and the music industry was a way that musicians could, at a price, get themselves heard and get themselves promoted.

If the technology we have now had come before pop music, there is no way the music industry as we know it would have arised from it. In a way, I think artists being extremely rich, in hindsight, was simply artists exploiting the limitations of technology at the time.

Piracy is here to stay, and while at the moment there is a debate about it, prosecutions etc, it isn't going to disappear, and will eventually, for better or worse, be pretty much the only way in which music is distributed (apart from people who like packagaing and things)

Artists will have to tour more to make their money, simple as that
(clinteastwoodbradfield, Tue 15 Nov 2011, 11:27, closed)

and a good thing that is too
as far as I'm concerned! Live music is much more fun for everybody.
(teasus likes tea, Tue 15 Nov 2011, 15:40, closed)