If you like a band, you support them. A scammed MP3 might turn into real money when you catch them on tour, or willingly buy the album for its art value.

Here's my defense of mp3 downloading for 99% of the music out there...

A new CD at tower/best buy cost around $17.

My box of cereal this morning had a free DVD strapped to the side.

I'm thinking the DVD cost more to produce than the CD.



THX,
-Jason D.

DJ_Statikfire wrote:If you like a band, you support them. A scammed MP3 might turn into real money when you catch them on tour, or willingly buy the album for its art value.

Here's my defense of mp3 downloading for 99% of the music out there...

A new CD at tower/best buy cost around $17.

My box of cereal this morning had a free DVD strapped to the side.

I'm thinking the DVD cost more to produce than the CD.

Remember, the price of a CD does not reflect the actual cost to produce the physical CD. You are actually also paying for the work that went into the CONTENT of the CD, the production, etc. Now, I am not defending $17 priced CD (not at all!), but let's not pretend you are only paying for a round piece of digitally encoded plastic. Again I refer you to the notion of intellectual property.

Also, the DVD you got in your cereal is probably an advertisement to sell something. It is, for all purposes, an 'ad'. They are more than happy to included it as it will in a best case scenario lead to them selling more of their products, or whos ever product it is advertising (thus, who ever paid them to include it). That is why it was 'free' to you.

Agree with you 100%....


For the music I DJ, I don't feel bad about downloading because I WOULDN'T buy 99% of it. As for the other slice, I don't mind playing patron to work I support.

Anyway,
Let's talk a little about distribution....
+mostly, what's in the local store isn't worth your money
+the albums you would pay for are all online
+P2P is faster than waiting for your package to arrive

This whole thing is simply a matter of 'path of least resistance'.

If I can download a song for spare change, and have the right to burn it to CD, transfer it to a CD player, and chop it in an audio app, then fine, at that point I will support digital media rights.

THX,
Jason D.

DJ_Statikfire wrote:Agree with you 100%....

For the music I DJ, I don't feel bad about downloading because I WOULDN'T buy 99% of it. As for the other slice, I don't mind playing patron to work I support.

Anyway,
Let's talk a little about distribution....
+mostly, what's in the local store isn't worth your money
+the albums you would pay for are all online
+P2P is faster than waiting for your package to arrive

This whole thing is simply a matter of 'path of least resistance'.

If I can download a song for spare change, and have the right to burn it to CD, transfer it to a CD player, and chop it in an audio app, then fine, at that point I will support digital media rights.

THX,
Jason D.

Just because you don't like the music you download doesn't give you more of a right to download it. In fact, if you use it for DJing (I am assuming you are a professional), you may actually have MORE of a reason to have paid for it.

As to distribution, the logic you use sounds more like justification for stealing. "It is faster to steal, therefore it is better and OK to do so". "It is easier to steal, therefore it is better and OK to do so". "It is harder to find what I want to buy (at local stores) so it must be OK to steal instead". I think these are all ridiculous excuses. If your local store doesn't stock what you are looking for, I am sure you can find it for sale online. Buy it directly from the label or the band. Nowadays almost anyone is only a google search away. Look on gemm.com. You can usually use paypal and receive your purchase in a few days. Yes, it is not as fast as downloading. Yes, stealing is faster than buying. It is also cheaper. I am not sure if those things make it right to do.

First of all, people have mentioned in this thread that a person sharing files on the internet shares with MILLIONS of people. This isn't true. The files are available to everyone, true, but how many people ACTUALLY download music from any one person? On programs like Soulseek, I'm downloading more than I'm uploading, so I doubt that a million people have downloaded songs from me. I doubt if there have been more than 50. But that's just nit-picking.

Secondly, a lot of people say that they download songs to try out music they haven't heard yet, and that they don't think what they're doing is wrong because at least they're not downloading the whole album. I, however, do download whole albums of music. And to be honest, I don't feel bad about this at all, in any way. I've thought about it a lot, too. I understand what you people are saying, about justifying stealing by simply saying that you don't have the money or effort to go to a CD store is somewhat of a cop-out. I would like to say, though, that I do buy CDs quite frequently. If I were to stop downloading, the quantity of CDs I buy would probably not be any different than it is now. As a matter of fact, I did stop downloading for a while, and I bought the same amount of CDs I usually do. It's just that, when I'm not exposed to new music or new types of music, I'm more likely to buy stuff along the same lines as the stuff I've already been listening to for a while.

