Buying v downloading music

[Khartoun2004]

Originally Posted by katbeidar

I don't think downloading music or movies or games is stealing. It's sharing. I dunno about others, but I actually go buy the stuff that I like a lot after "utilising" the downloaded version. Cuz in the end, if you like something a lot, you'll want the high quality version with the little booklets that come with it.

It becomes stealing when a person burns the downloaded music/movies/games on CDs and sells it for his own profit.

For once I actually agree with Kate. D/L an MP3 for your own personal use is not stealing. It's like making a mix tape of songs from the radio. As long as a person is not burning them onto Cd's or DVD's and selling them on E-bay they are not breaking any copy right laws.

If the music/ entertainment industry wants to stay in the game then they should have to force there prices down to counter-act p2p file sharing websites and programs. I personally think this was bound to happen with new technological advances. FYE and Sam Goody can no longer afford to sell 12 track CD at $20 a pop now because most people willjust go and D/L the songs they actually like from the cd and not bother with rest. What's the point of spending $20 on a cd that you really only want for 2 songs?

[Mossopp]

D/L an MP3 for your own personal use is not stealing. It's like making a mix tape of songs from the radio. As long as a person is not burning them onto Cd's or DVD's and selling them on E-bay they are not breaking any copy right laws.

Wrong. On two counts:

1) Burning a CD for your own use is illegal. It’s a fact!

2) You may not think that downloading a song for your own use is “stealing”, but it is. Ok, you’re not making any money from it but you’re effectively taking money away from the band/artist who recorded that song in the first place!

Most of the money needed to record a song/album comes directly from the pocket of the band/artist themselves. They only recoup this money through album sales. Therefor if you download the album from the internet and burn it yourself you are effectively taking £10.99 (or whatever a CD costs where you live) right out of the band’s pocket!
You’re probably thinking “so what??”. People see Snoop and 50-Cent and all these mega-rich stars on MTV and think “Who the fuck cares if they don’t get my £10.99? - that’s nothing to them!”. Fair enough. But it’s not just mega-stars who are affected by the current trend of downloading music for free. It’s the smaller, lesser-known bands who are perhaps on small indie labels, that are most affected. A lot of these bands don’t have 2 cents to their name. They need all the financial support they can get! So many bands are forced to break up and go back to their day jobs because of tight-wads who steal their music instead of paying for it.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a band, but I have. It may look like fun and games from the outside but it can be really hard work. The process of writing and recording songs in order to produce an album is a difficult and costly one. If I had suffered through months and months of writing, rehearsing, recording and promoting an album only to end up loosing money because people would rather take my work from me and make it freely available on the net to any cheap bastard who wanted it I would be really, really sickened. Fucking pissed off and sickened!
I agree that CD prices are, in general, too high. I object to walking into HMV and finding them insisting that I fork out £15 for one CD. But I can go to play.com and get that same CD for £8.99 - which a much more realistic price. I don’t object to paying realistic prices.
If we all use these cheaper internet retailers (such as play.com, who I really cannot recommend enough) then stores like HMV will eventually be forced to lower their prices.

Downloading music is not the answer!

[spyretto]

But I don't think copying for personal use is illegal. If the record companies had their way it probably would be. So next time you want to copy a CD for your own use, don't do it, go and pay another 15 bucks for a brand new one

Mossopp you sound worse than Lars Ulrich. Are you affiliated with any record company at all?

[Rachel]

Mossopp, most bands that people would want to download earn A LOT MORE than someone on the average wage earns here in the UK. Why should they? For what?! Singing?!

EDIT: 1,500 post LMAO

[EeZeReal]

See that's the problem with music.....it's all about the money and not about the love of doing it anymore...

Half the indie artists/labels I know of....are just happy to have people d/l their music and enjoy it and put their name out there!...shiiiiiit even they post their own tracks on their forums free for download and are happy in doing so.

[Rachel]

Originally Posted by EeZeReal

See that's the problem with music.....it's all about the money and not about the love of doing it anymore...

Exactly!

We're always reading on here how little Russian artists earn because apparently 95% of all cds sold in Russia are pirate copies - but still there are people in Russia wanting to be singers. Now that's how it should be!

