from what I can tell, the central premise of this article is
Many people were more happy to spend time searching for new music on the Net and compiling their own collections - a service previously performed by recording companies - than they were simply buying the goods the industry selected and promoted by the record labels.
This I would argue is fundamentally incorrect. People use file sharing to download music that they are already aware of, and specifically, the more aware they are of it, the more they download it. So they are still very much 'buying the goods the industry selected'. But, in this case, they are stealing, not buying.
Slashdot Mirror
from what I can tell, the central premise of this article is
Many people were more happy to spend time searching for new music on the Net and compiling their own collections - a service previously performed by recording companies - than they were simply buying the goods the industry selected and promoted by the record labels.
This I would argue is fundamentally incorrect. People use file sharing to download music that they are already aware of, and specifically, the more aware they are of it, the more they download it. So they are still very much 'buying the goods the industry selected'. But, in this case, they are stealing, not buying.