Although I do have a friend who doesn't buy any CDs at all, and I think that's pretty fucked up. If more people were like me (buying CDs in addition to downloading), the RIAA would probably not care too much. But the reality is that file-sharing programs make it a lot easier to steal things, and a lot of people don't care, especially the young people.

See, here's my theory- when people were making cassette copies of Naked Raygun albums a while back, the major labels didn't care, because the major labels weren't involved with that type of stuff, and the major artists' albums were always readily available. For the most part, duplicating albums was only exclusively done by the people who actually cared about the music, and would be likely to support the band, or even if they didn't, at least it wasn't really affecting the major labels as much.

But now, a young person with no ear for quality (and I'll admit, ashamedly, I am no audiophile myself, when I listen to music on my computer's speakers I can't really tell the difference between CD and mp3) realizes that he could listen to Linkin Park without going out and buying the CD; the major labels actually do start losing money, and they become pissed. My reasoning is that the people who do download the Linkin Park songs and the Britney Spears songs probably don't buy the albums at all, and so the issue of file-sharing was brought to the RIAA's attention. The file sharing now probably doesn't hurt independent bands any more than tape sharing did: on one hand, they sell less CDs per listener, but on the other, bands that would have been kept in more or less their local scene are now popular on a national basis (although that might have to do with the the spread of internet music journalism, like Pitchfork and all that).

I have a big problem with the "pay-per-song" programs that exist now: first of all, the best thing about p2p programs is that they are decentralized, meaning that, if ONE other person has a particularly rare bootleg, I can obtain it, because it will eventually spread. On networks like iTunes, I can only get it if they put it on the server, and even then, they're not going to have rare, unreleased, or live stuff on iTunes, which is predominantly the type of music I download on Soulseek. Secondly, it's not like I don't buy albums- if I'm going to pay for a CD, I'm going to want the case and the artwork as well. If there was some type of pay-for service that sent you the CD in the mail after you downloaded the music (and at a reasonable price, 99 cents per song can be a good deal, but it could also be a rip off- either way, the number of tracks on a CD is no way to judge how much to charge), I would be supportive of it, but I would still sometimes use Soulseek to get the rare stuff, the b-sides, the live stuff, etc.

My final argument is that there really isn't a great music scene where I live. Now, I could drive for an hour and get into New York, where everything is great, but a two-hour round trip to go CD shopping is a mite excessive. HOWEVER, this doesn't mean solely that there are no good music stores out here- the counter-point to that argument is that one could always buy CDs online (which is actually how I DO buy most of my CDs- label mail order usually have rock bottom prices with free shipping, that's the way to go), and just because it's more convenient doesn't mean that it's morally the right thing to do. The thing about not having a good music scene out here is that nobody listens to good music. Literally, my friend is the only one I know who listens to any indie music, and that's because I got him into it. I don't know if this is because of the predominance of the emo scene on Long Island or simply because everyone out here is just dumb, but if I don't own an album or download it, I'm not going to hear it. I can't listen to records that my friends have, because my friends don't listen to anything worthwhile. I'm not going to hear the new Rapture CD at a party and I'm not going to get worthwhile recommendations from people I know. I plan on going to college in a major city, so things will be different there, but right now, my only options are to buy online, buy from Best Buy (a better selection than you would think, I've bought two of Shellac's CDs there), or download.

Do I think that mp3's are the future? I hope not. I still like CD shopping. I realize that we all can't get what we want, and so it's hard for me to justify what I do. However, my logic is that I wouldn't be supporting bands any more by not downloading music. I do feel bad about the independent stores, except that there aren't any here, and I don't really feel guilty at all about mailordering a CD from the label anyway. If there was a good cheap local store around here, I would support it.

I hope that this rambling made sense to somebody else. I don't expect it to be too coherent.

I just thought of another angle, so I might as well explain it:

If I heard on this board how awesome Zeni Geva was, and had never even heard of them before, and I was walking through a record store and saw a Zeni Geva CD, I might be interested enough to buy it. This is an impulse buy. Sometimes I regret it later on (even on some albums regarded as classics - "This Nation's Saving Grace" and "Daydream Nation," I'll probably be strung up for saying that I didn't like either album but in both cases I bought the albums solely on reputation and was very disappointed), but sometimes I get a really great album I end up loving (I bought "Forever Changes" like that and it's probably my second or third favorite of all time). However, if I hear how great Zeni Geva is, and then I look them up on the internet and I have to buy their album from Insound (usually overpriced) or some other website, I'm going to put more thought into it and I might not end up ordering it. I would probably just download it, and if I liked it, I would then put an effort into acquiring it.

