Many of the comments here state how I feel in a way, if you combine them all.
LEADPIG, I'll start with you just because it is simplest. If you DL a song, even if you go buy it later the RIAA says you stole, and should be sued / in jail. That right there is part of the dilemma, and I don't have an answer to get around it.
Some here have mentioned downloading music because they don't want to pay $15 for a CD when they only like 2 songs. I completely agree with this, in fact it is one of my biggest complaints. Considering the cost to make a CD is less than 25¢ it is insulting to make the consumer pay $15. There was an article I remember that quoted the RIAA back years ago when CD's first came out. They promised the consumers the cost of CD's would be down below $10 in a year or two, and go even lower after that because the how cheap they were to make compared to albums and cassette tapes. Has that ever even come close to happening?
If the record companies weren't so greedy I'd be more interested in buying entire albums. As it stands the money they charge an artist for "recording time" "advertising" "distribution" and other bloated charges are just insane.
Here's a part some of you may not believe but it is totally true. Back in 1993 or 1994 when I was first learning about the internet and computers I came up with an idea. A friend had downloaded a MIDI file of some classical music and I thought WOW! I said to him "Wouldn't it be cool if you could download songs 1 at a time for 50¢ each?" This was in the first days of being about to burn CD's and I thought man I'd love to make my own CD. I was thinking of all the old songs I had on cassette that I wanted. I wanted only 2 or 3 songs from an old Whitesnake cassette but didn't want to spend $15 on the CD. I really did think of this concept years ago but knew next to nothing about computers or where to even begin with something like this. My dream was to patent the "idea" and go to Sony, BMG, so on, have them give me the songs, and I'd run the company that sells them. Sony, whoever would get 30¢ of every 50¢ song sold, and the rest would cover operating expenses. I figured there wasn't a huge market for those "old" albums, and they'd jump at the chance to make money off songs that weren't selling on CD. I also figured there were tons of other people who would love to get that "one special" old song on CD and not have to buy a $15 CD of stuff they didn't want at all.
Yes I really did think of this but had no clue where to begin.
Anyway I have always been "for" paying money for individual songs, and once that was a reality I thought wow this is cool.
Until I learned about the DRM garbage. I figure if I BOUGHT the songe once I should be able to play it wherever I want, and copy it for personal use whenever I want. Where it got really complicated is old songs I already owned. I must own 200 cassette tapes all bought years ago. I paid for those songs, and I should be able to have those in digital format if I'd like. since no one has come up with a realistic solution to cleanly convert them I have downloaded a bunch of them. There is no way I'm going to pay again for "Trixter - Give it to me Good" just to have some nostalgic hair band fun. I already own it, so I am going to download it if I can to have my digital copy. It is not a re-mix, or different version that someone took time to produce or something, it is the same song.
Well those are a few of my thoughts on this, I do have more but I am sick of typing lol.
