Challenging Music Downloading Myths

The BBC is reporting on a study by digital music research firm The Leading Question, which found that people who download music from peer to peer networks paid for four and a half times more music than regular music fans. Also that most of these people "are extremely enthusiastic about paid-for services, as long as they are suitably compelling." What is nice is that the BPI welcomed the findings that not all file sharers are actually evil... they still pledged to carry on the 'carrot and stick' approach though.

Comments

Common knowledge.

[Poromenos1]

This is something everyone knows, yet the RIAA still hasn't gotten wind of. Users would gladly pay for songs if they were sufficiently cheap and instantly available. Look at iTunes.

Re:Common knowledge.

[goldspider]

"Look at iTunes."

Indeed. Yet people still down^H^H^H^Hfreeload. Care to speculate why?

Seriously, with quality services such as iTunes out there, what legitimate reasons do people have to download mass quantities of music they haven't paid for?

Re:Common knowledge.

[KDan]

The Register story also points out that although they spend more on song downloads, that's still less than they used to spend on CDs - so the RIAA still loses out.

Please note: I'm not arguing that the RIAA doesn't deserve to lose out. The whole music distribution system (incl. most legal download sites, imho) is one big rip-off and should go down as soon as possible, to become a faded memory of the 19th century.

Daniel

Re:Common knowledge.

[Phisbut]

Seriously, with quality services such as iTunes out there, what legitimate reasons do people have to download mass quantities of music they haven't paid for?

Because not every bit of music is available with iTunes... If you're looking for music from American artists, then you'll probably find it there, but don't try finding more "local" music or you'll be deceived.

What I truly hate about iTunes though is that they actually have the music I want, but it's only available on their German store, or on their British store, or even sometimes on their US store, but not on the Canadian store, which I am required to use because I live in Canada (global market my ass).

They have the file I want to pay for, but they won't let me pay for it, so guess what? I'm gonna figure out another way to get it, and that other way might not involve payment.

Re:Common knowledge.

[JFitzsimmons]

For me: DRM. If I'm going to be paying someone for music, I want it in basically the same flexibility that I would get off a CD. Lossless and with the ability to exercise my fair use. ITMS is completely useless to me if I can't transfer the songs to my portable. And no, there's no way I'm wasting my money on an ipod just so I can carry my DRM tunes around when I already have a perfectly functional portable that I can fill with ripped vorbis or downloaded MP3.

Re:Common knowledge.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Lack of choice. Yes, even your beloved iTunes stocks a trivial amount of music.
2. Overcharging. When the cost of downloading a CDs worth of tracks isn't almost the same as buying a physical CD (and unecumbered by DRM) get back to me.

Re:Common knowledge.

[tomstdenis]

Answer, they don't run windows or macos, don't own an ipod, don't care to run their software, etc, yada, etc.

Though to be fair of the friends I have who were mass mp3 "pirates" [arr, avast ye matey!] in last decade or so they're less so [if stopped completely] now.

It's cool when you're a teen and you wanna download everything and anything. For myself, I was part of the generation that grew up with mod/s3m/it/xm tracks and then this "net thing" hit us. So for us it was all new, fresh, cool, etc.

I think most kids grow out of it once they get a good salary and can afford 20$ for a cd...

Tom

Re:Common knowledge.

[MountainMan101]

What this article is saying is that whilst there are some who download all their music, and some who buy all their music. The *majority* of downloaders are in the middle and buy some and download some. They on average buy 4.5 times the amount that people who buy only would spend.

The upshot is make music cheaper, $0.99 in the US but iTunes is 99p in the UK about $1.7. Without CD and distribution costs + supplier profit, straight to web service should make music cheaper. People are paying for 1 song at $0.99 and downloading 4 others = effectively reducing the cost to $0.20 per song.

Re:Common knowledge.

[SatanicPuppy]

I can only speak for myself, but a lot of times I download songs to see if I want to buy them. Or I download the remaining songs off an album to see if I want to buy the album. Or I download songs off albums I already own because I'm too lazy to go get the CD and rip it.

iTunes is good, but sometimes I look at songs and think, "This isn't a one dollar song". Add to that the fact that downloading the all the MP3s of an album costs the same as buying a physical album, and you see that, a lot of the time, the music available online is too expensive. There is no reason that the cost should be the same.

What they need are better download services, with wider selections, and variable pricing depending on demand. I don't care if the top ten downloads are 1.50 or 1.75, but I don't want to pay 1.00 for something that only me and two other people find appealing.

I also get real sick of being locked into a player. Half those services try to make you use WMP or Realplayer, god I'd rather die. iTunes is only just tolerable.

Re:Common knowledge.

[goldspider]

"When the cost of downloading a CDs worth of tracks isn't almost the same as buying a physical CD (and unecumbered by DRM) get back to me."

When you can buy a CD at a record store and only pay for the songs you want from that particular album, get back to me.

Re:Common knowledge.

[sp3tt]

But, much music is made for ages that do not have good salaries. $20 simply is not reasonable for a CD. Just because people pay for it does not mean it is a good prize.

Re:Common knowledge.

[Linus Torvaalds]

Seriously, with quality services such as iTunes out there, what legitimate reasons do people have to download mass quantities of music they haven't paid for?

Do you have a magical way of knowing whether you'll like music before you hear it? No? So I guess you'll have to hear the music before you buy it. For many people, downloading illegally is the most convenient method of hearing the music before they decide whether or not they are going to buy it.

Re:Common knowledge.

[DenDave]

iTunes is indeed lacking many things. This is not, however Apple's fault. This is because many recording industry folks have yet to license music for download. Often, the contract for producing an album will not allow the recording label to re-sell the product to a third party. The future herein lies in the fact that new artists and music will be iTunes compatible.

As for local music, this will change as apple expands its network of content managers and iTunes will probably end up dealing with the artist directly.

This is perhaps why some albums will never appear in iTunes, the record label wants the boxed cd set to be sold and not the download.

I must mention another alternative, where many good artists are trying something totally different. I am of course talking about Magnatune, where music is not evil. You should really check it out

Re:Common knowledge.

[stlhawkeye]

Except, the tagline here is a complete and utter fabrication.

The BBC is reporting on a study by digital music research firm The Leading Question, which found that people who download music from peer to peer networks paid for four and a half times more music than regular music fans.

This is a lie. This is NOT what they found. They found that these people spend 4 and half times more on legal digital music purchases than non-downloaders. The way this is written, it sounds like the average downloader who spent $50 a year on CDs in 1995 is now spending $200 on music. This is not stated or supported by the article. Study after study after study has conclusively shown a net depressed impact on music sales, especially in Europe, due directly to downloading music illegally.

Also that most of these people "are extremely enthusiastic about paid-for services, as long as they are suitably compelling." What is nice is that the BPI welcomed the findings that not all file sharers are actually evil... they still pledged to carry on the 'carrot and stick' approach though.

