[Rataxes]

I don't see how inmaterial loss can be compared to material loss. If 80 000 people download a single that they wouldn't have spent money on regardless of whether it had been available for free or not, then the record company and artist has lost jack shit and that is an undisputable fact. As undisputable, is the fact that if you rob a bank of 2 million dollars, then they have made an actual loss of 2 million dollars. It is therefore a bloody poor comparison.

There's a very common misconception that people that used to regularely buy CD's and games, have stopped buying these things in favour of downloading them for free. This simply is not the case since, at least in my homeland, it is estimated that approximately 50% of all software is pirated, yet PC game and software sales are going UP. Not only that, but it was a long time since the PC game market was as big in comparison to the console game market, as it is now. Sure, games in general have become much more popular, but the interest has still not grown anywhere near as fast as the proportion of pirated games have, so the latter simply doesn't have as great impact on software sales as some people want us to believe.

Interestingly enough, the price of PC games has remained quite steady over the years, while CD prices have sky-rocketed, and had been doing so for quite some time before mp3-sharing on the Internet became common. Now which market was doing the best out of these two? [img]smile.gif[/img]

What has the availability of all sorts of music on the Internet done for the global music community? Well for one thing, it's easier than ever before to grow an interest in music. Me, I hadn't spent a dime on music in my life and didn't own a single record I could call my own, that was before the mp3 format was created. I very much doubt that I would ever have grown an interest in music if it wasn't for Internet piracy. Now that I have, and actually been to a few concerts and bought 10-15 albums from artists and bands I've discovered on the net, how can one possibly say that me owning some 900 mp3's is BAD for the music industry, especially when at least 70% of those tracks are songs that would be near impossible for me to have gotten a hold of legally due to the extreme limitations of todays music market? Isn't it ironic that during the few years I've actively downloaded music from the Internet, I've invested far more money in music than I did in my entire life before that?

Free, fast and easy music sharing on the Internet has had a huge positive impact on the music communities of the world. Never has it been easier to share the joy of music with others, never has it been easier to spread the word about a good artist and get other people interested. I'm part of several music-orientated communities on the net. If one member discovers a great new artist and wants to share the discovery, the rest of us no longer have to take his word for it and several months later (if we didn't forget about it by then) spend a hefty sum of money based on nothing but what the guy told us to find out if we've found an artist worth spending our money on, or scour the independant rock radio stations 24/7 in hope that they just might (no matter how unlikely) play that particular artist. No, he can simply give us a link to a few of his personal recommendations and we can instantly hear for ourselves. That is how music interest is born! Artists have absolutely nothing to lose by gaining interest and popularity, regardless of whether it immediately pays off in dollars.

Like it or not, but piracy is not black and white. For every person who went from actually buying albums to neglecting them totally in favour of swiping them off the net, there's a person whose sole reason for growing enough interest in the music of a popular artist to spend his money on him, is the fact that he was able to grow that interest without risking or investing anything, and how could that possibly be achieved if not with Internet piracy?

It all evens out in the end, which is proved by the fact that neither the arrival of mp3 and peer-to-peer programs, nor the constantly growing popularity of these things, have had no distinguishable effect on record sales.

[ 04-12-2003, 06:49 PM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]