Oh! go take a dive, Jack Sparrow. Music piracy is for many a subject of debate – it never has been for me. It’s just outright thievery. I’ve heard people argue that record companies rip artistes off and we’re just ripping off the record companies and so it’s ok. How lame is that? What they’re doing, even if this is entirely true, is steal from the artistes even that little they get. And these days, so many artistes record and release their music independently. So why would these people not pay for that? How would they like it if the work they do gets them nothing because the clients or the companies they work for cheat them of their compensation?
I came across this on a blog that I follow regularly, Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs, which itself had reblogged the original from The Trichordist. Read and learn.
Recently Emily White, an intern at NPR All Songs Considered and GM of what appears to be her college radio station, wrote a post on the NPR blog in which she acknowledged that while she had 11,000 songs in her music library, she’s only paid for 15 CDs in her life. Our intention is not to embarrass or shame her. We believe young people like Emily White who are fully engaged in the music scene are the artist’s biggest allies. We also believe–for reasons we’ll get into–that she has been been badly misinformed by the Free Culture movement. We only ask the opportunity to present a countervailing viewpoint.
Emily:
My intention here is not to shame you or embarrass you. I believe you are already on the side of musicians and artists and you are just grappling with how to do the right thing. I applaud your courage in admitting…
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DyingNote 
Music downloading is one of those things where people cannot directly see the impact on the victim, or they see their individual impact as minimal. Yet as you point out, if they were expected to work for free so many days a year, they would not want to do it. If you want to enjoy something, then you should be prepared to compensate the creator in some way.
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I wish for the day one could buy directly from the artiste. You can do that with some now but I’d like it to be de rigueur.
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Couldn’t agree more. What do you think of songs and videos that people watch on Youtube? (Not sure if a fraction of the advertising revenues find their way to the artists. )
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Youtube is quite a different animal given that it often works as a promotion tool with much being released on official channels. I myself have bought music based on Youtube videos/sound I saw that were posted on blogs. What I like about the Trichordist post is that it does not advocate strong-arm tactics. I think the people there understand the nature of the beast and only wish for it to live and let live.
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