If Dutch musicstores are suffering from teenagers downloading instead of buying, i can only say that it serves those greedy bastards right. The price of a cd here is twice as high as for example in Germany or Belgium. Who's robbing who ?

[ 12-25-2004, 08:56 AM: Message edited by: johnny ]

damnnation to us all!!
it's a pity because it was one of the fastest
easy to say its bad but in the vs a cd is only 10 bucks
but here in holland it would be 30 bucks so it sucks here!
so instead of buying 3 cd's I only buy one and download the rest!

[ 12-25-2004, 02:00 PM: Message edited by: Har'oloth ]

<span style="color: lightblue">I agree with part of your point - the "who cares about the over-charging shops" bit; I don't agree with that being a reason to download it illegally. Remember that you can download music legally from the online stores. That way, you don't have to pay the local music stores, you pay less, and the artist still gets paid for their work. Win-Win. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Depends on what kind of CDs you want. It's possible to get cheaper CDs in the Netherlands but it won't be for all music. I often buy CDs (new ones as well as old and or pretty rare ones) for around 10 euro. ATM that's less than $10 I think. This is with mailorder but as far as I know Mediamarkt is pretty cheap on some CDs as well. If I buy only 1 CD (not worth the mailing costs) I often check there first before I put them on the list for mailordering which I'll do if I buy 3+ CDs but that doesn't happen too much.

I listen to internet radio and stream samples to get to know new bands and it'll take some before I decide to buy anything. I try to support the bands I like but sometimes I just have to wait some time till I have some money.

Johnny i can only say that if thats really the case for you then you are looking in the wrong shops. Try to find a nearby Plato (or if you visit Amsterdamj go to Concerto) and you will find that there a lot of very very good cd's for a very very reasonable price.

I have a couple of statements to make about the way i feel about downloading music.

First of all its stealing. end of discussion. Anyone claiming that its not stealing is lying. And when you steal something you ahev to think about the consequences. Do you hurt someone by stealing music.

I personally made a deal with myself that i will never hurt someone by stealing music. This means that when i think a cd/band is good enough to buy, i buy it. There have been cases where i have bought a cd, dispite the fact that i already had all songs on that cd on mp3, for the simple reason that i think i would have bought the cd if the mp3's werent availible.

However there are also cases where i do not think its bad to steal, because these are songs that i would have never gotten if they werent free. Metallica is an example of that. I have 3 metallica songs on my computer, which i Illegally downloaded from the internet. This is stealing yes but i do no hurt anyone with it, because i would never have gotten those songs if they werent free so i did not deprive a store from its profit. This is still stealing, but i dont mind it because i am not hurting anyone with it.

[ 12-26-2004, 08:29 PM: Message edited by: Rikard T'Aranaxz ]

Oh yeah, i haven't heared that one before. Must remember that in case i ever run into trouble with the law. :D

<span style="color: lightblue">If the artist decides to distribute a song as an MP3 for free, then it is not stealing to download it. If an online music store has it for sale (such that you can pay and then download it from them straight away), it is not stealing to download it from them.
Thus, the issue is not "it is stealing to download music", but rather "it is stealing to get music without paying for it, if the artist has decided to charge for it", because that equates to getting it without the author's consent.

Ah. This is a bit of a thin line here. Some music downloaders who download up to a Tb (yes, terabyte) of music could also argue that point. They wouldn't have bought the cds, because they would never have bought them otherwise, whether this is because they didn't have the money, or they didn't know the band, it's just the same thing.

i downloaded a lot of music from bands i never knew and i do buy the cds then i like the music.
also i'm not setting a moral for those people. I'm trying to explain the moral that i use when i download music.

ps. i have about 150 "illegally" downloaded mp3's and about 1550 mp3's that obtained legally (mostly ripped from cd's i own and from free download sections on the official website)