No, not all file sharers are evil, nor should those of us who choose to obey the laws have to tolerate failed-from-birth concepts like DRM and copy protection schemes. But for you people to sit here and still insist after all this time that piracy is somehow generating revenue for the music industry is completely stupid. It's not. It's costing them more money than it's making them. You can sit here and recite your tired anecdotes about how you and your friends and everybody you know buys more music because you can sample it.

You are not the people that are costing them money. It's the millions of high schoolers and young college students who are the problem. They have little to no disposable income (college kids especially) and so are downloading to get their music. I don't blame them, I don't even condemn their actions, but I also don't deny that what they're doing is unquestionably illegal and is costing the legal owners of those songs money.

This issue will not be resolved until the Hillary Rosens of the world stop castigating all of the internet for being the thieves she thinks we are (copy infringement is not theft, Hillary, we another law for theft and it's called...er...theft). And it won't be resolved until you self-righteous chest-pounding downloaders here stop defending your activity as some moralistic crusade against the evil content cartels who are determined to brand you as evil just because you have a guilty pleasure for "Dueling Banjos" and won't be caught dead at a Wal*mart at 3:00am buying the soundtrack to Deliverance.

You're both wrong, you're both oversimplifying the situation, and you're both motivated by completely self-serving interests.

I support open source, I support free software, I oppose DRM in general, I oppose anything that limits my ability to exercise the rights, freedoms, and privileges that I enjoy as a law-abiding citizen, especially the legislation of the RIAA's business model. But I don't deny that there are people who match my profile who engage in widespread copyright infringement and then either lie about it, pretend it's not illegal, or defend it with some holier-than-thou diatribe (much like this one) about why it's justified.

It's illegal, you're breaking the law, you're costing them money. Period. And although I don't blame anybody for downloading something illegally, I don't blame the people who are losing money from this activity for trying to put a stop to it. I don't agree with their tactics any more than I agree with the Slashdotters doggedly insisting that nobody is being harmed so what they're doing isn't wrong.

Re:Common knowledge.

[alvinrod]

Is this really such a bad thing? If the various music artists around the world realize that they can get along just fine without the RIAA or big music labels, then the world will be a vastly better place.

As technology becomes more widespread and digital music distribution becomes the norm rather than the exception, there's no reason why all the major record companies can't disappear. As an artist, you would no longer need a big company to make all the CDs, and you would get more profit from your songs without a greedy middle-man skimming off the top all of the time.

Bands wouldn't need to spend large amounts of money on studio time to release and album because with a new distribution model they could just release single after single, which is how a lot of online music shoppers purchase their music. Startups could even offer their music for free to get people to listen to them (like some bands are doing now) and pay money to see them live.

Right now the music industry is full of middle-men that screw everyone involved. If a company doesn't like a band they don't have to offer them a contract. We're probably missing out on a lot of good music in the mainstream because the music industry doesn't think it would be popular. While there are certainly a lot of albums out there worth the price they ask, there's a lot more that have only a few songs worth listening too on the album. Right now a lot of consumers (those without computers or the ability to use iTunes, Napster, etc.) are forced to pay $15 for what's really $5 worth of music. Then when someone doesn't want to subscribe to this business model called "fuck everyone" the music industry does as much as it can to resist any change.

They're all quite happy having their pockets lined by someone else's hard work and dedication and exploiting the customer base as much as they can bear. This article is also pretty telling about some of the business practices these companies employ. Frankly, they don't give a damn about music, only making money. Here's hoping that the rotten bastards have a steady decline and are remeber only as a horribly oppressive and unsuccessful business model that no one will ever try again.

Re:Common knowledge.

[rainman_bc]

The real upside is that, while downloading free music, the downloader might buck up and pay to go to a concert.

Re:Common knowledge.

[tomstdenis]

And my point is tough shit. You don't need the latest britney spears hit to survive.

A lot of things in life are unfairly priced [one way or another]. Doesn't mean you can just take them when you want.

Whether "piracy == lost sales" or not doesn't really matter. The whole point of a music career is to make a living producing and performing music. If you feel that paying for that is not worth it then you might as well not have professional musicians.

Are the RIAA and labels totally disgraceful? Doesn't matter. That's how they choose to do business.

Know that there are ways of getting good music without going through the RIAA labels. Local bands, indy bands, etc, are out there and if you were soooo concerned with unfair music practices you'd go look for them.

Imagine if all you stupid children spent energy spreading word-of-mouth about indy bands instead of further spreading label music. You'd have a WIDE VARIETY of music to choose from, it wouldn't cost 20$ per CD and you'd be happier.

But no, you're stupid and ignorant and fuel the things you hate the most.

Tom

Re:Common knowledge.

[aslate]

Seriously, with quality services such as iTunes out there, what legitimate reasons do people have to download mass quantities of music they haven't paid for?

Well, i can't for a start. No credit card. The teenagers that are often the ones who have large collections of pirated music either can't afford or access it. If i had a job and earnt £20,000 per year, perhaps a £10+ CD would seem reasonable, but my Summer job of £700 won't stretch to that extortionate a price.

Re:Common knowledge.

[el_womble]

This is a very good point. Not everyone can pay for music on iTMS. Kids are at the mercy of their parents buying them vouchers (The UK doesn't have these in stores) and not everyone wants to have a credit card - I sure as hell don't.

And you're right, there isn't enough choice with formats - even real life stores allow for choice of media - they have vinyl sections, cd, even tape and mini-disk. Why can't there be a lossless store for enthusiasts? - I'd really like to see this happen. They have an audiobook store and podcasts, why not lossless?

As for DRM... the RIAA dropped a bollock with CDs. Somebody had to be first into the digital media market and given the technology at the time it was hardly suprising that they decided to go with additional quality rather than copy protection - given the chance again I have no doubt they would put copy protection on vinyl, tape and CD, they just didn't have the technology at the time. But its not as if DRM, particularly Fairplay, is hard to crack, its there to make sharing songs more trouble than its worth.

As for iTMS locking you into iPod, well thats the point isn't it? You pay less money for a 'better' MP3 player that supports OGG/Vorbis but can't use it with the most popular online store - leaving piracy as the easiest option. The reason the better portables arn't selling as well is because they are more difficult to use for street consumers - its a package thing. Don't like the package? Don't buy the iPod... is that starting to sound weak to anyone else?

Re:Common knowledge.

[Linus Torvaalds]

How is downloading music to "test-drive" it any different?

Copyright isn't property and downloading it doesn't take it away from anybody.

If you are going to download illegal music files, at least call it what it really is.... theft

Copyright infringement isn't theft, and anybody who persists in saying that it is is either an idiot or a troll. Dowling vs US, 1985, even the Supreme Court says that it isn't theft. Or try looking in a dictionary, they generally say something along the lines of "the object must be moved, however slightly, from it's original position", or a definition involving taking something, which does not occur in copyright infringement.

