What’s the difference between cassette tape copy swapping before and the present day mp3 file swapping and downloading? You be the judge.

I’d like an explanation of how downloading and sharing music is illegal.. these idiots claim they are losing money.. yes they are losing money because people are tire of their BS. the only people who are worries about this stuff are the lawyers, and fat ass record label CEO’s (who have no talent and couldn’t make a record if their lives depended on it). so if trading songs were so illegal why the hell didnt the major labels suethe kids back in the 60’s and 70’s who waited for their favorite songs to come on the radio and hit the record buttons on their radios and stereo’s at home… SAME FREAKING CONCEPT JUST DIFFERENT TECHNOLOGY!.

bottom line here is the lawyers and fat ass CEO’s are worried they wont be able to make that extra 1million from internet sales =/ comon guys greed is not always a good thing.. as your declining sales have shown.. piss off the consumer you go broke.. just look at GM now … =/

There’s a world of difference between making mixtapes and recording songs off the radio AND everybody being able to steal any recording ever made easily from their computer with no effort with no reduction in sound quality. Don’t play dumb.

I look at it like this, If I buy a cd , I can do whatever I want to do with it. If I want to rip and share it I will. So until we meet again RIAA, Go play in the street.

Bands who make worth-while music always make it in the end.

Piracy keeps shitty bands in check. If you charge 18 dollars for a CD and only put 2 good songs on it, Fuck you, I’ll pass. Instead of spending so much scratch on catching the “Pirates” (99% of the world) Spend that time writing better music, spend that time making a good stage show, spend that time earning the title of rockstar instead of winning it on a technicality.

Furthermore, yeah, lets suppress the evolution of the internet and all of it’s possibilities and scare people away from it by watching everything you do 0_o good call.

Music isn’t a privilege, it’s a right.

Jordy – the difference between cassette swapping and mp3 file swapping is that back in the day you had to actually buy the record or a friend had to. The cassette cost money and it took time to make the copy. Cassettes sound like crap (very hissy and lo-fi), so the copy was subpar. One person bought the record and at most 2 or 3 friends got a copy.

Now all you have to do is type in a an album name on your computer and download the thing in minutes. Any album in the world, practically. ONE person buys a CD, and MILLIONS download. No loss in detectible audio quality to most ears.

Uh yea, what’s the difference…

I’m the assistant store manager at a F.Y.E. in a small community, and I’m also a avid music fan. I was offered my position because I was a frequent shopper who sold CDs after burning them to my iPod in exchange for iTunes cards.

I’ve seen the best and worst of the music industry from both sides of the counter. I know how much it costs to order a CD and I know how much we mark them up to cover our store’s lease, our employees’ respective salaries, and the inevetible hit we take from theft. I don’t make much.

Everyday I hear about how much less we should charge. I know that Walmart carries the top 20 titles for two or three dollars less (using them as lures so that you, the consumer, might then buy a refridgerator, a set of tires, or a television).

And I won’t lie and say that I don’t download torrent files to sample albums before determining my own purchases – I do. But I still support those artists that create something worth my money by buying CDs, DVDs, and Concert Tickets, and deleting the mass produced detritus of the music industry.

Offering everything free isn’t a viable option. In some capacity artists should always be compensated for their art. Whether you feel that, I, as a retailer, provide you a valuable service or not, is debatable, but we, as a society, cannot rape those that would enrich our lives because we feel that we have been abused by their industry.

Perhaps the recording companies will slowly fade in this new millenium, allowing artists to market their own music in any number of physical or online mediaforms.

Until that day, we must make ethical choices and steer the music industry towards a brighter direction by boycotting poorly crafted music and buying brilliant art. We have more power than that with which we credit ourselves.

Sweet! I am illegally downloading Heavy D right now and don’t have to worry about being sued!

