Stealing music -- c/d

the one thing that has really bothered me lately is my roommate downloading entire albums, and then burning them and printing out the artwork, so that he can feel like he owns the album in the true sense without buying it. that's just tacky, I think. I'd at least rather burn a mix of my favorite tracks by that artist. i like mixes. but i kind of feel there's a sanctity about the album, either you have the real, full thing, or you just have pieces of it, you can't piece it together yourself.

morals based on who you'd rather hurt - big chain or artist you like?

I've decided to give myself 3 listens to each album before deleting them. I'd much rather pay for the CD if I like something well enough to own it. Aside from the legal and ethical issues, 95% of the albums I've downloaded have audible problems on at least a couple of tracks.

B-b-but then that copy won't get Soundscanned! You're costing the artist valuable Billboard rankings!

Not strictly true, at least not in my (admittedly indie-label) experience. If it's a record store operating a sale-or-return policy, artists will only collect royalties on records that are sold and not subsequently returned to the shop. I don't know how stores figure theft into their figures, but I've got my doubts things are heavily weighted in favour of the artist, to be honest.

Next time I went into HMV, I ripped the free gift of "Official Playstation Magazine", which was a mini-packet of mini-Skittles, retail price around 12p. And, fuck me, I got arrested for it. Brilliant.

except, real justice would've been if they'd caught you with the £80 worth of CDs and you'd gotten a life sentance.

Classic. And I'll give it up to the shoplifters, too, just for the hell of it.

And, before you jump down my throat: I play in a band, I see our music online, and I don't get all freaked out about it. Only crappy bands need to worry about downloads/burns/used CDs hurting their precious livelihoods.

most downloaded album this year?

best selling album this year?

if the answer to both those questions is not Linkin Park's 'Meteora' or 50 Cent's 'Get Rich Or Die Tryin' then i'll eat my pie

funny you say that tho, i'm currently grappling with a major creative block

oh wait, no i wasn't.

i also burn cds fairly regularly
are there people here who don't have albums copied off mates,either on tape or cd?
i would find that hard to believe

"well the biggest moaners seem to be the biggest sellers"

Two words, Garth Brooks.

I actually don't, but that's cuz I'm usually the provider. I've had people promise to burn discs for me. But I guess my friends all suck.

Download, burn, seek out used CDs, and steal from corporate music giants

never steal from indies, and support the used CD market

for tips on stealing CDs from a guy who never once paid for a single Christmas present in his entire life, email me. I did a zine about it in high school.

I download music because I am absolutely unwilling to blow 20 bucks on a record that I can either use for a drink coaster, or sell back to a shop for 2 dollars. I don't dl because I want to rip people off, I dl because I have already bought enough bad music to fill up the entire trunk and backseat of my car. The music industry is built on the concept of screwing consumers over due to their ignorance of the actual product. If you can test drive a car before you buy, why can't you listen to an album for a few weeks?

I'm still flat broke.

I still can't even afford $5 for lunch.

I can only afford to go to Target for my clothing.

And certain people still expect me to pay $15 - $20 for a CD?

No, I don't think so. Not unless the artist is someone I truly, truly care about, and even then I'll try to see how I can pay as little for it as possible. I have found that Half.com and Amazon are fairly good places to go to for new(er) CDs, and if I want to buy an older release from someone I will physically go into a secondhand store.

But a new music store? No. I will not pay Borders' or Barnes & Noble's extortionist prices for a CD. Screw the majors anyway -- they're only interested in hyping up whatever little teenybopper group they want to get on the charts and don't give a damn if you can't find a particular album or artist. When was the last time you saw Yellow Magic Orchestra CDs in a regular music store? I'm not talking about the highly priced Japanese imports -- I'm talking about U.S. releases. I saw them once in 1999 at a Barnes & Noble and then *poof* gone. They were taken off the shelves because suddenly the record company decided they wanted to classify their releases "out of print". Of COURSE I'm going to dl their music -- aside from the extremes I've gone to to get two of their CDs, what else am I supposed to do?

Same thing goes for most of the '80s material I enjoy. I either choose to pay major bucks for tons of compilations for the two or three songs in each comp. that I'd actually want to have (this is the case with the "Just Can't Get Enough" comps) or I can dl the individual songs and listen to them on my MP3 CD player, having given $5 to the good people of Best Buy for a ten-pack of CD-RWs. Hmmm. Tough choice.

Maybe if I were rich and could actually afford it, I would spend the money at a regular music store. Maybe if I felt that the majors were actually considering people such as myself when they made their business decisions, I would actively support them. Maybe if I could rely on buying a CD that I actually love instead of regretting it and wishing I bought the single, I would buy more CDs. (Although file sharing software *has* helped me there bigtime -- everytime I hear something good by an artist, I dl two other songs from that song's album and if I like those songs, I add the album to my wish list and I eventually go out and buy it.)

I don't call it "stealing music". I call it "taking back my musical independence". Oh, and the only reason I purchased Ladytron's music in the first place is because I was able to sample four of their songs via a file sharing program (good old Audiogalaxy), and now I consider myself a Ladytron fan. So there's one additional music purchase I wouldn't have made had I not had file sharing available to me.

What I do is different from shoplifting, though. And I still prefer regular CDs to homemade CDs. If I can make my own comps, fine. If it's available in stores (online or bricks & mortar) and I really like the music, I'd rather get the prerecorded CD.

Everybody wins! Except maybe the library.

I like downloading MP3s. I download live sets from bands I dig, smatterings of songs from bands I want to check out, miscellaneous songs I like (just for the ease of making winamp playlists), etc. I have a couple thousand MP3s, and I don't think that makes me a bad person.

How many complete albums have I downloaded and burned for myself? Unless I'm forgetting something, only one: No New York, because I don't want to pay ridiculous amounts for an import of it. Wait, no, that's wrong. Two, I guess. I downloaded the Wolf Eyes "Mugger" CD-R and burned a copy of it, since it was released as a limited edition of 50 or so and sold out rapidly.

I've never stolen a CD from a shop. I've stolen CDs from my sister before, but she's a cunt and her taste is mostly crap anyway--anything I steal is something she hasn't listened to in 5+ years or so anyway.

I have checked music out from libraries (jazz and folk box sets mostly), but never burned them for myself. Maybe I should have, but I would never really listen to them because I don't like burned CDs. The Providence Public Library downtown has hundreds of thousands of classical and jazz LPs. Someday I hope they decide to move to digital archives and sell them all for $0.25 apiece.

That's not the point. The point is that CDs are way more expensive than they should be.

What, you want I should do WITHOUT a BMW? What kind of asshole are you, this is the 21st century and I speak fluent English, so you just fuck off, we don't 'do without' anything.

Furthermore, I'm a music consumer, I like the idea of owning and consuming art and the act of purchasing it, with a secondary result being the benefit of the artist.

Just a heads up, I just put in a $200 order for the proper releases of albums I have dl'ed.

I think we should install change slots into our car radios. You know, you ought to pay for that stuff, you can't just give music away afterall! Heaven forbid, artists would actually have to craft good albums that stand out from the crowd in order to get a financial reward.