These arguments have come up many, many times, and nobody has ever put across a convincing argument as to why I should believe some random stranger on Slashdot about what is and isn't theft above and beyond the dictionary and the Supreme Court.

Re:Common knowledge.

[InvalidError]

The reason why CDs are 70mins is to fit the whole of Beethoven's 7th or 9th symphony... I wonder if any download service is offering it as a single track at the regular track price. (Yeah, I know, they most likely give each movement its own track.)

Re:Common knowledge.

[shark72]

"Seriously, with quality services such as iTunes out there, what legitimate reasons do people have to download mass quantities of music they haven't paid for?"

A common excuse around here is that a buck is still too high. It commonly goes like this: "if only the record companies would sell those tracks for $0.75 or $0.50, I'd buy them!" This is often accompanied by a claim that Apple and or the record labels "just don't get it," despite the fact that the iTMS has been a fantastically wild success by any measure.

One thing I'm not sure about is whether the "they just don't get that it's wrong to sell a track for a buck" crowd really is saying that because they really can't afford a buck, or if it's a nice reason to allow them to comfortably continue their pirating ways.

Re:Common knowledge.

[Ulven]

If you want to give things their proper names, at least get it right. It's copyright infringement.

And would you buy a car without taking it for a test drive first?

Granted, being able to try something before you buy it isn't that common. After all, when was the last time you were able to try a fridge before buying it? But then again, if you decide that the fridge you just bought isn't good enough, you can take it back.

A different example: Books. I don't think I've ever bought a book without reading at least a few pages first.

With music you can't try it first, and you can't return it afterward. Is that fair?

Re:Common knowledge.

[Kirth]

Because not every bit of music is available with iTunes...

And because iTunes isn't available in all countries? And because I have a very strict criterion for an online-music-shop, which wants to sell me something:

- No DRM at all. Pure MP3.

Do that, offer a broad bandwidth of different kinds of music and sell me these, and I'll be a buyer. But if you're fucking around with different reseller-rights for every country, and DRM, then you're doomed.

Re:Common knowledge.

[Intron]

Why would you shop at a grocery store that sells food you don't like? Would you buy a peach if you were also required to buy a sack of dried beans, a muffin and a tin of Ovaltine?

Re:Common knowledge.

[Stone Cold Troll]

Sorry to see that you got modded down, but I too lament the passing of the album era. While we generally consider the artistic unit in music to be the song, in many cases the album itself is also an artistic creation.

The obvious example is the concept album - imagine a world in which Pink Floyd's The Wall (or the Who's Tommy, or Rush's 2112, or Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime)existed only as a collection of individual tracks distributed independently of each other. While the songs from these albums certainly are capable of standing alone, their inclusion in albums of conceptually related material gives them additional meaning, and adds context that allows them collectively, as an album, to be greater than than the sum of the individual parts.

Even ignoring concept albums for the moment, track order can have a significant effect on the mood of an album, and add continuity that otherwise would be lacking. Try taking a familiar album and playing it in shuffle mode sometime - the songs are still familiar, but it feels completely different.

Re:Common knowledge.

[Hungry Student]

He's the only person to decide if its fair or not - he's the consumer.

This is the main problem, too many customers of iTunes and regular music shops don't see DRM and rip-off pricing as factors, so they happily buy their £17 Britney Spears album and toddle off home. The only way anything will ever change is a mass revolt on the part of consumers. This is what happened in file-sharing and, instead of using market forces and conventional supply and demand to redress the balance, the RIAA went to the courts.

The only person who can decide value is the consumer, it is an entirely subjective measure. Therefore, the only person to decide whether a store's return policy or music's method of consumption is "fair" is the consumer. If they don't percieve it to be fair, they withdraw their custom. It is because the majority of consumers apathetically accept DRM restrictions and record company pricing that it has continued for so long.

If there were a mass revolt against iTunes' DRM, the situation would change or the record companies would lose their customers. Not even the record industry can survive without customers.

Re:Common knowledge.

[DavidTC]

My requirements are:

No DRM at all. Lossless encoding, perferable FLAC, but I can convert. Full albums.

I'd like album covers and other stuff you get with CDs, but that's optional.

I have yet to find anyone who has that. (Beside the quasi-legal Russian one.)

That's what I get with the CD, and I refuse to pay for anything less unless the price is much less, too.

I'd also like the ability to try out songs. (Yes, with DRM and lossy encoding, I'm not crazy.) And to purchase a song or two, and then 'upgrade' to the album at a discount. But those are absurd pie-in-the-sky concepts when the music industry can't even get the basics right.

Re:Common knowledge.

[Vadim Makarov]

It was reportedly to fit the slowest performances of Beethoven's 9th symphony.

Interestingly I have a recording of Shostakovich' 7th symphony by the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky (a very strong performance by the way), and it's exactly 75 minutes long.

Re:Common knowledge.

[krakelohm]

Ya know, this is really startin to piss me off. If you do not like *legally* downloading the music, then buy the damn cd. Just because something is not setup to your liking does not make it ok to steal. Hell I don't like stopping at all those red lights everyday, but I know if I don't stop there will be hell to pay.
As adults in whatever country we reside, we know that we have a set of rules that we live by. I can only talk for America here, but if there is a rule/regulation / ordinance that is unfair, and you are in the majority, you can change it. No it is not easy, that's the point. Fight for your rights.

OK, sorry rant is done.

Re:Common knowledge.

[shark72]

The vagaries of colloquial English often are at odds with the more analytical, black/white approach of the typical Slashdotter.

While both sides can be argued, I think one would be tilting at windmills to stop the public at large from using "steal" and "theft" and its variants in colloquial, non-literal form. Sadly, we will continue to use phrases like "theft of service" (vis. cable TV), "stealing your thunder," "stolen kisses," "steal first base," and so on.

Just look at all the "I don't have a boat and an eyepatch, so I can't possibly be a pirate" posts to see that Slashdot is not a very homonym- or colloquialism-friendly place. Those of us who revel in colorful use of the English language may indeed be called idiots or trolls (to use your words) by the Slashdot crowd, but that's okay: my guess is that O'Reilly manuals are more the norm around here than the great works of literature.

Re:Common knowledge.

[AuMatar]

Legit reasons?

1)I refuse to use a DRMed service. Ever.
2)$1 per song is still too expensive to use as a sampling service. I tend to download 5 or 6 songs by an artist to see if I like him, trying a new artist is not worth $5-$6
3)I refuse to use a time limited service. Rhapsody/Napster/whatever would be fine except that they don't have full selection, and if I decide to stop paying I lose the music I already acquired.
4)Not available on Linux. Pretty much a deal stopper there.

eMusic used to have the right idea when they had the unlimited access- pay $10 (or $20, $30, $40, whatever the price needs to be to make it work) a month, grab whatever you want in mp3 format. I'd happily pay for that with decent selection (hell, I payed for emusic like that without decent selection). I'm not going to pay monthly so someone can raise prices on me without warning and destroy all my music if I don't like the new price.