Strange that the RIAA has NEVER sued or gone to the extreme to closing down the internet sites/sources that provide an online space for music lovers to share the downloads. There appears to be a conspiracy where it’s becoming more and more obvious that the RIAA has possibly set these sites up themselves to lure & trap unsuspecting kids/adults to music file sharing & trading – legally or illegally – just to sue them and take their $$$. There needs to be an investigation here. Think about folks – WHY has the RIAA not gone after the file sharing sites? Why has the RIAA not gone after the ISP’s to bar those file sharing sites from their internet services. The ISP’s will get sued for privacy issues and fraud.

The RIAA should also LISTEN & look at the crappy so called music filler on every album they issue through the artists in the industry. You get one good song for $12.99 – $14.99 and the rest is bull shit.

Try this: go to your local supermarket and gather a basket of groceries. Take them to the check out and tell the clerk you’re not going to pay for them because eveything basically came from the Earth and you feel that as a citizen of the planet you don’t understand why you should have to pay for these things.
Free music? Buy a musical instrument, learn to play, learn to write a song and play them for yourself and whoever you choose. Wehoever wrote THEIR songs and WHOEVER pays them for the right to sell those songs ultimately will determine how much they’ll cost. That some out there think they have a right to them for free, just like free groceries, etc., hey why not everything be free, including the work you do. Why free music as something that falls under some special category I just don’t get. And the argument of sharing a copy of an album with a friend is a big differenc than sharing it with the whole world. I suspect even Lars Ulrich would agree, unless Deep Purple live bootlegs don’t count

To all RIAA reps and reps of all the major Recording companies: Stop signing shitty bands or acts. Start signing talented folk, and stop cramming Britney Spears and ect down our throats. I’d buy some cds then.

How about the record industry wake up and realize they peddle shit to people who buy music! Nickle back anyone. The new Killers!
U2, Dave matthews band, Green Day, The Yeah yeah yeahs,Arctic Monkeys, Band of Horses, Dredg, and maybe even the Strokes(they are in the studio) will have new music out this year. Here’s to 2009!

Music is a “right”, not a “privilege”?!

If you have a job, I hope and pray that when you walk into work on Monday morning, you are told that you will no longer be paid for your services.

You don’t want to pay for someone else’s work, but you damn sure want to be paid for your own, yes?

Pick and instrument, learn to play it, and you’ll have all the free fucking music you can handle.

Everyone agrees that the artists deserve to be compensated for what they do. The problem comes in when you realise that the artist is actually receiving less than 1% of the cost of each CD sold, with the rest going to the stores and the record company middlemen. I don’t see why HMV or iTunes or Sony or whoever deserve ten times more compensation for the work they’re doing – work that wouldn’t exist in the first place without the artists. When people start talking about how the artists need protection from pirates, they’re missing the fact that artists haven’t been getting much of the cash we spend on CDs anyway. If intercepting people’s earnings at the till and diverting it into your own pockets isn’t piracy (or banditry) then I don’t know what is – and that is ultimately what retailers and labels have been doing for decades. Just cos it’s traditional don’t make it right.

These are difficult times with a lot of hard thinkin’ to be done by everyone in the industry, but it’s also a great opportunity for artists to take back their music as the major labels flounder about wondering why they aren’t able to squeeze so much cash out of people. Exciting times…

I used to buy CDs everyday. Seriously, go to lunch, buy a new CD to listen to afterwards. I have way too many bad CDs by doing that. I also used to download too, then run out and buy the CD to support the artist (if it deserved supporting). Now I do neither! I don’t appreciate being treated like a criminal by the music industry, nor do I appreciate getting ripped off by them with crappy music, poor packaging and high prices…they get nothing from me anymore.

Wow atlast they come to their senses!

Im in Asia and in a 3rd world country.A CD here cost $14.50 and im only paid $5.75 a day 9 hours work, no way i will buy a CD! The price is a joke!

I will download songs illegaly till hell freezes over!

I will not buy because of those reasons, piracy etc.

But 1 thing i will support, 1 idea the Radiohead idea , the In rainbows album idea, beacause :

1. The money goes directly to the artist.
2. The price can be reasonable, depending to your concience and respect for the artist.( if your a fan you are willing to support your artist right? )

Hey industry whatever the kids of this generation hates you guys, so stop pretending, stop bulliying!

