Apple Logic Pro /LogicExpress Discussion

--- Kamm Schreiner <kamm@...> wrote:

> In all seriousness though, this issue really hits
home for a lot of people
> in the music business.

> Kamm

And the 'grammy winners don't look poor' argument is
just so irrelevant.  For every hugely rich celebrity
rock star, there are countless bands and individual
musicians who are pushing self-produced cd's at
concerts, or who will never see more than the advance
that they spent on studio time, and an atmosphere of
rampant and easy file 'sharing' affects their bottom
line infinitely more than it affects Metallica,
Madonna, or any other multi-platinum artist.  

More and more, I find that younger kids don't consider
copying a cd to be any sort of a problem, and we need
to educate them about the issue.  At least when I was
a broke high school and college student, I KNEW that
taping a cd was theft, but it was all I could afford
so I did it anyway, but I also knew that if I really
liked the cd, I'd buy it when I could afford it,
because my copy was so inferior.  There is some
validity to the argument that a broke-ass college kid
downloading songs isn't affecting anyone's margins,
because they wouldn't have bought it anyway.  However,
the quality of the copies, even mp3 copies, is good
enough for most folks that they have no incentive to
pay for a high quality original, later.  I know that I
own legal copies of all the cd's I taped back in
college, but I don't think that will be true of the
people I see with, literally, thousands of downloaded
cd's.  

That's why the online music stores are such a good
thing for the industry.  Prices are cheap, but they
are selling an inferior product, so that's ok.  More
importantly, given the quality of today's music, it is
a great venue for buying individual songs.  I think
that most of the music I like really deserves to be
heard in the context of the whole album, and whole
albums of my favourite artists are often of high
quality from start to finish. Every once in a while,
however, a popular song grabs my interest, and we all
know that for many 'popular' artists, the rest of the
album is full of garbage being used to pad the one or
two 'singles' on the cd, so a $.99 purchase of a
single song at iTMS is perfect.  I pay for all kinds
of things I would never have bothered with a few years
ago, and my music collection is richer as a result.

Even worse than the file sharers, however, are the
record store employees.  Is anyone here friends with
someone who works at a music store?  Those people
bring home any cd they like, copy it, then bring it
back the next day to be rewrapped and sold as new. 
And they are getting full cd-quality copies, not
inferior mp3 or aac versions.  I have friends who work
at various record stores, and the theft is just
endemic, and their employers encourage it.  No matter
how much I try to impress upon them that they are
stealing real money from real people, it doesn't
change their behaviour.  And most of them are into the
kind of independant artists who are truly affected by
that kind of theft, too.  It ticks me off.

--sam



		
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