I don't have any.

Do you?

what would aerosmif do?

People use iTunes and other programs to buy songs for a dollar which never made sense to me since you have the entire interwebs that gives it to you for free. I will support an artist by going to their shows, maybe even buying a shirt, but otherwise, downloading music is fair game.

hey do you have any 'weed'?

I have qualms like Jong has bombs

Good thing we have you around to define what's fair game for us

If I really want the music, I'll buy the cd. Otherwise, I download for free.

I can't ever seeing a reason why I would pay to download music. It's the same reason I don't buy newspapers. If I can get it for free off the Internet, why pay?

Exactly. And I don't see why it's a crime. If such a large majority of people do it, then how is it a crime? How does it constitute a danger to society? It doesn't. . . . .record companies and movie studios are just pissed off that they don't get that revenue. I mean instead of going home with $40 million off a huge hit, they only go home with $20 million. What a shame!!!111

my mind's boner is getting a blowjob right now

Seriously though,

I get depressed when fine people like Bruce Brodeen of Not Lame email me and tell me they aren't putting out records anymore because they can't even give them away.

I get depressed when Parasol records tell me they have to cancel their consignment distribution for most of their small indie labels because no one's buying anything anymore and they can't even afford the postage to send the stuff back.

I get depressed when mom and pop record stores like Val's Halla consider closing down completely because too many people are buying what little music they are buying at the local Best Buy for $6.99 instead of buying it for a little bit more at a much more well-informed and cooler source.

And I get depressed when I have to consider going completely cd-less in the next calendar year because I'm having the same problems as everyone else.

Sign of the times, I guess, but still.

I'm not going to pretend I'm on some high horse here. I have access to a lot more music because of the internet, and it did change my buying habits. However, recently I've trying my damnedest to still buy 3-5 records a week because I want to do a small part to keep the places I love in business.

Uhm, maybe because you're taking something without the owner's consent. I don't lecture people as to what they should do or shouldn't do, but I'm pretty shocked at the rationalization that goes on in threads like this. Its stealing, nothing more nothing less. Intellectual property is still property. You don't have the right to take it without the owner's consent. That's why its a crime.

If I couldn't download music, I wouldn't buy nearly as much as I do. Simple as that.

If I had never had access to downloading music for free off the Internet, I'd still be only listening to whatever was played on the crappy rock radio station here.

Thanks to programs like SoulSeek, I can easly look into and check out any artist my friend is raving about, I read about in Filter, or see advertisements for. If anything, free downloading is ensuring that I spend my money on artists and albums that are worth it. Otherwise, I might have bought something like the last Yeah Yeah Yeahs disc, listened to it, then kicked myself afterwards for throwing that money down the drain.



I'd have to assume that the people who don't buy any music at all are the MTV-watching, frat boy no-taste crowd who would have predominately shopped at places like Best Buy in the first place. I can't see how free downloading is responsible for independent record stores closing down.

Why would you assume this? We ran a poll on hipinion a while ago and something like 80% of the hipsters on there bought no music whatsoever.

I can't imagine calling yourself a music fan and not purchasing any cd's or dvd's.

You're a college kid with little to no income. Would you spend the little money you made working your shitty part time job on cds, if you could just get a burn or download of it? Of course not.

Musicians can make money doing concerts and gigs. THe mom and pop stores can make bank by selling merchandise. There are still other lucrative revenue streams.

This would be my qualms like Jong has bombs thing.

Billy's 100% correct. I know that as a professing religious-type person and a person who believes himself striving toward personal integrity, I should always acknowledge this to myself. But as a dude who loves finding out about new music even MORE than those things, sometimes I skirt and obfuscate.

Usually I only download for mixes. But that's still downloading.

I don't post at hipinion that much but I have noticed more than a few of their posters say that they hadn't bought any music in several years. The idea is pretty foreign to me. They are younger on average than most of our posters and were raised with this being an accepted way of doing things. Its that attitude that I think is widespread among younger people that made me realize all that stuff FastnBulbous used to spew about the availability of free downloads being helpful to the majors is pure crap. Sure, there are many people including ones here that use it as a freeview before buying...but I'd guess that most of the young people use it more to avoid paying for music.

You are being a little naive here. The mom and pop stores are going out of business; it's been a trend for a while now. What merchandise would they be selling that would cover their overhead and replace the declining cd sales?

There are a lot of great, very knowledgable music people in the business who run smaller indie labels (like Not Lame) and distribution companies, who have made a modest living at music and are now forced to consider doing something else completely because they can no longer make a living. At the very least, that's a shame. It's not like everyone who runs a label or distribution network is some mogul making millions of dollars.

As for buying a CD at a mom and pop shop for $14.99 or a Best Buy / Circuit City for $9.99; i will goto best buy / circuit city 100% of the time.

or get entire albums for free from sendspace, etc.

curently d/ling new jim jones.

You are exactly right. I teach guitar to someone who's in her late teens/early twenties and she claims none of her friends/peer group have bought music the last two or three years.

The majors are not going to be the ones hurt by this in the long run though, because there are other ways that they can make money (DVD sales are still on the rise). The small independent record labels and distributors would be more affected by this because they don't have other ways to make money.

They could take second jobs as dishwashers too I suppose. Not all musicians want to spend their lives on the road and they shouldn't have to just because people can download their music without their consent very easily.

But more to the point, its irrelevant that there are other revenue streams. You don't have the right to take something that isn't yours without the owner's consent. That's how the capitalist system works.

Yep. And I could shoplift candy from CVS because they still sell soap.

And eventually, you will get what we pay for: no alternative but a pock-faced teenager who knows nothing about music pointing out the disc racks, instead of a guy you can actually get to know, relate to, discuss music with and get rec's from.

To think that the latter has no value compared with the former is pretty short-sighted. I usually find the disparity in price between the two places to be probably 2-3 dollars on average. To me, it's worth it to pay the extra money.