Untill the CD prices will not drop here in my country i will not buy CD’s.

in this argument people always seem to forgot about the producers, engineers, and other people who work hard on putting albums together and end up getting ripped off when people illegally download music.

i think its fair to ‘try before you buy’ by downloading music, but if you like the album, do the right thing and buy it! support the artist, the record label, and everyone who worked on its production.

if you dont, its stealing. end of.

I got one word for the record industry: costumer service! Deliver a good, nicely priced product to your paying costumers in an easy and attractive way, before worrying about ways in which new formats might by pirated. Not getting on the internet before pirates shared illegal copies was the first devastating mistake. Selling faulty or low quality copy-protected products was the the second. Letting potential costumers pay huge fines to an organisation that does nothing to benefit artists was the third and final one. If the industry hasn’t been knocked out by its own flaws, it’s only because musicians still work terribly hard to bring us their wonderful music. Unfortunately part of the pay for their work ends up in the pockets of a more and more obsolete industry. Record stores are definitely excluded from that, though they should realise that they’re not only competing with illegal downloads but also with very legal internet stores. Also people can nowadays order directly from the label or artist. If shops are struggling maybe they should explore the internet themselves, as a tool to sell records.

So what most of you are saying is that if you don’t like the price of something, just steal it? So if I don’t like the price of jeans,I just steal them? If I don’t like the price of food at a store, I just steal it? If I think the CEOs and “Fat Cat” lawyers are greedy, I should just steal the products from that company? That would put most of you out a job. When you download illegally you don’t stick it to the CEOs and the”Fat Cat” lawyers you are putting a lot of recording studio workers and average record label workers out of work. Studios are closing, engineers and A&R guys are leaving the business because the have families to support. It cost money and the efforts of experienced engineers to record quality music. Do you think artists really want to put up the money it takes to record music when people think its okay to steal it? And do you think some kid is going to go down to Guitar Center, buy Protools and some plug-ins and produce the same quality recordings your used to in his basement?

What is going to happen is majors artist will stick to just touring because recording music will not be cost effective, and we will be flooded with low quality garage music better left in the garage.

I have never paid $18 dollars for a CD. If you shop around you can find most CDs for $10-$12. If you complain about only two good songs on a CD, than go to itunes and buy just those two songs $2. If you download legally and support indie labels (who are taking a huge financial risk on every album they produce),than more and more artists will feel confident investing in and sell their own music themselves or through indie labels that put music first. Most artist are waiting for their contracts to be up at the major to go indie. But if we as a society continue to steal music, the indie labels will go under first and artist won’t have the financial confidence to go on their own.

Just one more fact for you- the major record labels make tons of money off ringtones. So buying those ringtone (which cost more for the ringtone song clips than to download the whole song on itunes) is just padding the bank accounts of the major labels.

Isn’t the RIAA similar to the vigilantes of the late 19th century whereby they appear to have taken the law into their own hands, and in some States, possibly committed criminal acts? For instance, it appears that the State of Michigan has put the RIAA’s forensic agent on notice that a private investigator’s license is required to gather evidence on file sharers. Gathering computer forensic evidence without a license in Michigan is a felony, with 4 year jail time. I for one intend to ask the Michigan law enforcement authorities to investigate possible conspiracy and criminal acts by the RIAA and their agents.

Jordy – Not that big a diference if some people are buying the CD and a few are making a copy. The labels are seeing that NOBODY is buying the real CD and thousands are downloading it for free.

This will not change,it will not go back, the cat is out of the F’n Bag..

So, the bands that can tour, do merch, sponsor a product that they dont despise, write a theme to a TV show, etc, will be just fine.

The REAL music fans will mostly buy CDs from their favorite artists, but it ain’t gonna be like 1994 again (pre CD-burners)

The funny thing is my 62 year old dad goes to garage sales and buys used CDs, puts them on his ipod and then gives them to whoever wants them to keep. The artist does not make a dime on this either, but its legal

Dax: Customer service is two words, and costumer is not how it is spelled, unless they plan on putting costumes on.

