Home Music Lane

It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

I understand your point fine

"A recording is worthless unless and until you get it to the audience that wants to listen to it."

This is factually and legally incorrect. You probably mean to say that a recording will not generate revenue until... which is a rather different thing. Regardless, it is the property of the copyright owner and obtaining it through illegal means is stealing regardless of how much you or Emily or anyone else "thinks" it's worth.

"If iTunes is able to reduce its price for downloads to one-tenth of a cent each rather than 99 cents each and still make a healthy profit, the pirates might have a tougher time of it."

No, she gets it for free. You have not established an incentive for her to pay 1/10 of a penny for it.

Think for a second about the math of what you're suggesting though. I mean, I think a Macbook should be $3.99 but that math doesn't add up. At 1/10 of a cent per download, 10k downloads adds up to $10. I'll refer you to the link in the OP about how many records sell more than 10k. 1M downloads equals $1k. Gross. What portion of that do you think should go to the artist? What is the basis of concluding that worth for a recording?

It's worth noting that she didn't download her music.

"The consumer will no longer be able to buy and own a copy of the recording, rather, she will have to buy a limited right to listen, perhaps only for a limited time."

Again, no she won't because she gets her music for free and it's not limited.

"As I said before, but you seemed not to notice, I agreed with you that Emily is used to paying high monthly fees for internet access on her Mac and cell phone access on her iPhone. This will be another such access fee, or will be folded into the ones she already pays."

I did notice and as I responded the first time, this will not happen because she gets her music for free.

"If you don't see what this has to do with this thread, maybe it's because your focus is on the evil ways of the younger generation, something older generations always complain about, rather than on the effect of rapid changes in technology in the music industry, which to me is the root cause of all this illegal downloading"

Again, she does not download. As long as she is getting her music for free she is not part of the industry regardless of what the industry model is, it won't matter. As long as she feels what she is doing is ethically acceptable, she will continue doing what she's doing. If you are listening to what I am saying, I am not "focusing on the evil ways of the younger generation", in fact I am quite sure most are entirely unaware of the reality of what they are doing. My concern is making them (and others) aware of what the situation actually is, that sharing/downloading/whatever is ACTUALLY stealing and the ethical equivalent of swiping a Macbook from a table at Starbucks. I am quite certain if they properly understood this they would realize it and make better ethical choices as far as purchasing music. But they have people like yourself putting forth arguments that "it's the industry's fault for not changing" and "it's just the way it is now" and "people just won't pay for that", as evidenced by comparing your posts to hers, and so she thinks it's "ok" and doesn't give it a whole lot more thought than that. If she wants to own up to the ethics of what she's doing, ok, there are crooks in every society. My guess is she (and most others) doesn't.

You want to talk about the inevitable future, wait till another generation goes by of people that have literally never spent a cent for music. Do you really think there will be such thing as a professional musician? That will be a CEO with focus group trying to understand the musical genius of the Black Eyed Peas...


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