I don't know why I have this mindset, but I don't think it's too far out of the ordinary. Perhaps there's some convoluted psychology behind it, or maybe I'm just lazy. That's pretty much my motivation for file-sharing, though.

I'm sorry I'm making you guys read this much.

I would have to agree with Andrew here. I've said basically the same thing in another post about file-sharing. The current state of things allows peopel to download music for free... ie entire albums, single songs, whatever. If bands or labels feel like they are being cheated (which I think does happen often), then laws need to be passed. If you don't want people to have the option of not paying a dime for thousands of songs, and distributing/sharing them further... then shut down kazaa... shut down morpheus... and all programs similar. It's one of those things where there is alot of grey area. Kazaa isn't completely at fault, because all they do is provide the medium for p2p.... they don't actually provide the substance, or the songs... So I see why legally it would be tough to pin the entirity of the blame on the programs, or servers... Basically, in a nut shell... the mass download of songs for free is going to continue until payment is mandatory for all material. Simple

Intern_8033 wrote:If that means it doesn't make people as much money, fine. That just means it shouldn't have been allowed to get so commercialized in the first place. Right now we're trying to fix the tire on a car with a broken engine, and it will only ever get us so far.

That's pretty insightful, but as a solution, it's much too impractical. Sure, the state of the music industry needs to be changed, but the labels don't want it to unless it's strongly to their advantage, and the decommercialization of music will be seen as nothing but a threat. And even then, they feel as if some type of measure to prevent loss is needed until the next step occurs.

And shutting down programs like Kazaa would 1) be impossible because the servers are decentralized and 2) set a really bad precedent for internet regulation.

In a way, I'm somewhat against these new "anti-spam" bills because I'm afraid of what will happen when the government starts getting its fingers in areas of the internet that are not inherently illegal. I don't like spam, but I like the internet as the crazy, illogical wilderness it is now, and I see the anti-spam acts as the next step to the government doing something crazy like an e-mail tax. The same thing is applicable to Kazaa- it is possible to share non-copyrighted material over its servers, so it would not be good if the government became allowed to shut down whichever servers it saw fit.

Intern_8033 wrote:There is nothing stopping a rogue band or independent label from releasing their music for free

Bands do this all the time, either posting MP3s on a web site, giving away or trading homemade CDs or selling them (the fancy, high-production-value-but-still-homemade ones) for just enough to cover expenses.

But wait a minute, now I'm unsure what you're proposing. I think your real idea here is some kind of alternative economy, because I remember you saying in a previous post how bands shouldn't charge admission for their shows, either... but I think you changed your mind on that one. Let me look...

Is this about bands asking for donations, rather than charging for music?

An “art tax” is imposed on everyone. Essentially we enormously expand and de- bourgeoisify the National Endowment of the Arts, i.e. the rubric of art expands to include all music, TV, movies, visual art reproductions, maybe even books. The tax is justified by the enormous savings to consumers who will never have to pay for art or entertainment again.

Here’s the good part: the fixed tax is then distributed according to who consumers vote to give it to. Everyone has the same tax imposed on them and everyone gets one vote to say who gets their tax. There’s like one time a year when you designate which creators of art / entertainment pleased you the most and the tax goes to them.

Anyone who wants to create art / entertainment is apportioned an equal amount of the tax so THERE’S NO PANDERING INVOLVED like when NPR tries to get money from us. Then the art is perpetuated if it sails with consumers, just like politicians. The appropriate amounts of tax to charge and distribution methods are figured out by a panel of artists / entertainers who are either chosen because they’re esteemed by their colleagues or considered leaders in their field or they’re voted on by consumers or whatever. Anyway these guys’ll know just how much money is necessary to “craft the definitive aesthetic statement of our time” so you can afford to record at Electrical and everything. If anything the recording standards and quality of materials and instruments used etc.--as well as Steve Albini’s and Silkworm’s income--will only go up with this system. And all economic justifications of Pro Tools will become moot.