Jungleland2, the artists has already made money when the CD was purchased before it became used. Checking out CD’s from the library, putting them on iTunes, and then returning the CD is legal and much more rebellious.

To Good News!, who posted the following:

“But 1 thing i will support, 1 idea the Radiohead idea , the In rainbows album idea, beacause :

1. The money goes directly to the artist.
2. The price can be reasonable, depending to your concience and respect for the artist.”

83% of the people who downloaded In Rainbows didn’t pay a single penny for it. Personally, I paid $8 out of respect for the band and this incredible idea they had to get their music out to the masses. I found it VERY embarrassing when I saw the percentage of people who took full advantage of something like that and decided that they deserved free music. It comes down to resentment by our society against those with high profile jobs and potentially large bank accounts.

“They have enough money, so why the hell should I pay them for what they do?”

There’s also a lot of “The music is horrible! Why should I pay for it?!”

You don’t have a problem STEALING horrible music, but you sure as hell ain’t gonna PAY for it. What a pathetic justification. If it’s so bad, why listen to it at all, right? Leave it where it is, but don’t steal it just for the sake of stealing. You wouldn’t want it done to you

I support the artists much more directly than by buying a CD (most don’t even get a 10% cut off those) by buying merch, going to concerts, etc

The industry’s actions over the last few years have made me unsympathetic to their “plight” and actually made me feel better about downloading illegally.

83 percent downloaded In Rainbows, the best album made so far this decade FOR FREE? You couldn’t even shell out $3?!!? I hope the computer you did that on gets a virus. Radiohead tried something revolutionary for a major band to eliminate the middle man and all these people were too cheap and self righteous F You all

Madcap if you read the comments correctly you will see that ‘meh’ explained the differences in the two types of copying. Furthermore the law your breaking is copyright law. Your not breaking the law against the “Fatass CEOS” either, your breaking the law against the artist who has an exclusive right to reproduce and duplicate his or her work.
GM is not going broke in relation to ‘pissing of the consumer’ you insufferable moron. It is going broke due to a downturn in demand related to the credit crunch.
The music industry is also not going broke, these widespread copyright infringements are making it a challenging environment though. Im not in the music industry yet but having completed my bacholar degree in Music Industry in Business I shall be soon. Keep in mind downloading illegally inhibits the resources dedicated to finding new ‘talented’ artists.

I don’t understand the fuss at all.
Basically, this is all about royalties so if you just download stuff that:
a) you will buy but isn’t yet available
b) You never would have bought anyway –
where is the problem?
The irony is as well is that when Kazaa, Napster (original), Audiogalaxy etc etc were being heavily used cd sales were going through the roof so the record companies seem to have shot themselves in the foot.

I love buying CD’s or vinyl albums.
It is still a thrill to me to come home and put the music on and kick back and read the liner notes. I want to know the engineers name, the cover artists name the producer.

I can’t remember the last time I paid $18.00 for a CD. I usually pay between $8.00 and $12.00 for a CD or vinyl release. There are lots of deals to be had out there. Paying $10.00 for a CD is not oo much. There are many people out there that depend on that revenue source not just the “fat cat” record execs. What aboout “Mary” the receptionist, “George” the janitor at the studio, “Sweet Melissa” the HR person or “Jake” who works at a packaging factory. And it does take capital to mount a tour. The sales of CD’s help fund the up front costs of trucks and vans and t-shirt printing and equipment.

I would like to know how many “common” folk have lost their jobs and therefore helped put the economy in it’s current state because of illegal downloads.

I also download songs but I only pay for the ones I want. $1.00 a song is not a rip-off. And to those that say the artists only gets a small percentage from the sale. Those small percentages add up to pay them. I bet many artists would like to see that missing 5 or 10 percent for every illegal download.