Re:Common knowledge.

[Svartalf]

You mean the same artists who were:

        * discovered and promoted on worldwide TV by
        * signed a nearly-lifetime contract with
        * and practically sold their souls to ...the RIAA? Those artists?


Well, many of the label signed artists aren't promoted on worldwide TV- Clearchannel's crap radio stations, perhaps, but TV? Most of them don't get airtime on MTV or anywhere else. Only the most popular (Or, rather, the ones they WANT to be the most popular...) end up with that situation.

Nearly lifetime contracts don't happen, but they do sign untenable contracts- typically 10 or so albums over 10-20 years time with the verbiage that even if the band implodes, loses members via various means of attrition, they can't produce anything until the label accepts and produces the 10 albums or they pay back all the money given to them under the contract. Might as well be nearly-lifetime contracts, but they're not really.

Oh, and it's not the RIAA that these artists signed their souls away to- it's to the labels that RIAA represents in the media and courts.

Besides, I'm much more keen on things like RenRadio (http://www.renradio.com) where the people are all independents; and the performances have music in my not so humble opinion, instead of "music" (Read: CRAP...) like the labels oh so often parade around as Music. I've little interests in their crap and if I can manage to help keep this sort of thing going, I will do everything that I can including subsidizing the performers directly by way of helping them set up, buying gear, etc.

Re:Common knowledge.

[maxpublic]

A lot of things in life are unfairly priced [one way or another]. Doesn't mean you can just take them when you want.

While that's a grand thought it's pretty damned apparent that it doesn't reflect reality. Not in any way, shape, or form, not when it comes to downloadable music (and since that's what we're talking about here, don't even bother bringing any strawmen to the dance).

Fact is, copyright violation for music is still on the rise despite all the efforts of the government and the RIAA to stop it. The penalties if you get caught continue to increase but these fear tactics haven't made a noticeable dent in the activity; last month the U.S. reached the point where 70% of all people with internet accounts at least 'sometimes' engaged in acts of online "piracy". This isn't an activity restricted to certain age brackets (e.g., college kids) or income levels.

Economics 101: if a big chunk of the populace is actively engaged in the black market despite the risks, then something is seriously wrong with the model which spawned the black market in the first place. If the majority of the people who have access to the black market actually use it then your model isn't just flawed, it's fucked up beyond repair.

Bad economic models encourage otherwise law-abiding citizens to break the law in order to obtain what they want. It doesn't matter a good goddamn whether you think it's right or ethical; what you *think* doesn't matter for shit. The only thing that matters here is identifying the cause of the behavior and working to eliminate it, replacing the broken economic model with one that works well enough to at least partially satisfy everyone concerned.

It's pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain what that new model would be: cheap high-quality mp3s, no DRM, preferably no obstructionist middle man between the band and buyer. It doesn't take a fucking rocket science to figure out that if the latest Britney CD was sold online at $0.50/track in a 320/44 mp3 that it'd sell like hotcakes - especially if the buyer knew that 90% of the profit were going straight to Britney herself.

Are the RIAA and labels totally disgraceful? Doesn't matter. That's how they choose to do business.

It does matter. To say anything else is just plain ignorance. Economics 101 again, see above.

Imagine if all you stupid children spent energy spreading word-of-mouth about indy bands instead of further spreading label music.

I see. You're one of those egotistical college fucks who thinks he's somehow superior to everyone else because he hates Britney but waxes lyrical about some shitty garage band. Grow the fuck up, junior; being a 'rebel without a clue' doesn't make you cool, and never will.

But no, you're stupid and ignorant and fuel the things you hate the most.

Count yourself in among the ranks of "stupid and ignorant", not to mention "arrogant". Try wrapping that tiny brain of yours around some basic economic theory before spouting off on the topic again, because it's clear you don't have the first fucking clue what you're ranting about.

Max

Re:Common knowledge.

[kurzweilfreak]

The answer is when people found they could get the shit for free and needed to find a way to justify their unethical behavior: easy, just complain that music isn't worth it anymore. I still don't understand why people are complaining that CDs are overpriced because they don't think the music is worth it. If the you think the music sucks, why the fuck are you buying the CD in the first place, or even downloading it for that matter? Buy from the artists you enjoy. If people really gave a damn about the music they liked as much as they profess to, they should be happy to pay for those albums. I don't think even $15 is overpriced for a great artist that I enjoy, but that's just my opinion. Cue the arguments about teenagers with low allowances

And I also don't understand where this mythic $20 CD price across the board comes from. I can't remember paying more than $11-15 for a CD, with the exception of the $19-20 a few of my recent Ayreon purchases were, and those were two-disc albums with cover art and extras.

People don't give a fuck about their music as much as they say they do, they just want some cheap background noise.

Re:Common knowledge.

[milkman_matt]

Oh I absolutely agree with you, and you won't be hearing me pulling out the 'low allowance' argument, I found ways to buy music with mine, they can make due with theirs. I also agree with the argument of "Buy from the artists you enjoy" which I've been doing all along, why would you get anything else? The $20 CD price is available at most Virgin Megastores and Sam Goody stores in southern California, it's ridiculous, and I'm shocked that these places are still in business. I myself stick to the cheaper stores who push somewhat reasonable prices. I agree with your $11-$15 mark, if they were all this price I wouldn't complain, but I still think $15 may be slightly high, but not by much. Then again, I guess that just means I value my music at under $15, whereas others value it to a point where they would be willing to pay $20 for a CD of a band that they like. I don't think we'll ever have a community viewing this the same way. Everyone applauded Universal for dropping their CD prices to $10, but as soon as they're all $10, people will be saying they should only be $5... some people will be impossible to please on this front..

Sadly,

[BlackCobra43]

recording companies around the globe will likely ignore this piece of common sense and prefer to continue their tagline of "all pirates are evil and they steal millions from us". I wish I was just being cynical, but at this point the stubborness of the *IAA to fight pirates is really disheartening.

I'm all about legal alternatives...

[garcia]

Rather than taking legal action against downloaders, the music industry needs to entice them to use legal alternatives, the report said.

By chasing down people for using P2P they just cement my opinion that we should be downloading free music via legal alternatives like etree, dimeadozen, etc.

I just can't imagine why people would be enticed to further support the RIAA's actions rather than dropping support for them all together.

It's the sad nature of the public. They love to be abused.

Re:I'm all about legal alternatives...

[goldspider]

"It's the sad nature of the public. They love to be abused."

It's even worse than that; they simply don't care.

The world is a good place as long as they can get their Top 40 fix. Finding quality alternatives to major-label music is just too much work. The RIAA knows they can walk all over these people, and so they do.

