“I download music.” Is that such a surprise to hear from anyone nowadays? We might be able to justify it to ourselves, but it’s technically still stealing. Because at Wal-Mart, it’s still $19.88 + tax. And so we inevitably turn to cheaper, more easily accessible alternatives. Behind our closed doors, our anonymous IP addresses, and our high-speed wireless connections, we shamelessly download discography after discography. Movies. Albums. Utterly massive personal collections of media, spread around the world with the convenience of the Internet.
Today, my own musical album – with songs and music that I created – will be released. And I actually intend on profiting from it. Needless to say, I hope that it will not be torrented, shared, or downloaded illegally. And now I find myself on both sides of the pirate cannon, so to speak.
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| This particular cannon, actually. |
It’s a complicated puzzle. Musical artists obviously need to make a living off of sales and performances. Pirating music undeniably hurts album sales. But the majority of profit is taken by record labels, so the artist is only marginally profiting in the first place.
Taking a closer look at Billboard records of music sales, we can see that some artists actually manage to sell millions of copies of a single album, or even millions of copies of a single song. And this isn’t just a one-time occurrence – this happens week after week. Despite downloading, the entertainment industry seems to be thriving. Movie ticket and album sales have never been higher. To the people that claim pirating will kill the cinema or the musical artist, I say no. There will always be people willing to pay for good quality entertainment. It’s just the question of where to draw the line.
I hope that my music will someday make it around the world. The internet can help with that. But I also hope that I might be able to make a living performing and selling my music. The internet can hurt that.
Perhaps the only advice I have here is to remember the little guy. Support your local musicians. Go to live shows, buy CDs, and wear those t-shirts of bands that almost nobody has heard of – they’re pretty obscure, so they need all the advertising they can get. When it comes to pirating, that’s your own call.
Perhaps the only advice I have here is to remember the little guy. Support your local musicians. Go to live shows, buy CDs, and wear those t-shirts of bands that almost nobody has heard of – they’re pretty obscure, so they need all the advertising they can get. When it comes to pirating, that’s your own call.
Jason Mraz put it so succinctly: “We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.” Oh is it ever true. Even if it’s just a little bit.
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| Jack Sparrow only downloads Disney movie soundtracks. |
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