No one should be earning rediculous amounts of money for a talent they were probably born with!

[Khartoun2004]

Mossopp, I see what you're saying and you do make a very good point. However an artist only gets about $1US for every album they sell anyways. So if the artists want to make more money than they should stand up to the record companies and demand lower CD prices.

D/Ling stuff is like a protest. If enough people d/l an album because it's not economically worth buying a CD with 12 tracks on it for $20, maybe the record companies will get the message.

[ypsidan04]

There’s one thing that, especially in the last couple years, has really become a “pet peeve” of mine with regards to music: people downloading music for free on the Internet. Yes, this means you – and if you don’t do this regularly, your friend or sibling or significant other surely does. Heck, even I’ve done it, and why I can say that while still going on to say how it is wrong, I will explain later.

The problem is that downloading music means you get to have it without giving anything back to the artist. They put (hopefully) their heart and soul into that music, as well as a lot of time and money. They may claim they do it for fun or to purge emotions, and that may be true, but the fact is, if they don’t sell many records, they won’t be doing it for very much longer. The whole music business these days is driven by record sales. Those who don’t sell get dropped from labels and fade into oblivion (Ever heard of Audiovent? I’d be pleasantly surprised), and those who because of talent and/or marketing do sell millions, they win awards and are talked about all the time in the media, hence adding to their sales total. So when you download music, whether it’s free or not, you’re hurting their sales total.

If you’re like me, you have a hard time getting through the day without playing some music. Whether it’s while driving, checking email, or while cooking dinner, you just can’t do without it. What I say is that for all the pleasure, serenity, or headbanging that music allows you to experience, you should give up something in return. It doesn’t have to be much, just a symbolic token amount.

Now you’re probably saying “Its stupid to pay when you can get it for free!” That, however, is looking at it from the wrong point of view. First off, you can’t get if for free, without technically doing something wrong. Secondly, if you really like Eminem or Slipknot or Yellowcard that much, you not only shouldn’t mind, you should jump at the chance of shelling out a few bucks to help their careers along. That’s the least you can do for everything they’ve given to you.

So why not buy a CD? “They’re 20 bucks each, after tax! And I’m on a budget!” you say. Well, shop around. I’m not naming names, but one local business has any given CD for probably $18.99, while a different business has the exact same thing for at least $5 less, sometimes $10 less if its on sale. I don’t know why there’s a difference, but there is. So don’t pay $18.99 for a CD. Also think about buying used. I recently bought a used CD for $2.99 at a record store, and it came with a quality guarantee and hasn’t given me a single problem. And you can get real good deals on Ebay as well.

“Downloading off the Internet increases their sales because it gets their name and sound out to the public”. Another excuse which is only half true at best. Many artists do offer free downloads on their official websites, but I’ll eat my hat if the majority of you only download music off artists’ official websites. No, you download off p2p services like Kazaa, Napster, Bittorrent, et al. Those artists who do offer said downloads, doing that most likely has little impact in their sales. Not nearly as much as high radio play, or having a prominent place on a movie soundtrack, or backing up a well-known band at a concert (Breaking Benjamin and Three Days Grace were buried in the middle of my favorites list 9 months ago. Since I saw them back up Evanescence in July, along with hearing them more on the radio, they have both moved into my top 20).

And I don’t know about you, but it personally feels good to have I think 38 official albums, with labels and cover art and booklets, to display and to just know that I have them. Having a bunch of CDR’s with plain jewel cases and magic marker to identify them certainly plays music for you, but just isn’t the same.

Now, yes I have downloaded music for free not from official sites. There are three reasons why this is different from what the majority of people do. One, I actually have 38 official albums, with about another 50 or so on my shopping list. A friend of a friend has thousands upon thousands of MP3’s, and to my knowledge, very few albums. And there are numerous others just like her. Secondly, I download some music because it is not available in stores. This comprises of 2 CDs worth of older Evanescence music (1997-2002) that was recorded before they “made it big” so to speak, as well as a handful of Tatu songs in Russian (Belochka, NVNB, Ochkami, Robot). If these things were available somewhere within a short drive, you better believe I would have bought them there, but I can’t. Finally, I’ve downloaded a few songs from albums I’m certainly going to get in the future anyway. Just to have a few songs from them to bide my time until I can get the real thing.

