yea. that makes like NO sense. downloading songs and movies online from p2p programs and other sources shouldnt be illegal if they are already publicly avaliable for free >.>

it just makes sense.

Of course there have been used record stores around since the dawn of time, but somehow those people escape any sort of blame for poor publishing house financials. I actually don’t really see much of a difference from a revenue perspective. i.e. in neither case would the record company, and maybe even the artists, see any revenue.

Could it possibly be that much of the music that the record companies are publishing just blows?

In the same way interstates are built to help augment law enforcement (shoulders, turn-arounds, weigh stations, etc), ISPs should absolutely cooperate with law enforcement as they do today for CALEA. Forcing ISPs to become law enforcement for the benefit of the music industry makes absolutely no sense.

That’s where the majors have everyone by the balls: money. It costs alot to market an artist (even more for new artists). Indie artists and labels simply don’t have that type of dosh.

So whatever you think about the piracy debate, you can’t just say that it’s cheap and easy to get known because of the internet. Cheaper and easier maybe, but it still costs a hell of alot for the people who can’t afford it. You can’t compare newer artists to well established artists like Radiohead, NIN, U2 etc. They have already become rich and famous precisely because of the marketing muscle of the majors they came from. Now they can afford to do their own marketing (and get alot of free marketing purely by being well known). New artists are stuffed.

The majors rip off artists, yes. Hopefully things will change now they are in trouble and artists could have more choice and leverage. But it’s people who download their music and don’t buy it (if they like it) that hurt the artists more. There’s one record company ripping them off compared to millions of downloaders. The Radiohead ‘In Rainbows’ exercise even proved that most of the people who downloaded their album didn’t pay for it, and there are millions more who have just downloaded it via the torrents. There are thousands of artists out there who are unknown and give their songs away for free download, but still don’t get anywhere.

My wife (Mandyleigh Storm) is a musician, and has just released an album and has free mp3’s for download… but the indie label and ourselves don’t have the money to market it very much. We have two (soon to be 3) kids to feed, so don’t tell me illegal downloads don’t hurt… there are very few honest people who will buy your album after they’ve downloaded it for free, even if they love it. We don’t think there’s anything wrong with downloading music to discover new music, but if you listen to the album more than a few times, then it’s worth paying the artist for their hard work.

I don’t like it, but the isp-managed route seems to be the most logical option, unless you can think of anything better to stop people from just stealing everything in sight.

@Tom - yes, the music industry needs to produce products people want instead of working to regulate themselves back into business. Your products and packages seem like a good start.

So I download your music for free and along with every song comes an advertisement for a t-shirt, up coming show, etc. I buy the bands new book and get a CD. Use the music to sell the merchandise.