'big cigar' guys not smiling at all

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

congratulations! you just betrayed yourself

Fine AdrianShephard, he downloads illegal stuff all day

[Whistler]

The internet is d*mn slow here... downloading mp3's will take much more money than buy the music

btw, I haven't been listening to pop music for years

[>BKA< T Wrecks]

I haven't bought a pop album in my life - nor d/l'ed a commercial pop mp3. But why would the whole stuff be limited to chart pop shit? The labels could also offer nice things from their entire repertoire... which they don't do.
In fact, in a recent magazine article they said that even top-selling stuff like for example the current Shakira / Anastacia / Britney Smears / whatever album is unavailable in most cases. And I doubt they will ever have stuff from the 70's or 80's, unless it's VERY famous and well-known.
And yes, your music really becomes more expensive. In this article, the commercial MP3 download system was shown to reach shop prices in the best cases. In most cases, however, it was indeed more expensive. The most extreme case they had in their test was a double CD (some lame "best of" which the f***ing music industry sold for whopping 30 euros already) - a legal download would have amounted to 77+ euros!!!! Without booklet and case, of course. Yeah, right. They can just go soak their heads if that's the best they can do. Pathetic.

[-=RAV=-AdrianShephard]

Originally Posted by Pierre-Marie Baty

congratulations! you just betrayed yourself

Fine AdrianShephard, he downloads illegal stuff all day

and i am damn proud of it 8D

[stefanhendriks]

ever heard of:

if you can't beat them, join them

period!

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

I'm impatiently awaiting the society where all access to art and culture will be completely FREE.

That is for sure one thing I dream of.

[>BKA< T Wrecks]

Hmmmm... nice thought. But then the artists would need to be able to practise their art for free as well. And as long as a musician needs money for instruments, a rehearsal room, recordings, promotion and distribution, he will need to sell his art in order to continue - even if he doesn't make any profit himself, but only uses the money to compensate for his expenses.
Unfortunately, this is the point where he begins to depend on others: be it a label that wants to tell him what music to play in order to get better sales, be it some enthusiast who sponsors him but in return maybe expects certain things and wouldn't continue sponsoring the musician if he chose to play some different music all of a sudden...
And if a musician would only record stuff at his own cost and make it all available for free, then only the better-off could afford to make music, and it could be damn hard to get access to somebody's art because without some good means of distribution you might not get it where you live or maybe you just wouldn't know it exists at all.
But sure, the thought of walking into a museum or an exhibition and looking at some beautiful paintings or sculptures whenever you want and without having to pay... *sigh*
I think you could even make much of our culture available to the public - the sad story is that people in total tend to be a bunch of selfish, careless, irresponsible, stupid, uneducated and destructive assholes - if you put up a famous painting for everyone to access (no museum, no security, no personnel = no cost), some shithead would be likely to steal or destroy it, unless of course one of those brainless graffitti sprayers had sprayed his childish tag on it first. > Likewise, if all music was legally available on the internet for free, but people would have the option to pay as much as it means to them, chances are that 20% would pay something whereas the other 80% would just grab all stuff and leave the musicians out in the cold.

[stefanhendriks]

welcome to the world of internet... i have seen many bands producing their own music for 'free' using MP3 and such , and via this way they get more 'fame'. Well, its not 100% perfect. But i would imagine a sort of 'free music kazaa' would be great. You can download tons of music, that is really free. Perhaps a rating system can make it easier to distinguish good and bad music.

[TruB]

nad most band get money through tours..

[stefanhendriks]

true. Although i think bands also earn quite a lot from cd's and such..