Lulz

Hillarious.

I've heard so many people on forums saying

"I'm an amateur musician, and because of piracy I make no money. I might have to pack it in!"

Do these people not realise that amateur musicans and most indie bands have NEVER EVER made any money. 10 years ago these band simply had no market to reach. Pratically every sale they ever get they simply wouldn't have got back then, and the downloaded copies don't reflect a lost sale either.

You simply plug along, doing it for the love of the music or entertaining, and eventually, if you're REALLY good, you'll suddenly have money coming out of your arse.

A freind of mine is in a band: They played for years for nothing, practicing practically every day. Eventually they did get signed, and have done tours in the UK and the US, and other places, and they STILL haven't made any real money by the time you take all the studio time etc. out of it. Looks like some time this year they'll go into the black, and suddenly have 100's of thousands of pounds.

That's just the way it goes, and it always has.

Hopefully these small bands will realise it's the LABELS, PRODUCERS, STUDIOS etc. who are ripping them off, not piracy.

Re: Re: Theft

"Theft is when I take something from you. That implies that you don't have it anymore."

Correct. In this case the 'something' is potential sales. I am in the market of selling my music to people; if you give my music to people for free, you are lowering the probability that people will give me money. THAT is what you are stealing from me. Sure someone might be 'honest' and buy my CD after downloading it and that's great, however it is very likely that the majority wont as they have it already, and if they were honest, why are they on illegal download sites in the first place?. Of course we are talking 'ifs' and 'maybes', however that is what selling is about and it's why the placements of adverts and shops are such big business. It increases the probability of sales. Your argument is similar to that it's ok to take down gig posters or remove flyers from clubs because the person marketing the gig has lost nothing by you doing this. This is simply not the case as the promoter would suffer in lower attendance as a direct result. Smaller promoters might go out of business. Larger ones might be able to absorb the loss. Conversely downloading harms small artists more than big ones, however big artists have to start somewhere.

At the end of the day nobody asks the permission or artists to give away their music. If they did, that would be a different story entirely.

"And what are the means please?"

You buy a physical object called a 'CD' or you pay for a download. There is also nothing stopping you sending money direct to the artists (we like that one particularly). Money for T-Shirts and gig tickets are also always appreciated. There is an argument in that the more people who hear music are more likely to attend live shows regardless of how they obtained that music, however it's debatable and there are issues with physical location. There is also a psychological concept where people attribute more value to things depending on how difficult they were to obtain, meaning they treat 'free' music as throwaway and worthless.

I would have no problem with people downloading if they bought things however the problem is in a great number of cases they don't because they already have it. This takes us back to previews - you see a film trailer for example, you decide you want to pay to see the film. You hear a music preview, or (almost) the full track on the radio, you decide you want to buy it. People seem to think they have a right to take the entire work for a period of time to decide if they want to give the artist money. How many of them delete those albums they decide are not worth paying for?