You cite a single article, which goes against the past two decades of experience, where illegal downloads have decimated much of the entire music industry.
When were these “two decades”? Illegal downloads in Western Europe and North America only flourished on a large scale for a decade or so, between the rise of Napster and the point when it began to feel more convenient to many people to pay on iTunes, use a streaming service, or just hear whatever you want to listen to free on YouTube. The traditional music industry was challenged by filesharing, but it has also been decimated by changing formats that diminish the importance of the whole album, and a glut of content where it’s hard to do promotion when you’re just a drop in the ocean.
People who torrent music – I am still one myself – can be passionate about it, but we are a shrinking minority.
Last month I bought another external harddisk as a second security copy for my photos (can sound like a cliche, but this was their sole purpose). They say me that I have to pay around 8 euro extra, because I could be a pirate. So I had been fined by a private company, not related with the maker of the hardware and with the complicity of the government. Not much different than if bankers would push and force the government to make everybody serve three months in jail; because "everybody could be a bank robber".
Law is based in the norm that you can't pay two times for the same crime. I had paid yet "for copying a few titles". I pay each time I buy a computer, a telephone or an SD target, so I feel morally vindicated to take a modest profit of my pre-crime also.
The music industry decimated itself, by being stuck in their backwards ways. They stagnated instead of innovating, and ignored the vast array of new technologies that became available to them.
They shunned digital distribution and preferred to bet on ill-conceived retrofitted DRM on CDs. They attempted to instigate a migration to new DRM-laden formats (DVD-A and SACD) with false claims of better sound quality. They completely neglected streaming possibilities until Spotify et al. came and caught them with their pants down. Now they are trying to milk the streaming companies as hard as they possibly can, killing their Golden Goose in the process.
They are seeing record profits from streaming, but they continue to tighten the leash.
look, i get that you've gotten yourself into a career where you're adjacent to the legal system so you have no ability to critically evaluate anything beyond "it is/isn't legal therefore it is/isn't good" but if you try talking to a young person you might realize the number of independent artists has been exploding every year for a decade and we now have more people creating quality music than ever before in the history of the world (more people per capita than ever before as well, I'd wager). the ability to share and expose others to these new artists faster and easier than ever before is what makes this possible. sorry that no one cares that the big record labels and top 40s that made all their money on CDs are losing ground to distribution methods that aren't utterly unable to adapt to the industry's current landscape
"we now have more people creating quality music than ever before in the history of the world"
Where exactly are you getting this? I find it extremely unlikely, and I'd bet the opposite. Just because it's now easier to discover artists, does not mean that there are more of them. My position is based on the many former artists I know who abandoned what they did b/c of the futility of being able to support themselves.
But the issue is bigger than just creating the most amount of art. On a moral level, an artist should have some ability to control how their art is distributed. Just because it can be easy or free for others to enjoy it doesn't mean that everyone is entitled to it.
>"we now have more people creating quality music than ever before in the history of the world"
Where exactly are you getting this? I find it extremely unlikely, and I'd bet the opposite. Just because it's now easier to discover artists, does not mean that there are more of them. My position is based on the many former artists I know who abandoned what they did b/c of the futility of being able to support themselves.
There are absolutely more bands now than ever before. In the olden days, you needed a studio full of expensive gear, and sound engineers to work the gear. You needed production facilities to press LPs/CDs and you needed distribution and promotion deals to get your name out there and make something for people to buy. All of this necessitated a big investment, so the concept of the record deal was born, and the labels grew fat and happy, mostly because they exploited the hell out of the struggling artists, with onerous contracts.
Even just being a garage musician was more expensive back then, as instruments and gear used to cost a lot more than it does today.
Today everyone with a PC can record music inexpensively. Reaper is an absolutely fantastic DAW and very fairly priced, and high quality audio interfaces with good preamps can be had for a couple hundred dollars. That's not to say that these people will produce anything of notable quality, but the bar is so low now that basically anyone can give it a go.
For promotion, you can very successfully go by word of mouth on social media, instead of relying on traditional promotion.
For distribution, it is easier now than every before. Anyone can create a Bandcamp profile and upload their music. Bandcamp handles the layouts, tagging, re-encoding and provides streamlined shopping, both for downloadable tracks and for physical merchandise. Their terms are easy and uncomplicated, there are no long confusing contracts, and they're extremely friendly and easy to deal with, in my experience. They take a 15% cut, which reduces to 10% if you sell over a certain amount per year: https://bandcamp.com/pricing
>But the issue is bigger than just creating the most amount of art. On a moral level, an artist should have some ability to control how their art is distributed. Just because it can be easy or free for others to enjoy it doesn't mean that everyone is entitled to it.
Yes, the artist should absolutely have control over how their art is distributed, which is why the big labels need to die, along with their onerous contracts and manipulation.
There are a lot more people than at any time in history. Getting food and housing is also significantly easier today than it was in (most of?) the past. It figures that there are a lot more people creating music today than at any time in the past.