Lastly, a few other excuses that I often hear:

– “I do that so I can figure out if its really worth the money”
– “I don’t usually like most of the songs, so with downloading (for a fee), I can get rid of the crap, and save money.”
– “Well, they have a whole bunch of money already. They aren’t going to miss 12 bucks if I download the album”

The first is the worst thing you can say to me. You have no idea how many options are open to you if you want to test something out, other than downloading. There are so many numerous websites, and other resources, I’m not even going to list them all. But I have two words for you: Streaming Audio.

The second is noble, but still isn’t perfect. If you only like a couple songs on any given album, then you obviously don’t like that artist too much, and should really consider spending your money on someone else who you like more. But other than that, this is one of the best things about downloading for a fee – you can pick and choose, so as long as you pay a small fee per song, then go ahead and be picky!

The third here has two facets. First, it goes back to the “you should jump…” argument. If you really liked that artist, then you wouldn’t mind shelling out that money. And if you do have a problem with paying, then you should either stick to the radio and streaming audio because you’re too poor – and I’m sorry, but people that really can’t afford it have no right to being able to hear music anywhere other than the radio or the Internet, - or you should really consider that might be a sign that you don’t like the artist as much as you thought, and maybe you should get something you like more. Second idea here: “They won’t miss it”. That’s what everybody says. Ever heard of the snowball effect? Perfect example right there. People say “Well one person’s vote doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things, so I’m staying home”. But if enough of those people had second guessed themselves, we might have Al Gore in the White House right now.

Well that’s all I got right now. I'd love to know your feelings.


haku: Merged with "The end of online piracy" thread because it's really the same topic and many people have already given their opinion there.

[teeny]

Originally Posted by ypsidan04

And I don’t know about you, but it personally feels good to have I think 38 official albums

38 albums in total? or with one group only?

I'm caught in the middle of the scale I think. I do download music, and then again I buy a lot of albums aswell.
Most of the time I buy albums when they are on sale. And it's mostly albums I've already checked out online. The days of buying albums in the dark is gone. Sure back in the old days one could at least hear a single or two before buying the album, but some groups only live on those two singles and then the rest of the album is crap.

A few days ago I downloaded the first mp3 which I paid for online. And I was kinda disappointed even. Expecting a mp3 I could listen to in winamp I get a wma file instead, that doesn't play well in winamp. So to be able to listen to it I need to burn it to a cd-r and then rip it to a mp3. Could be it's just a bad experience though.

[EeZeReal]

The bottom line is that the world is an immoral and lazy place and there's fuck-all anyone can do about it. This is just a re-iterated scenario of when the VHS recorder was first brought out commercially and anyone could record movies from the television for free.

Now the DVD recorder is out and the ever increasing impatientness of our country means movies are on "Sky Premier" Or "Box Office" like 3-4 months after they've been released on DVD. So anyone can record new DVD's for free.

It's just evolution...I know it's wrong for artists/groups to go to all that trouble for us to just get what it took them months to create, in 30 mins. But it just goes to show the way the world is going.

[ypsidan04]

Originally Posted by teeny

38 albums in total? or with one group only? .

38 albums in only like 21 months. I didn't buy my first CD from just a single band until April or May of 2003, when I was 17, and I'll be 19 in a few weeks.

*****

I do have to complain about one way that people try to stop this, and that is electronic copy protection. They either make it impossible to copy, or they make it so you have to jump thru so many hoops that most people give up. All this does is throw a speedbump at the serious pirates, but not stop them, and just annoys those who have good intentions.