It's just a shame when people who DO care are impacted.

Downloading isn't evil at all.

[Captain Scurvy]

I know it's illegal and that it can possibly hurt artists, but if it wasn't for downloading music illegally, I would have never bothered listening to Michael Buble, would have never bought two tickets to his show, and would have never spent over $200 on merchandise afterwards. So there's a good side to it as well that isn't always as obvious.

Re:Downloading isn't evil at all.

[zr-rifle]

You spent $200 in Buble' merchandise???
 
If this isn't an epitome of evilness, I don't know what else could be...

Re:Downloading isn't evil at all.

[Captain Scurvy]

"You spent $200 in Buble' merchandise???"

It was my girlfriend's birthday. No, seriously, I have a girlfriend. Hey, I'm not kidding.

Stop looking at me like that.

Re:Downloading isn't evil at all.

[RedSteve]

unfortunately, since the labels don't see any of the ticket or merchandise money -- only money from the sales of the albums -- they couldn't care less about anything from your post after "downloading music illegally".

Re:Downloading isn't evil at all.

[jellomizer]

The music indrustry doesn't want you to listen to different music they want you to listen to their popular music that you know from the radio. Because then they can mass produce the CD's, saving a lot in manufacturing costs, and sell them at a much higher price, because they are popular. The recording companies dont want you spending money on show tickets, and merchandise because the artest gets a bigger cut of the action, and not them. If everyone had a different favorate musicain the recording indrustry couldn't make much money because they will have to many products with the overhead involved. That is why Internet download are dangerious because it makes people aware of different music.

Re:Downloading isn't evil at all.

[CaptainZapp]

That is why Internet download are dangerious because it makes people aware of different music.

I don't think that this is the primary reason, why the cartelists so much hate the internet. The reason is control or loss thereof. Prior to the internet you had virtually no chance in hell to get your music published, unless you agreed to a contract, which makes slavery actually look like the prefered choice. The Internet can change all that. Everybody with a [insert favorite instrument], a cheap microphone and a recording device can be a publisher now and circumvent the established distribution channels. If anybody listens to such music is a whole other question, of course.

If the music industry doesn't change their business model from a mere media distribution model (media in my book include DRMd files) to a value adder (promotion, marketing, infrastructure, artist scouts, etc) and continues their rather odd "criminalize-thy-customer" business model my prediction is that 10 years from now they are deader then Jimmy Hoffa.

Re:Downloading isn't evil at all.

[TopShelf]

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

Product differentiation is the key to high profit margins, and corporations know this. You don't see one kind of Campbell's soup on the store shelves, do you? No, because people will pay more for their favorite kind of soup (spicy gristle w/salted rinds, yum!) rather than a simple old standard. There's plenty of reason to dislike the recording industry, but your argument is misguided here...

Re:Downloading isn't evil at all.

[tclark]

Recording companies don't care about consumers; they're scared as hell that the artists will decide that they don't need record companies any more. The artists will quit signing with them, or they will insist on better terms.

Recording companies stay in business because they control artists' access to listeners. The Internet is threatening this, and the recording companies are going apeshit over it.

Hands up

[BarryNorton]

I don't know about enthusiasm for paid services (sounds a touch rude... though seriously, I used to use eMusic in the days before it became a nightmare, and have never used iTunes or similar), but I am a downloader who's very enthusiastic about music...

I spend as much money as I can afford on CD and vinyl and am completely unapologetic about downloading leaked pre-releases, deleted releases, music I'd consider buying but only after hearing (RIP John Peel, there are fewer and fewer places to do so), and sometimes just music I've not yet the money or time to buy...

Re:Hands up

[Ruprecht the Monkeyb]

I was with you right up until the last one. Music is a luxury. It's not food, or shelter. You're not going to die if you don't get it. Not having the money to buy something is not an excuse to steal it.

Telling the truth?

[Illix]

I like the way the spokespeople in the article speak entirely as though the recording industry's major problem with filesharing is not that it's illegal, but that it costs them money - probably a more accurate reflection of their sentiments, but certainly not the line the RIAA has been spouting.

I have a quest

[SamSim]

One day I am going to find and buy - or else delete from my hard drive - all the music I have illegally downloaded.

Try before you buy

[spaztech]

It's nice to hear the CD before you pay $20 for one good song and fifteen crap songs. I have never downloaded off of a P2P myself though.. ((smile))

You're wasting your time

[Weaselmancer]

The whole piracy/peer-to-peer argument has been done and done. And no matter how powerful the argument, the industry believes that every single time you download something, they lose a sale. And that's that.

Statistics and studies do not matter to these people. Your desire to kick the tires before you buy doesn't matter either. You got it - you didn't pay for it - we lost money. Of course the reality of it is something totally different, but these organizations have had a stranglehold on their commodity for so long, they're not comfortable with anything less than a stranglehold.

So they fight. And if that means ignoring studies and taking up ridiculous positoins - so be it. We're convinced - but they are never going to be.

Re:You're wasting your time

[garcia]

We're convinced - but they are never going to be.

But we should *not* stand down in the face of their tactics as that's exactly what they are hoping for. We, the educated public, should continue to spread the anti-conglomorate message to those people that might have been swayed by the rhetoric being passed along by the RIAA.

Tell people that there are viable alternatives out there for them to listen to the music they enjoy. There are bands that do support free distribution of their music and *those* are the bands that need to have our continued support.

The more we support bands that do allow us to freely trade their music the more will come along.

Re:You're wasting your time

[openfrog]

And no matter how powerful the argument, the industry believes that every single time you download something, they lose a sale

They are shrewd businesspeople and they know as well as you and I that we will acquire music legally if given the occasion. The Economist has already revealed that their losses has little to do with music download and has helped if anything

What they want to do is to frame the question in such a way that they can promote legislation that will do away with fair use and will strenghten their (the distributors') control of the market.

Re:You're wasting your time

[fermion]

I think there is a lot of oversimplification on all sides. The reality is more complex. For example, the fact that the average person both downloads and purchases music does not mean that the labels make as much as they would if downloading were not available. Of course, the labels do not have a right to profit, but they do have a right to the pursuit of happiness which is often interpreted as the same thing. OTOH, firms do need to a make a suitable profit to operate, and, as much as we whine, most of us have at least one favorite RIAA artist.

To me the real argument is the nature of entertainment. Can entertainment be packaged like a bottle of soda so that the owners are compensated everytime a person drinks that kind of soda. The production and development costs are not really an issue either. If you take a bottle of soda from the market and pay only the actual cost of the product, minus shop profit, that is still stealing. It would be my argument that entertainment cannot be packaged. I can lend my DVD of a movie. I can make a copy of music to tape. I can drive my car down the road and entertain the world with my favorite CD. So where is the happy medium?