Joe Music Engineer make some excellent moral points on the ‘illegal’ downloading of music. However, Joe also points out quite clearly the pricing discrepancy pertaining to the sale of ‘new’ CDs, which again clearly indicates how the end user has been ripped off by record companies over the (many) years.
Joe’s quoting of CD price variance from $10, $12, to $18 really requires explanation. An 80% variance in price tells the whole story.
Example of how the mug buyer is being ripped off: Led Zeppelin Remasters CD came on the market here at $41. Six months hence I purchased a new copy at $14.99.
Technological obsolescence has for years been the greatest ally of the recording distribution companies. Technological progress has now bitten those companies on the arse. My, how the wheel turns, even when one is asleep at the wheel. As Neil Young once said, ‘Rust Never Sleeps’.

Jim, Radiohead have also released stats that state that they’ve made more money from releasing In Rainbows than they would’ve if they released it in a purely conventional form.

I don’t know how you can chastize people for “stealing” something that is offered for free. I’ve spent loads of money on Radiohead in the past, and I bought the In Rainbows CD when it came out in stores, just to have for completion purposes. And guess what? That CD went to number one on the Billboard charts, even after the free download. I think more faith has to be given to the consumer. We recognize good music when it comes out.

The RIAA are a bunch of bullies. They are only their for their own self interests. These are the same guys who went after guitar tab sites (because they felt it would hurt songwriters, yeah sure). They sent cease and desist letters for people dancing to an artists music on youtube. Yeah, I’m sure that’ll really hurt your sales. It’s sad when most of the artists whose songs people listen to, don’t actually care whether people download it or listen to it free, but on the other hand the morons of the RIAA make a big deal out of it, suing 12 year old kids. Thank goodness for bands like Radiohead who actually stand up against these guys. I hope Radiohead wins the grammy for album of the year so they can send a big “FU” to the RIAA.

Downloading without paying is stealing plain and simple. You can try to rationalize it all you want but that doesn’t change the fact that you are getting something that is for sale without paying for it. Radiohead is different because they allowed it to be for free but in almost every other case it isn’t like that.

It is amazing how many people will come up with excuses to steal things. If you are a fan you support the band. If you are a thief, well you you are a wannabe fan. Grow up and quit coming up withexcuses to be a thief.

The record labels need to focus on promoting quality music. Do you honestly think the average music fan like the artists and songs that have been in the top ten charts all year long? I haven’t. Most of my new music discoveries came from downloading the songs first, then buying the albums when I can find them in stores. Only a few of the songs and artists I’ve discovered from music outlets like radio and music television networks. Even then, they only got played a couple of times then disapeared in favor an overhyped music act. True music fans want to do the right thing. The others have an entitlement issue to deal with.

stop charging outlandish prices for your products and perhaps people will be willing to pay for it…who is going to pay $15, or even $20 when you can have it FREE. it’s called economics.

Fuck them all. In fact, download albums you don’t even want, then delete them once the download is finished. Do it just to piss off these whores. Making their miserable existance as painful as possible is the key, folks.

To T-Cap,

In Rainbows was offered up to the public in what could basically be called an honor system. Pay whatever you think it’s worth. 83% of the people who downloaded it obviously thought it was worthless, so whats your point? It still doesn’t change the fact that out of say 1,000,000 people, 830,000 of them are spineless punks who actually think it’s ok to steal from people who are on their side.

Any way you spin it, the whole thing proves that there are a lot of worthless scumbags out there with a rather large sense of entitlement and no class whatsoever.

Look already how we have let the record industry dominate and define this discussion. It has degenerated into discussing the merits of thievery. The simple fact is this is not stealing it is sharing, its simply the old tape trade on a massive scale. If you copy the record and reproduce it as well as the artwork and then go sell the damn thing that’s piracy! Simply listening to a lesser quality downloaded version of a record has no moral question attached to it what so ever. Concerned that your favorite millionaires are getting their three squares? If you like a band go buy tickets to see them live, go buy a t-shirt. Personally I prefer to buy vinyl, I download digital copies of records and buy the same thing on Vinyl, if its available. Some things I download are nearly impossible to find, although lately it seems like ever tiny little psychedelic garage band from Helsinki to Hungary is getting some kind of tiny release.

There Is no Difference in swapping cassette tapes and mp3 files. I used make tapes all the time back in the day. It was no problem then. Their a bunch of greedy whiners. It A new day.Download 2009