This is a touchy subject for a lot of people. I'm aware the thread is old but I don't know how I missed it and I am passionate about the subject itself. I am pro-piracy. I believe that "piracy" is no different than sharing and that, as long as one is not profiting off of it, it's perfectly acceptable. I remember back in the day when they tried to criminalize burning CDs for a friend. Sorry, but that's not theft to me. You "listen to music without paying for it" every time you turn on the radio or listen to a friend's CD collection.
Who benefits from CD sales? RIAA. Not your poor starving artists, no, just a greedy company. In fact if you look it up there are multiple interviews available with musicians in which they admit their profit comes from concerts and tours, not CDs (despite the anecdotal statements this article makes). I will gladly buy a CD if it comes straight from the artist and the artist is the only one profiting, but if there's a middle man in there I am far, far more hesitant. The price has to be fair and right and it better be free of DRM.
article said:
I must disagree with the underlying premise of what you have written. Fairly compensating musicians is not a problem that is up to governments and large corporations to solve. It is not up to them to make it “convenient” so you don’t behave unethically. (Besides–is it really that inconvenient to download a song from iTunes into your iPhone? Is it that hard to type in your password? I think millions would disagree.)
This is ignorant. Yes, it is inconvenient to have DRM installed onto my computer that can cause me to be unable to use a product I paid for when it malfunctions. Yes, it is inconvenient that I am over-paying for horrible compressed quality. Yes, it is inconvenient when certain companies put a rootkit onto my computer or try to prevent me from burning a CD I purchased with my own money onto my computer to store in case anything ever happened to the disc. It's inconvenient paying $20 for a CD only to find that there are only mp3s on it instead of FLAC.
I believe the ethical thing to do in this matter is going to concerts, buying band merch and doing what I can to give the
artists my money. Not the RIAA and other evil companies that sue people for copyright infringement, making tens of thousands of dollars for each lawsuit that the artist never even sees. I believe that I am not being "unethical" by sending my friend a burned copy of a CD when that friend hasn't heard the band yet and I want to introduce it to them. I have spent thousands of dollars on my music collection over the past decade and over 90% of the music I listen to, I never would have even become a fan if I hadn't found them through piracy to check them out.
The ethical thing to do is spread word of the musician and get those concerts sold out. Getting a copy online from someone else so I can try a product out before I buy it is, to me, more ethical than giving the RIAA which repeatedly chokes artists and takes their hard earned money from them any of my own funds. The only way artists would make enough money off of these CDs to actually have a livable income is if all of their CDs sold by the 6+ figures which is unfeasible and unsustainable.
Gabe Newell said:
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
The Escapist : News : Valve's Gabe Newell Says Piracy Is a Service Problem
The bottom line is that if my privacy and the rights to use a product I have purchased as I please are being violated, I am not giving that person my money. It is unethical to exploit people's computers just so you can make more money off of content you didn't even create (talking about you, RIAA).
I have a pretty big LP (vinyl) collection probably 1500 - 1600. Less CDs and even less paid for digital music.
I paid for the vinyl and CDs because I had to, free music was on the FM radio.
People only pay for stuff they can not take for free. I pay to watch films in theaters because it is still a fair (in my opinion) value. I could watch free torrents on the net. No thanks. If theaters start charging $30 for a movie ticket I may change my mind.
Oh god, if theaters started charging $30 per ticket I would suddenly have a massive cam collection on my computer. No way. I have enough beef with $12 a ticket...
The recording industry brought part of this upon themselves. CDs cost next to nothing to press out. The album art, liner notes and even quailty of the music (analog to compressed digital) went down. Consumers got a lot less, and the labels jacked the prices way up.
Once they started marketing the lower quality, compressed digital, put that out,
the jeanie was out of the bottle.
Digital is over priced. Why is Apple stock at $600. Because they gauge music providers like vampires sucking 30% off the top. They could charge 5% and still make a killing. A song download should be 25- 30 cents max.
It isn't just that, though. I remember one interview I read by a band in which they explained that they only make 30% profit off of CDs. That's right, for every $20 CD you buy the "starving artist" only gets $6. What many artists are doing now is putting up their CDs on their own sites with "choose your price" or $5. It's a much better way of getting CDs because the consumer doesn't feel ripped off AND the artist makes well deserved money. When bands do this I do a "choose your own price" of $15.
Article said:
On a personal level, I have witnessed the impoverishment of many critically acclaimed but marginally commercial artists. In particular, two dear friends: Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse) and Vic Chesnutt. Both of these artists, despite growing global popularity, saw their total incomes fall in the last decade. There is no other explanation except for the fact that “fans” made the unethical choice to take their music without compensating these artists.
That's quite a jump in assumption there. There are literally thousands of factors that come into play here. So many things have changed over the past decade regarding business, music, everything in general. We had an economic crash here in America. So a couple of his friends lose money and suddenly he assumes piracy is the only thing that's changed? No, it hasn't. People have been "pirating" since before the internet existed. The author of the article brings up that only the top 1% of musicians actually make money off of concerts and tours. This reminds me of the rest of the political climate in America. EVERYONE is suffering. Do you think the artists are unique or special in this regard?
You find a way to adapt and make money in different ways. If selling CDs and renting out major concert venues isn't working, find another way to get your music out there. More small concerts in low key places, selling the CDs yourself and providing a better product than the production companies can, etc. Heck, you could even make money off of youtube ads by uploading your own stuff to youtube. There is a guy I know that does this by writing musical covers of old video game music and he makes $30,000 a year off of his youtube channel. He's not even that well known.
I have more to say but I figure my post is long enough.
for now. I'll address other stuff later.
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