And I think this is where the parent was going. The new reality may in fact reduce the profits of the labels, and, if not, require a reworking of the model. It is the nature of humans to want to get stuff with minimal work. It is why we have all this cool technology. So, there is no reason to say the labels are evil for wanting profits and not wanting to work. We all do that. And anything that requires them to make less money or do more work is unacceptable because that is not the desired path. Likewise, the average consumer needs to take responsibility for their desires. Yes, advertising makes us want this stuff, and it is really unfair to make us want stuff we cannot have. But if we do not attribute a fundamental right of the firms to profit, we cannot attribute a fundamental right of the consumer to have lots of stuff.

Spend more not less!

[stuckinarut]

But our concern is that file-sharers' expenditure on music overall is down, a fact borne out by study after study. So we must always spend more on music not less! How dare we as consumers decide to spend less of our disposable income on something other than music.

Bribery

[djfray]

I fail to see the relevance of this. Yes, while some people I know who download a lot of music tend to buy more music than other people, they are still downloading much more than they are buying. A record stolen is a record that the record company, the artist, and all the tricky bastards in between on the cut aren't getting paid for. And they have every right to be pissed about that. If someone buys more real estate than the average person, they shouldn't be turned a blind eye for stealing massively greater amounts of land. Here's a metaphor I'm sure most of you will get: Bill Gates is one of if not the most generous philantropists in the world, but that doesn't stop the Slashdot community from admonishing him for his shifty business practices. No matter what someone does for someone else, it shouldn't justify wronging the other party. Also, besides knowing some people who buy lots of music, and download lots of music, I know a smaller portion of people, who download much more by comparison, who buy significantly less CDs or online downloadable songs

RIAA = bad, downloaders = good

[calvind]

Anyone else think the people who are harming the music industry are the RIAA? People who download music off the Internet (hardcore music lovers) probably take up a majority of the people who spread awareness about music artist's songs.

The real problem

[Ostien]

How about record companies sign bands that are fresh and innovative not the same old crap and perhapse overall record sales and legal downloading revenu will go up.

Credit given where credit's due

[trosenbl]

I don't think we should be really giving BPI (or RIAA when they do) a lot of credit for acknowledging that downloaders aren't all evil. They're making a buttload of cash off people who are getting music electronically. They have ZERO production costs (other than a few kilowatts of electricity), reduced equipment maintinance (costs of maintaining duplicating equipment vs. Apple's servers), and zero shipping costs.

Giving them credit is like patting a child on the head and telling them "good job!" when they eat a cookie.

When they start making real changes, and start understanding the new culture, then I'll be interested.

And yes, I read the article. According to the fifth word of the fifth paragraph, "of"

I've spent loads more since using P2P networks!

[gearmonger]

Of course, most of that expense is on CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, but hey, consumerism is consumerism, right?

More seriously, my wife's and my music purchasing really picked up after we discovered Napster all those years ago. Sampling a couple of songs from an artist often convinces us we want the whole album, and we still really enjoy the permanance of physical media (yes, we rip all our CDs, but I think of the collection of actual media as an aesthetically interesting, if not large, physical backup).

carrots?

[ctnp]

"'...which is why we need to continue our carrot and stick approach to the problem of illegal file-sharing,' he [Philips] said."

  What carrots? All I see are sticks. Are good file-sharers being rewarded at all? Let's see...

  New CD at Best Buy, at a cut-rate price: $12.00

  Paying for an entire CD with 15 songs off of iTunes: $14.85, not including the hidden costs of their DRM.

  It seems all we're getting are sticks and heavier sticks from the recording industry. Yet they think they're being nice by offering to license music for a more expensive price. Fuck them, I'll save my $15 bucks and download free music off archive.org.

Re:carrots?

[Rude Turnip]

"Paying for an entire CD with 15 songs off of iTunes: $14.85,"

If you download the whole album (instead of one track at a time) it's only $10, or about $0.67 per song. There is a well-known tool for removing Apple's (intentionally) weak DRM, so that's barely an issue anymore.

Same Old, Same Old

[Feneric]

It's pretty much a repeat of history. Back when FM radio and analog tape cassette recording was in its infancy, the music industry also cried foul about people recording music from radio shows and claimed it was cutting into their profits.

Studies of that time showed similar results to the one mentioned in the article: people who recorded music from radio also bought a heck of a lot more music than those who didn't. Ultimately radio served as an advertising medium and wasn't hurting sales at all. The music industry eventually made its peace with radio.

We can only hope that eventually the music industry will relearn this old lesson...

Re:Same Old, Same Old

[AeroIllini]

Ultimately radio served as an advertising medium and wasn't hurting sales at all. The music industry eventually made its peace with radio.

We can only hope that eventually the music industry will relearn this old lesson...

No, we really don't want P2P services to turn into the monolithic, streamlined corporate marketing scheme that radio has become. The only reason the RIAA "made peace" with radio is because they effectively took control of it. Only a very tiny fraction of stations are not owned by some corporate monstrosity like ClearChannel, who hand down playlist edicts from on high as if they were carved in stone tablets.

The music industry has truly embraced the Marketing Age, and thus (popular) music has transformed from a pull medium to a push medium. The only records in stores, basically, are the ones you hear on the radio, on TV, and are advertised everywhere; they are the low-risk, high-profit "mass-appeal" products. Once in a while a great musician will become popular, and that will allow him/her/them to overcome their indentured servitude to their recording contract. However, the majority of the "popular" acts are only semi-talented, very attractive people who are being marketed like they're the Second Coming. The internet (P2P), on the other hand, is still a haven for slightly less popular, but vastly more talented, people. I would love to see more record companies on the internet dedicated to artist's rights and proud of the music they underwrite and sell, instead of focusing so much on the business end of things that an artist becomes a "product" instead of a person (I know a few of these exist, but I can't think of any off the top of my head).

Do we really want P2P services, and by extension, the internet, to turn in to radio?

Things never change

[rudy_wayne]

While going through some old magazines, I came across a copy of "Modern Recording" from early 1981.

24 years ago, the recording industry was making the same exact claims that they are making today -- they are losing huge amounts of money due to "piracy". Back in those days, personal computers and the Internet were almost non-existant. CDs didn't exist and the main form of recorded music was the vinyl LP. According to the RIAA back then, the villain was cassette tape recorders. People were borrowing their friends albums and recording them onto cassettes instead of buying their own copy.

So, the RIAA commissioned a study that they hoped to take to Congress as proof that they needed tougher laws to deal with this terrible problem. But a funny thing happened. Their study showed that people who had a good quality cassette deck in their stereo sysytem bought nearly twice as many albums as people who didn't.

Sound familiar?

I question the validity of these findings.

[stlhawkeye]

I'm skeptical of the objectivity of this study. Just as sketpical as I am of the objectivity of the studies paid for the RIAA and their ilk.

