Comments on: To Pirate or Purchase: Making Legal Music Appealing

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By: Watch The Pacific

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By: pisangbakar1999

pisangbakar1999 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:53:41 +0000

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By: Bitter Patrick

Bitter Patrick — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:56:52 +0000

ill be playing your songs for almost everyday now.

By: Jaymis

Jaymis — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:54:12 +0000

To me, something that labels and bands need to focus on is making it easier to pay for music! I often spend exponentially more time and effort to get music legitimately, than it would have otherwise taken for me to just grab it via bittorrent. As someone who bills their time by the minute; if I have to spend 10 minutes fiddling with a band site, signing up for an account somewhere, confirming my account sign up etc etc. your $10 album download has now cost me $25.
It’s really important for bands to be able to get the details of the people who are buying their stuff, but the process should be as smooth as possible. Having your music available in more services than Just iTunes is a great start (yay Musicadium), but I don’t use any of those, I just want to buy some files and download them to my computer.
The best solution I’ve found for this is Bandcamp, who keep the time between “I want to buy this” and “Yay, I’m listening on my media player of choice” super fast.
Aside of that, I think the most important point you’ve made is “there’s no going back”. Despite all of the political stupidity, suing fans, trying to put trade sanctions on entire countries, and other stupidity the industry has been getting up to, there is absolutely no way to put the cat back into the bag. There are infinite cats, and thousands of people making faster, stronger, sneakier robot cat hybrids. It is utterly impossible for a handful of people to compete technically or socially with thousands of people who break encryption, build protocols, and share culture because they love it.

By: Julia

Julia — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:27:27 +0000

Hiya Josh!

I agree with you in that some people will never pay for music regardless of the reasons I outlined. I’ve read a few articles outlining how the ease of access to consume music for free combined with the intangibility of it as a product, means that many people don’t see any real value in music and hence won’t pay for it. Ever. These people are usually ones that wouldn’t have bought records, tapes or CDs, let alone pay for online downloading. They are the lost causes.

I also agree with the legal-moral dischord regarding piracy. The guilt trip of the “You wouldn’t steal a CAR…” campaigns we have in Australia, and the prosecution of random downloaders in the US are both proving to be rather ineffective, creating more of a “stick-it-to-the-man” mentality especially among young people. Mind you, Jay-walking is illegal and I’m a serial offender… but I’m not about to go and rob a bank. I do see your point though.

Cheers for the comment! I’m interested to hear more thoughts on this!
- Julia

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:50:19 +0000

Great blog! I just think you are missing one small outside factor - ’some people will never pay for music regardless of the above reasons’. When you can listen to it free (in practical terms for the consumer) on the radio it is difficult for some people to understand why they should have to pay to listen to it in other formats. Especially when you consider it is now completely legal to tape television programs off the tv (and with new technology) without having to even watch it at the time. I think you are correct in saying that the music industry do need to modify their current business model however, (to ensure they are able to capture the market of people who wish to legally download music online, that previously didn’t have the ability to do so ‘legally’) and I think this will significantly help them in combating piracy.

On a more global note however, millions of kids and teenagers see nothing ‘morally’ wrong with downloading music (or movies) off the internet (without the copyright owner’s consent), and yet they are also aware that this is ‘legally’ wrong. In my oppinion this could be extremely harmful to society as a whole - laws gain their importance in a society’s mind by being closely associated with the moral fibre of a society. So when you have a dischord in morals and legal obligations, it can i believe, result in a lack of respect (and in turn obedience) to the legal system as a whole.

Sorry if this dribbles on a bit, but there is a very interesting article on it somewhere, which i will link to if i can find it. Nice blog, Josh!