I’m old enough to have grown up back when the only way to listen to music at home was to listen to the radio or buy the album. Almost every weekend I headed into Philadelphia to “3rd Street Jazz and Rock”. They had the best selection around of all the punk, new wave, alternative stuff I was into. I bought a lot of albums as a teenager. Hundreds, actually. I wasn’t rich. I earned all that money washing dishes and later cooking at restaurants. And I walked uphill in a blizzard, with no shoes…yeah, yeah, I’m an old fart.
Years later as the internet was really starting to explode my brother introduced me to newsgroups. Particularly, one that contained nothing but pirated alternative albums. Thousands of albums. All I had to do was download them. So I did. There seemed to be no real risk or consequences. I’m sure I originally considered the ethics of it. But the temptation was just to great.
I also pirated software, especially video games. This is what eventually led me to change my views on piracy. I was downloading a lot of the games to play with my kids. But as they got older it became difficult to explain where all these games were coming from. By the time they(twins) were 12 years old, it was obvious they knew exactly how I was getting them. And they were asking me outright to pirate specific things for them, or show them where they could get stuff. This was also about the same time that the record companies started making headlines by suing illegal downloaders.
I wasn’t really as much concerned about getting “caught”, as I was about the shaky ethical foundation I was teaching my kids. It forced me to exam the real reasons I was pirating. I had eased my conscience like a lot of others by saying I was only stealing from the rich, and it was mostly a victimless crime. The truth was that if you really looked into the facts, this wasn’t true at all. The real reason I was pirating, was because I liked getting stuff for free. And the internet disconnected me from seeing any of the consequences.
Over on the Trichordist blog, David Lowery of the bands “Camper Van Beethoven” and “Cracker” has a great article addressing the current generations attitude that free music should be a right. I think he really gets to the core of the matter, and if you really love music, yet feel no need to support your favorite artists by buying their albums, I challenge you to read the whole article. Check his facts. Then tell me you still feel stealing music doesn’t have consequences and is good for musicians. Click here to go to article.
Here’s a good excerpt from the article :
The existential questions that your generation gets to answer are these:
Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself?
Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?
Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?
This is a bit of hyperbole to emphasize the point. But it’s as if:
Networks: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!
Hardware: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!
Artists: 99.9 % lower middle class. Screw you, you greedy bastards!
Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians!
I am genuinely stunned by this. Since you appear to love first generation Indie Rock, and as a founding member of a first generation Indie Rock band I am now legally obligated to issue this order: kids, lawn, vacate.
You are doing it wrong.
And no, I don’t pirate anything anymore. I legally bought all 5500+ songs I currently have on my iPhone. Money well spent.
