Copyright protection laws were NOT written for people who SHARE. People can share ANYTHING - there's nothing wrong with that. The artists are a bunch of cocky jerks anyway, so let them go broke. If they produced anything worthwhile it would naturally be unable to be lessened in value, as they say file sharing lessens the value of the song/CD/artist. I say, BAH!
Creators are compensated by distrubutors for access to that copyright, therefore copyright protects both interests.
not in the music biz they're not, unless they're megastars. do you know how those columbia house/BMG "8 CDs for a penny" plans work? they take out the royalties and pay the creator nothing. in fact, they *charge* the artist's account by declaring the sales as "promotional material". :eek: signing up with columbia house is far more stealing from the artist than is downloading music - at least the artist doesn't get a bill when someone shares a song. i have songs on iTMS ( the major online music store, run by Apple). i didn't put them there, my label did. and my label gets the proceeds of the sales - i and my buddies who created the music - we get nothing - and will never ever get anything. if you want to support artists, buy tickets to live shows.
Payment is voluntary; music, movies and software are not staples like food or shelter, you can survive without them. Downloading the latest Liberace disc or version of Windows is not analogous to stealing a loaf of bread to feed your starving family. The market has set the value of that artist's work, your personal views on the quality of that work are irrelevant. Just because you feel that the market has overvalued that work doesn't give you the right to take it without compensation.
Initially, it's distribution that puts up all the money for recording, promotion, etc. It would be a pretty lousy business model if there wasn't a mechanism to recoup that investment. That's great, now what about software developers and filmmakers? Planning on catching Bill Gates at this year's Ozzfest?
Very well said Damir !! As in trading music business is a learning process for the newcomers.. Actually many good artist are spoiled in the process if they don't have the right advisory and attorney support about publishing deals, distribution and merchandising ! Selling music is nothing cooler than selling soap boxes for the big guys.. no so for the artist !! So I agree to protect copyrights as long as those royalties are going to the pockets they should go... the creators. And yes , I've been through the process.
exactly. the costs of buying a CD have nothing to do with the costs of creating music, they are about the cost of putting music into a distributable form. if you want more of your entertainment dollar to go towards the actual creation of music, buy a ticket, because buying a CD at amazon will do sweet FA for the vast majority of artists. and anybody who belongs to Columbia House and bitches about downloading is a hypocrite, plain and simply.
ITunes is the one to beat, both for size of catalog and speed of download. ~70% market share is usually a good sign that you're doing something right. Napster 2.0 is crap. The search engine is crap. I only use it if I absolutely can't find what I want on ITunes. I'm interested in checking out Microsoft's 'Loudeye', although I prefer MP3s to crippled WMAs and I expect they'll mostly offer the latter.
Try this one www.rhapsody.com (79cts/song ) with a monthly subscription of $9.95 and wash out your guilty feelings !