cfitzarl said:
Let me put it this way;
You spend a large amount of time to create and write a song, you record it, and you are the sole owner of the song. You have no other job, and depend on the royalties for money. You used to make a lot of money from songwriting and singing and all of a sudded, your income is cut in half. You'd be pretty angry too. Just like if you made an OS and it got ripped, or you made a game and it got ripped. Especially with games and OS's, which take a
lot of money to make.
Now you decide
Obviously post count doesn't accurately depict wisdom
You truely don't understand what being a true musician is.
A true musician makes music because he loves music, and creating music. Music is what painting is to a painter. It's expression. That is the way a musician expresses themselves. When you talk do you want people to listen to you? Ill take the obvious answer. Its true that when you create music you put all your effort into it, but you want to be rewarded by it also. And people enjoying it is just enough. To make enough money off of record sales alone to live comfortably you MUST sell a million records. Record lables give you a very small portion from the price of the record, lets say 15 cents(Very good) but maybe for the whole band on an average of 25 cents a record. You must firther split it however many ways depending on how many people are in your band. SO lets say you make a record with 4 people in your band(counting you). You sell a million copies, thats platnium, extremely hard to achieve. Your record company gives your band 25 cents a record( extremely realistic to a big lable). that ammounts to around 250,000. Now split that 4 ways, 62,500. Now tax that, pay your producer also(if that was in the deal) buy musical equiptment for live play. ill say that will leave you with around 40,000...
doubleposting so i can finish what i have to say...
Now sense record sales don't pay you any more then an average office job how do rock stars live in mansions?
Live performances and merchandise...
I think It should be perfectly legal to download any song from any band, because all a musician wants is to be heard and if extremely lucky possibably be able to live off their music. If told anything else that source is a sell out.
I would say to download all your favorite artists albums. Then support them in their live show by buying a t-shirt and concert ticket with out complaint of the high prices.
Even if you downloaded every one of their albums you probably still will be giving them more money by just buying the t-shirt at a concert then buying everyy single one of their records in a corporate music store.
And if you buy cd's make sure its at a local record store not best buy/walmart/etc..