I don't download

[gillbates]

I rarely, if ever, download music - legally or not.

Interestingly, I haven't bought a CD for myself in years...

I wonder if the RIAA assumes I'm a pirate because I'm not feeding their monopoly. I wonder if the RIAA is even aware that people like me have stopped buying music because we got sick and tired of being treated like criminals - copy restricted CD's, lawsuits against music fans, etc...

I wonder if it ever occurs to the **AA's that their revenue shortfalls are due more to the manner in which they treat their customers than piracy. Face it - while the average Asian may have a good reason to commit music piracy, the average American is affluent enough that they'd rather buy music than steal it. Yet, most Americans want to know they like something before they buy it. And this is what P2P provided.

I don't use P2P. I don't buy music, either. Wonder how long it will take the likes of the RIAA to figure out the connection between the two...

It's not simple...

[scottsk]

I used to use Napster and some of the others for two things: (1) downloading music that can't be bought, i.e. out-of-print albums, b-sides, etc. and (2) trying music. Back then, I bought numerous CDs after trying music I really liked. Some of these CDs were retail CDs, where I wanted a higher quality sound than a low-grade MP3. Others were b-sides I bought on CD singles off of eBay because I wanted the better sound quality. But I also bought a lot of retail CDs I never would have bought if I had to buy them without hearing them first. So the bottom line for the RIAA is that the P2P effect is not simple: file sharing has caused me to buy music I downloaded, but not always at retail. More music may be sold as a result, but it's not all profit for the RIAA.

The unfortunate part about the new online services is you can't browse the catalogues without first signing up and selling your soul to their DRM. I would love to see if out-of-print music is available on some legal download services, such as out-of-print albums and b-sides, but I doubt there is anything on these services you can't find in Circuit City or the mall, so I don't ever sign up for the DRM.

The one thing no one ever mentions is the CD replacement effect. People who grew up listening to cassettes and LPs in the 70s and 80s got jobs in the 90s and could afford to dump their cassettes and buy CDs. This sort of generational shift in media will never happen again, and the RIAA's sales figures were bloated by people buying albums they already had. The effect is over. Everone now is buying music on CDs from the beginning, and has nothing to replace.

"lost dollars"

[therealking]

But our concern is that file-sharers' expenditure on music overall is down, a fact borne out by study after study. This is probably due to many CDs on iTunes costing $9.99, where a CD in the store is costing $16.99. Also buyers are able to be more selective about thier purchases, since I may only want 1 or 2 songs from an album instead of the whole album.

Just FYI, downloading isn't illegal

[goldspider]

The RIAA doesn't sue people for downloading music. The people they go after are distributing without authorization.

That's a HUGE distinction that I think many Slashdotters tend to ignore in order to make the RIAA appear that much more petty and intrusive.

Nahh i'm evil

[darkmayo]

I download music with no intent of paying for it, I go to live shows make bootlegs and sell them.. after stealing the bands equipment from the back of the van of course... I kick kittens and puppies and beat up old people while selling smack to their grand kids. Britney Spears and all those wonderfully manufactured musicians are going hungry because of me.

I am evil hear me roar.

Buy one song vs buy the whole album

[GozzoMan]

There are a few comments in this thread concerning the point of being able to buy just one song online vs buying the whole album in the stores.

Now, while some interesting points are being made, I can't keep myself from asking: what kind of ultra-pop-hollow-crap music kind are you used to listen to and, worst, paying for, gentlemen??

Here in the beautiful towns of Bluesia, Hard-rockia and Metal Hill, it's commonly known that the single on each album is often the _worst_ song of the album, put together to please the label and casual listeners, while the juice is in the rest of the album.

Personally, if I bought from iTunes or whatever, I would probably buy every and each song from an album, I would _never_ be satisfied with a subset of an album. (Buy only Smoke On The Water and not the whole Machine Head album? Pure blasphemy! ... Pardon the dated but seminal example: SOTW is wonderful but the other songs aren't less spectacular)

When you are to buy a song that you probably know is the only decent song of an album, isn't it a sign that you are supporting the wrong kind of people? (Providing, of course, that you are interested in people able to offer you a whole album that is worth listen to, instead of a few isolated lucky good songs in a desolated shallow sea of nothingness.)

I pointed out this because it seems to me that supporting label-made hollow artistroids is not far away to support the hollow views of their labels, which are the main topic. I mean, if they can sell me shit, they probably realize that they can sell it to me and "protect" it in shitty ways (DRM, evil pirates campaigns and whatnot), since I'm an happy shit-eater... Anyone agrees?

Uh, sorry for rude terms :P

You don't get what you pay for...

[Acoustic]

I recently just downloaded and bought some songs from iTunes that I wanted for a picture slide show I was putting together.

However as I found out, I can't use the iTunes format in MS Photo Story. So then I had to download another program to hack the songs out of iTunes. In the end it would have been much easier to illegally download them. At least then I've got it in a format I can actually use for something.

Just another case of DRM hurting legitimate users.

Re: They are smarter than you think, though

[twifosp]

It's not that they honestly believe that every single time you download something, they lose a sale. They do know better.

But they do need to cry foul, and keep up the appearances that every single download is a crime, and a lost sale. They are using the same strategy of fear mongering that our government is fond of.

The reasons are simple. If they were to let up and say, ok so some music downloads are ok, but we still think we are losing sales, then their entire basis for legislation is thrown out the window.

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm defending them. I think the RIAA, and cooperations like them, are some of the absolute WORST things about this country.

But I can understand why they are keeping up the public relations stint of crying foul. They don't need music fans to believe them. They just need congress to. As soon as they "convince" congress with their "arguements" ($$$,$$$,$$$) they will get more legislation that will introduce more DRM, and possibly even remove the free-use clauses from current law.

They know full well that some bands are discovered soley through the internet. They just don't care. That is a small drop in the bucket compared to the marketing machine that makes acts like Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys sucessfull. They don't need underground marketing when they have pepsi jingles and MTV in the middle of time square.

What I can't figure out is why they pay so much for marketing crap bands when we would be just as happy with zero marketing for good bands. We'll find the music on our own. The RIAA could probably make just as much money if they just gave up. But I hope they don't. I hope they legislate themselves into the grave.

Further proof about how out of touch they are

[bornyesterday]

"But our concern is that file-sharers' expenditure on music overall is down, a fact borne out by study after study."

Stop marketing crappy music then. Even the most mindless drones of modern "culture" are beginning to notice that the SPAM (Shit Posing As Music) that they are being bombarded with all sounds exactly the same, no matter how enticing/slutty (depends on your POV, I suppose) the singer is.

I mean there are only so many ways you can refry the three/four-guys-in-a-'punk'-band, or the boy band, or the solo-female-who-struggled-from-nothing-to-stardom, etc recipes before it all starts to taste the same.