- I remember some computer games wouldn't let you play without verifying you had the manual, and as such, verifying you paid for the game at a store. But if you lose the manual, tough luck.
- And when you copy music from a CD onto your hard drive, there is a little thing that is attached to it, commonly called a license, that only lets you play the file from the hard drive if you have the proof that it was originally yours, to stop people from giving their friends their whole music collection. But this is also a nuisance to people with good intentions. I recently received a Dell Digital Music player as a gift, and for reasons that dont need to be mentioned here, it isn't compatible with the computer that has all my music on it. But I have access to another computer, so I've put my music on there and used that to fill up my Dell. Thankfully I only had a handful of MP3s and 38 albums to copy, so it didn't take as long as it could have. But here's the problem. Contraband from Velvet Revolver - great CD - has a copy protection on it. Until it installs a little marker on your hard drive, you can't copy the music onto the hard drive. But unfortunately on this second computer, the installation process keeps crashing it for some reason (and this happens quite often, I have read). Before I got the Dell, I was able to copy VR onto the computer that turned out not to be compatible. So I figured I'd just burn the music onto a CD, take the CD to the other computer, copy it onto that computer and then put it on my player. But of course this second computer notices I don't have a license for that anymore, and won't let me put it on the device. For all it knows, my friend gave me that CD, and that's illegal file sharing, but in fact I'm just trying to get one of my favorite CDs onto my Digital Player. This is not the right way for them to go about doing this. It just slows down pirates and annoys people with good intentions.

[teeny]

Originally Posted by ypsidan04

38 albums in only like 21 months.

ahh.. ok then.. start adding more albums to the list

[ypsidan04]

Originally Posted by Khartoun2004

D/Ling stuff is like a protest. If enough people d/l an album because it's not economically worth buying a CD with 12 tracks on it for $20, maybe the record companies will get the message.

Trust me. If you go to another place that sells music, I'm sure you can find it for under $15. And sometimes under $10 on sale. I've bought a brand new CD for $8.99 once before. You just have to know where to look and have good timing to hit a sale. The last time I bought a CD for $20 after tax (not including the recent Evanescence 2 disc set which cost $22 plus tax, because it's a 2 disc set - and that's cheap for 2 discs) was on January 11, 2004. Since then I've bought over 25 CDs, and not a single one cost more than $20 after tax.*

* I keep a list of every CD that I buy/recieve, where I bought it, when I bought it, how much it cost, and if it was a gift or if I paid for it out of pocket. Even though I can't explain why I've done this, I think it's a good idea, and I'd recommend it to you.

Originally Posted by teeny

ahh.. ok then.. start adding more albums to the list

My CD shopping list currently numbers at least 30 CDs and possibly as much as 50. However a few of those, which I perpetually cannot find in music stores, I'll probably download for a small price.

[teeny]

Originally Posted by ypsidan04

However a few of those, which I perpetually cannot find in music stores, I'll probably download for a small price.

or check online stores. One of the cool sites to buy from in Denmark is www.cdwow.com which has no shipping charges and since they ship from various locations in the world, no vat added for EU buyers.

[Mossopp]

Play is a really good site too. Most of their cd's are under £10 and postage is free.

[ypsidan04]

Originally Posted by teeny

or check online stores. One of the cool sites to buy from in Denmark is www.cdwow.com which has no shipping charges and since they ship from various locations in the world, no vat added for EU buyers.

8.99 British Pounds is currently $16.97. I can get CDs cheaper than that at stores around my house. But thanks anyway.

Amazon is about the same as any store around here. If you want bargains, you'll have to buy used from Ebay, or similar:

97 cents for example

[Mossopp]

Originally Posted by ypsidan04

8.99 British Pounds is currently $16.97. I can get CDs cheaper than that at stores around my house. But thanks anyway.

£8.99 is cheap for a CD here. Most new releases retail at £12.99 or higher!
It's one of the many reasons why they call it "Rip-Off Britain".

[teeny]

Originally Posted by Mossopp

£8.99 is cheap for a CD here. Most new releases retail at £12.99 or higher!

exactly.. it's the same here.
I normally wait, or buy from a 2nd hand store instead

[ypsidan04]

Originally Posted by Mossopp

£8.99 is cheap for a CD here. Most new releases retail at £12.99 or higher!
It's one of the many reasons why they call it "Rip-Off Britain".

Maybe it's just a thing in Britain that they all cost more than here, because 8.99 pounds is a bit of a rip-off here. You *can* pay more than that, but many places have them for less, on the order of 10, 12, 14 dollars, not 17.

[teeny]

Originally Posted by ypsidan04

Maybe it's just a thing in Britain that they all cost more than here, because 8.99 pounds is a bit of a rip-off here.

It's not just in Britain. In Denmark we order cd's from the site listed, since it's a little above halfprice.