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by MeadowTheory
4292 days ago
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Most artists tour for years before signing to a major label, during which time they most likely book all their own shows, do their own promotion (with maybe a tiny bit of help from the venue). They have often released albums on a smaller indie label first, usually recorded on studio time for which they themselves paid. There are many artists that have made a living doing things like this for years and even decades, and they are harmed by a music culture which values artists purely based on the number of units of recordings they can move. It is not a simple binary choice between making things bad for the artists or good for the artists by pirating music or not. I personally think that piracy is the catalyst that will effect a tremendous and positive shift in the music industry, where the artistic qualities of the music and, importantly, the performance of music, take primacy over moving enough album units to hit the quarterly sales goal. Maybe the resulting industry will have a lower overall profitability, but maybe that's not entirely a bad thing, since most of the profits the recording industry has made were based on unethical business practices. The idea that this will spell the end of music because musicians won't be able to make a living is absurd and betrays your lack of vision and historical perspective |
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Piracy makes for great exposure. You can't eat exposure though. At some point a band has to make money if it's going to make a living, and piracy has made a big dent in that, even for small labels.