No legal downloads please
I for one have never got into buying music via download. I think honestly to date I have only bought (from Itunes) a few tracks from Coppola's "The Conversation" soundtrack. I understand the record companies issue with illegal downloads but I think their ire is misplaced. I've downloaded music from bands like "Modest Mouse" for instance because someone told me I would like them, and ended up buying about 6 of their CD's. If someone hadn't ripped me a copy of Porcupine Tree I would most likely have bothered to take the chance of buying one of their CD's (DVD-A) without having heard them first, now I am working on buying their catalog. The Media companies see every illegal download of a song or a movie as a loss of revenue but it just isn't true. They don't take into account that people just have crap on their hard drives because they can, just because you have it doesn't mean that you would have otherwise paid full retail for it. I had a girlfriend who I swear to god had one Barry Manilow CD. I'll bet she has a bunch of stuff now on her computer but that doesn't mean the record companies would have ever saw a dime out of her. It is the real collectors that support the bands and the labels, and real collectors would never be satisfied with compressed MP3 tracks, their is a difference between collecting and aggregating. Back in the day before CD's everybody made cassette copies for everybody. What did they think those omnipresent double cassette decks that came with every set up you could buy were for? Later when CD-Roms became affordable it was ripping and burning. Did it hurt the music industry? not really. The problem for them is the ubiquitous MP3 player. When I was a kid (and still today) my dream was to have a big stereo system. Today kids more often than not just have an laptop and an MP3 player. Is it any wonder the music biz is in trouble? As a side effect the younger generation seems to have track mentality and the concept of say a "album" much less a concept album is lost on them. Thank god for Pink Floyd's "The Wall" which has done the most as I see it to keep the concept of "album" alive in the younger generation. I really don't see all doom and gloom for musics future however in fact I am heartened. My teenage son and his friends are largely into the same music I started out on ..Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and the Stones, Dylan, Neil Young ect. When I come home from work and he and a few of his friends will be in his room and I hear them listening to Hendrix it warms my heart. I am reminded that in all things the Universe seeks balance.
