Some thoughts on music piracy.

• Parka

  26 Aug 03, 20:40

  Some thoughts on music piracy......
  
  I heard another friend lamenting that her sister's friend got fined for downloading mp3. $6000. That's more that the amount I have in my bank account, which means I would be bankrupt the moment they slap me with the fine.
  
  With the RIAA coming down hard on music downloaders themselves, I can already see some possible senarios that might happen as a result.
  
  In the event that RIAA manages to stamp down music piracy, people will resort back to the good old days: buying pirated CDs.
  
  Not only that, downloaders would start to form clans that share music, allowing only people they know in.
  
  I would belong to another clan, the pay per song, if music piracy is eradicated. I wouldn't buy audio CDs unless absolutely necessary. Why waste money buying an album hoping that all the songs are good. It's similar to buying a lottery ticket.
  
  As I was visiting some other forum, I discovered that David Tao's new album was copyrighted, meaning the CD was digitally created to prevent people from ripping it into mp3. Who's the winner here? People in that forum has already expressed distaste in this so called "error" CD. It doesn't play on some CD players, some CD roms and even Macintosh computers. Now who would want to buy that?
  
  With the clamping down on music piracy, online music store, I believe would be the ones with potential to make great profits. itunes from Apple sold 1 million songs in a week, at US$0.99 per song. But that's limited to Macintosh users.
  
  Windows users need to look in envy. There are also many online music stores coming out, like MusicNet, MusicNow, Pressplay, and Rhapsody. EMusic has a monthly subscription fee, US$15 per month, that allows the user to download 2000 songs per month. That's what I call value for money.
  
  So how much do music companies want to earn exactly? Are they asking us to pay for their effort in making music, or are they asking us to pay for music we wished we shouldn't have bought.
  
  
• SingaporeTyrannosaur

  26 Aug 03, 20:58

  They can't stem the tide, they can stop it or retard it, but if they are thinking it will return their profits, they are wishing in vain. Right now the people making the most money out of all this is not the music companies or the mp3. "pirates", but the army of lawyers who are cashing in on what they see to be a field of opportunity for them to bring in the big bucks.
  
  In the end, the music industry will only be left with customers who are completely annoyed with them and very rich lawyers.
  
  Even if I can't dl mp3.s it will be a long time before I buy their crappy albums.
  
  And that lame ad about piracy destroying little kids dreams... oh yeah right, dling mp3s will rob artistes of their rice bowl, as if they all so poor dun have cash like that. As a matter of fact, many of them are prehaps the most overpayed people on earth and they produce junk at the same time. If little kids want to be like them, their parents better straighten them out.
  
  So there.