The same holds true even in the less popular genres. I work for my university's radio station as the heavy metal director. Even the "smaller" labels are pushing this same pre-formatted "loud rock" now. And the standard rock (not top-40 though) that we play during the day time is so bland that I spend most of my time listening to the jazz/blues station.

Of course this is true.

[shark72]

I, and most of my peers, have downloaded plenty of illegal music in our day. Now that the P2P services are getting worse and worse, and the legal services are getting more and more enticing, we're making the switch. I, for one, spend at least $30 a month on the iTMS each month. I do this not because I may have downloaded a P2P track here or there, but because I like music. This is not a cause-and-effect relationship.

On the other hand, my relatives over the age of 50, many of whom do not have computers and thus have never used a P2P service, do not buy a lot of music. So, in my little group, our results match those of the survey.

This is a second-order relationship: Younger people buy more music. Younger people tend to be more wired. Younger people who are online and who like music are likely to have used a P2P service at some point. This is the very psychographic that the online music stores are targetting. In other words, of course the generation of younger online music listeners is going to be the first to flock to the legal stores.

Typical Slashdot responses

[brkello]

But really, you guys are full of crap. Sure, you illegally downloaded content that didn't belong to you. Then you went and spent money at a show or bought it. To you, that justifies copyright infringement. But it doesn't mater what you think, it's against the law and it's not really that hard to understand why. You are getting things for free that you should be paying for. If the artist is cool with free downloads, fine, but they aren't.

When you can now go to iTunes and preview all the music you want (well, the first 30 seconds of it), you have no justification for still doing this. I won't argue, the RIAA is evil. They price fix and people should be legally going after that monopoly. But just because some group is using crappy practicies, it doesn't give you the right to break the law.

That being said, I actually don't care if people download music or not. Just don't try to justify that you are doing the right thing. Because you aren't.

A classification of file sharers

[chato]

From Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig: "File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different kinds into four types.

• A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it [...]
• B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it [...] The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.
• C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high [...]
• D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away.

How do these different types of sharing balance out? [...] From the perspective of the law, only type D sharing is clearly legal. From the perspective of economics, only type A sharing is clearly harmful. Type B sharing is illegal but plainly beneficial. Type C sharing is illegal, yet good for society [...]
The "net harm" to the industry as a whole is the amount by which type A sharing exceeds type B."

Professional Musicians.

[hackwrench]

No professional musicians sounds good to me. I want that.

Does nobody own up to just plain downloading?

[tommut]

I always hear the argument from illegal downloaders about "I like to try before I buy". They don't want to waste money on crap, so they download it first, and if they like it, they buy it. While I"m sure that there's some people who actually do that, is this really the norm? How come we don't hear from people who download albums and never replace them with purchased CDs?

I know in the last couple of years, a buddy of mine has obtained over 25 complete downloaded albums, and has not went out and purchased a single one, though they are among his favorite bands. That's roughly $375 that did not go to the record companies or the artist. In this case, somebody is losing money somewhere. I'm sure that this is the more likely scenario than the usual music-lovers-just-want-to-try-it-first voices that I usually hear. I just want to hear some people admit that they download music illegally because they can, it's easy, and it's free. I bet that even if there was an iTunes-like service that contained the same un-DRM'd formats that people illegally download, it wouldn't matter to a lot of people when they could still get it for free.

That's Not What it Means

[waldoj]

"Carrot and stick" refers to putting a carrot at the end of a stick, which is held above the head of a reluctant mule by its passenger. The mule walks forward to get the carrot, which it can never quite reach, at least until it arrives at its destination, when it's given the carrot. "Carrot and stick" means "incentive." It does not mean "alternately rewarding and beating." Anybody who's beaten a mule knows full well that the damned thing will just kick you in the head.

-Waldo Jaquith

why i don't pay for music

[GodGell]

there are several different cases. one case is if someone tells me about a band that i might like. i don't want to waste time and money on buying a cd i'm not even sure i'll like or not. so i download a few mp3s for free. if i don't like them, i won't download any more mp3s - if i do, most likely the recording companies are gonna be happy anyway.
there are bands that i really like yet all (well, most) of the mp3s i have from there are from the net for free. that means no money from me to the recording companies (who cares about them anyway? i like the band, not the record company). in that case i'll go to their concerts where i'll pay much more than i'd pay for a CD and it's usually not a ripoff either as i get drunk and generally feel good - both the fans and the artists are happy. :)
and that way the record companies aren't really involved, the band gets paid and not organizations like the riaa.

so basically if i like the band i'll eventually pay more for their concerts than i'd pay for their cd's. if i don't like a band it's not likely i'll keep downloading their music anyway. all the fuss about it is by the money-grabbing record companies. no real band has ever complained about people having the right to do whatever they want with the music. it's only the record companies who suppose that i'd buy CD's from them if i wouldn't have the music already from the net.
without the record companies life would be much easier for everyone. if bands didn't have to get a record company for cd manufacturing and stuff, they'd get a lot more money for what they do and the consumers/fans wouldn't have to deal with all this bullshit. and of course, the only way to do that is to make a website and sell downloads. no stupid crap like drm or any of that shit limiting the customer - just good old mp3. if people aren't tied down by all this copyright bullshit they won't be leeching stuff just for spite.

I buy all my music

[WillAffleckUW]

or i get it for free at my radio station on radio.yahoo.com (Launch, which doesn't work well with Firefox or Opera ...) when I'm on an XP laptop.

But I've stopped buying from big chains and only buying from the musicians themselves at their shows (they get half the take, instead of 2 cents) or at local indie music stores where they get $1 from the $12 CD price.

my prediction is this situation will continue to get worse as more and more people avoid the price-fixing parasites at the middle tier and reroute from the consumer to the provider (musicians).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Say it's not "stealing" and get karma points

[Linus Torvaalds]

Yes, when you post stuff that is factually correct and pertinent to the topic at hand, you generally get modded up. Welcome to Slashdot. You must be new here.

Re:Common knowledge is hardly ever common.

[Linus Torvaalds]

To back up, "Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud." So, to quote your own case, there are property interests and it's not just "run-of-the-mill theft".

You are misreading that. It does not say that copyright infringement is more than "run-of-the-mill theft". It says that copyright infringement is not "run-of-the-mill theft". I notice you didn't quote the more relevant sentence that preceded your quote:

Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use.

Now, from dictionary.com: Theft: "a criminal taking of the property or services of another without consent."

Property OR services. Check. Without consent. Check.

Take: no check there.

I notice you conveniently ignored the part of my comment and the dictionary definition that pointed out that you have to take something in order to steal.

Magnatune

[falconwolf]

There are other websites that like Magnatune allows free or low cost music downloads. Some of these are:

• Creative Commons
• DMusic
• Opsound
• Internet Archives
• Prelinger Archives'
• Common Content

Also there's Berklee Shares where you can find free music lessons.

Falcon