Over a year ago, I wrote a lengthy post on downloading stuff with P2P or torrents, as well as legal downloads. In that post I mention I only had 2 legal downloaded albums from iTunes (Canada), and yes… now I probably got a few more (I got two more just a couple of weeks ago), and AM still waiting for Amazon MP3 to go international… is it offering this service already?? I must test for my next digital purchase.
**EDIT**
Amazon MP3 is still NOT international.
Anyway~ do you buy music? Do you support your favorite artist? I admit it, I still buy CDs. I do take, however, longer to purchase. Some of my last album purchases have been Kate Nash, Yael Naim, St. Vincent, Feist, The Dresden Dolls, and Los Campesinos! That was back in April… and I’m only counting Amazon.com, LOL. Add to that at least 5 Japanese music albums, which are pricier than those~~
So… why do I keep buying CDs? Because they are pretty… specially the Japanese ones [see Pricey Hobbies]. And do I download? Hell yeahz. More now than ever. I was surprised when I realized that I had over 8Gb of music in the May to June 2008 period. Crazyness, I tell you. The reason, TORRENTS. You can preview anything completely… you can find new artists and love them.
There’s news going around that maybe sooner, rather than later, it will be completely illegal for you to listen to your friend’s cd because you didn’t pay for it. But doesn’t anyone agree that copyright is just so gray? I totally support buying albums, but only albums that I think are worth buying… so wouldn’t I need to preview the whole album before deciding I want to buy it?
I do it. I download an album and listen to it, and I either LOVE it, shrug it or just plain hate it. Obviously, when you hate it, you shove it to ur trash bin, right? You’re not gonna be wasting precious disc space by burning those in your backup, right???? If you shrug, is it really worth buying? Sure, maybe a song… but I’m not a one-song kind of person. I would either have to buy over 4 tracks to decide I want to do it legally… I mean, I wasn’t even a buying-singles kind of consumer.
However, if I love it?? Man, I have to fight really REALLY hard against my consumerist one-click buying. I have literally bought stuff from ALL OVER THE WORLD. Ship stuff from Norway… from Japan… from Canada, and when I travel~~ I bought a whole bunch of albums in my visit to LA, and I literally went CD-hunting when I was in HK. So yeah, I think the music you like should be supported one way or the other.
I’m not one for brand consumer, so I won’t usually buy a t-shirt or some merchandise just because it has the name on it. First and foremost, it’s got to be a good product. But there’s always a way to support your artist… so why not music for free? Record Companies fear free music, so that’s why the stick a pole up our asses with threats. In the end, we, the music fans who buy albums, get screwed.
I think 85% of the time, copyright laws (at least in music and films) protect the crappy artist. If you are a rubbish musician whose album gets leaked online, it is most likely that people will listen to it and think it’s not worth the buy. If you’re good at what you do, even if people download your album… there’s a good chance that people will buy your CD (or LP) in the end.
It is most likely that someone, who downloads over 50 albums a month, will buy one of those albums, than the possibility of someone who only downloads the Top10 hits of the week.
