Feds to audiophiles: You're all pirates now

This is pretty simple if you put yourself in the shoes of the artist. Piracy doesn't hurt the major artists as much, since they have always made the majority of their money on concert revenues. However, to the small artist that produces, records and distributes his/her own music - piracy takes money directly from their pocket. Let's say an artist is doing the coffee house circuit and he hopes to sell maybe 20,000 copies of a self produced CD. Some guy buys a copy and distributes it to 100 of his buddies as an mp3. That's money right out of that artists pocket.

Cruz123:
But on the other hand, the guy who distributed those mp3's just gave free buzz to 100 people, which is a very good thing! Especially if you consider NEW business models. The music industry is moving AWAY from CD sales, which is very very clear. And when I say "the music industry," I'm not just talking about the business of execs and board members, I'm talking about everyone who wants to sell music.

Here is a business model scenario I just made up: I'm a band, and I have a really good CD that gets ripped and distributed to all kinds of people who love it. They are enjoying my music for free, but the fact is they are enjoying my music. I get in touch with some companies that might want to advertise through the band, and I set up a site where I will distribute my music in every kind of format imaginable at a very high bitrate, with a click-through advertisement before getting to the download page. Nothing too obtrusive, just a recommendation from the artist. The music consumer sees it as free music, the advertiser gets all kinds of traffic and impressions, and the artist gets paid.

Throw in some more value-add like an "online meet and greet" with the artist in a chatroom, a free sticker or something, whatever, and you'll drive people in like crazy. I'm not saying this is how everyone should do it, or that this plan has no flaws, but I literally made that up as I was typing. If I can do that, then who knows what kind of cool business models are waiting to make money off of your art!

The point is this: SELLING CDS IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE MONEY FROM MUSIC. It is how the labels are familiar with making money off of music, but that power is rapidly shifting and it's scaring the hell out of them.

Cruz, 100 buddies!!! I don't even KNOW 100 people let alone have 100 buddies. I would venture to guess neither do you or the majority of people reading this thread.
Dusty, those same 100 people will now pay to see this artist live in concert thanks to the exposure file-sharing has brought them.
It is wrong to punish people for sharing music without the intent to profit from it.

Dreadhead, I think Cruz may have misused the term "buddy," but he's right on that if you put a ripped album in a shared folder on a P2P network it would be likely that at least 100 people would find their way to it. And if the band is lucky, then even more than that!

The level of moral aptitude I always find in arguments over file-sharing, etc. is astonishingly low - usually on the part of the Gen X and Y'ers who just feel entitled to free stuff.

If the Artist says "This material is copyrighted" - that means copying it to give away is STEALING. Simple. Case closed. IT'S NOT UP TO YOU to decide what business model might work better for the artist. IT'S UP TO THE ARTIST!
There's no law that anyone HAS to copyright their material. The law exists so that they can, if they want to. If you see "Copyright" --- that means the artist made a decision and is telling you, "I created this, and I don't want you giving it away."

You are simply ripping people off, and if you had any cajones you would stand up and say, "I rip these artists off because it's fun and because I can." I would at least respect the honesty of that.

The entire premise of that MSNBC article posted above shows the same type of utter ignorance of the issues. Lending a Record to someone is not the same as making a copy and giving it to them. Lending someone an physical lp is not a against the law.

And the fact that the Radiohead experiment flopped does, IMO, expose the high level of hypocrisy among the bottomfeeder, "music should be free because I say so" crowd.