The music industry is so blinded by greed that it is turning on those who allow it to exist. Piracy lawsuits and threats against those who are buying their product will only hurt their business in the long run.
As a kid, i couldn't afford to buy music. Even if i could have my mother would not have let me buy the bands that i truly liked anyway. My music collection as a child consisted almost solely of copied tapes. i'd buy a bunch of cheap blank tapes and either give them to friends to copy music onto or borrow friends' tapes and copy them myself. Sometimes i was even copying copied tapes.
To say i was hurting the music industry would be incredibly short sighted. The alternative was not me buying music, that was not a possibility. If i wasn't listening to those taped tapes i would not have listened to music.
Those tapes helped to foster in me an insatiable appetite for music. As an adult i now own in excess of 600 pieces of PURCHASED music on various formats. Even if calculating with a modest average price of $10 per item that is at least $6,000 spent in recorded music alone. Add to that hundreds of bands seen live with ticket revenues. Lastly, sprinkle on band merchandise and i have become a life-long contributor to their fat-cat lifestyles.
i wish that ANY business in this country had the ability to take a moment, take a step back, and look at the long term effects of actions. Music distribution, sold or copied, is ultimately helping their bands and in turn them with fans that follow music for life. The older we get the more money we have to spend. If the music industry wants a part of that action they need to look the other way during those childhood years.
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