paying for copied music

silverside

Just thinking about the ethics of downloading music.

I have a fair-sized collection of mp3's acquired from various sources, along with a cd collection.

Now if I know a CD is good I will buy it. However I don't want to buy half a dozen cd's just to find one good one. So I listen to other peoples stuff and MP3's first.

But what when you feel you should pay for something good? I feel like throwing the artists a fiver or a tenner for their work. But I don't really need another CD which will just go into a drawer after I have ripped the MP3's from it. And I think paying a dollar a track for restricted files on Itunes or something is still a rip-off.

What does anyone else do? Ignore the ethics of it? Buy the CD?

Is there an internet 'conscience box' somewhere?

Paddy20

Personally, I just download from that Moscow website where they charge a small fee and apparently do pay royaltie's.

silverside

I already have a few solid weeks worth of music downloaded, thanks to campus broadband

impr0v

i suffer from conscience too and if i download something i like and i feel is def worth the money i will generally buy one of the artists other cds or something..

weemcd

no concience whatsover when it comes to downloading, plus anything i usually download, the artists are already fairly well known.

Dr_Teeth

The iTunes Music Store (http://www.apple.com/itunes/) should be available here in a couple of months time. It will be a good way to cheaply pay for the 1-2 tracks you want to listen to legally, without having to go into HMV and pay a rip-off price for the full album.

Buy and download the tracks you want for 99c each, then burn them onto a CD and you're all set.

Teeth.

sci0x

Also Eircom.net have a Music Club where you can download music and they have about 200,000 tracks available for download from the site for about €1.

silverside

I reckon 99c a track is still too expensive. If there are 14 tracks on the average album, that comes to the same price as buying the CD from amazon or cdwow. Because they have basically no physical costs, I thought it should be much cheaper.

not to mention the fact that MP3s are definitely lower quality than CD's.

weemcd

^ plus the charge on your telephone bill making music more expensive that way, id imagine that will send people back to buying cd's wasting what little effort that has been made to embrace downloading

sci0x

Just looked at Eircom's Music Club pricing list. For €9.99 you get 1000 credits; by the service's reckoning, you can download 10 permenant songs for that amount. In reality, the newer the song, the more it costs you - up to 189 credits - so if you download recent tracks, you get much less then that. You could end up downloading 6 or 7 tracks for a tenner. I think i'll stick to downloading from iMesh!

elivsvonchiaing

I just don't buy CDs in Ireland. When the govt took off the vat 3 weeks later you were still paying the same price.

Rip to yer hearts content and buy the occasional CD abroad/on the net (where you aren't hit with Irish vat! - that really sucks imho).

This was and will remain a complete rip-off industry. So feel moral about milking the net and buying the occasional CD from CDWOW etc.

If you meet the artist buy him/her a drink - this will be worth more to them than if you bought their CD - this is just an illustration btw. I am not suggesting you actually do this- unless you know them.

John R

If they have an official mailing address you could always mail a euro in the post I suppose, the artists' royalties per CD is not much more than that anyway.
Going to gigs is the best way to support artists, particularly less successful acts and if you want to by a cd then buying at a gig will give a bigger % to the artist too.

John R

As far as i-tunes and all those other download sites (excepting the Russian ones) the prices are as bad if not worse than HMV and co, considering what you get and the other costs involved I wouldn't pay more than 20c per song for a good quality mp3. €1 and over per track in a low-medium quality DRM infested file is daylight robbery.

elivsvonchiaing

I do not want to kill any of these sites so let's play charades In Google type music and hint: "Serious rain". Do you want to kill them? Think about before posting perhaps?

John R

elivsvonchiaing wrote:

I do not want to kill any of these sites so let's play charades In Google type music and hint: "Serious rain". Do you want to kill them? Think about before posting perhaps?

Was that directed at me? If so wtf are you on about?
(If it wasn't directed at me I'd still like to know wtf you are on about.)

elivsvonchiaing

John R wrote:

Was that directed at me? If so wtf are you on about?
(If it wasn't directed at me I'd still like to know wtf you are on about.)

Absolutely not. Just flabergasted that people pay for music to dodgy institutions. Band's website is the only place when talkling mp3s imho. :rolleyes: PM sent.

boo4842

I used to buy about 2 CD's a week for years. I have hundreds of CD's in my collection, some I wanted jst to have and have NEVER listened to. That being said I think I have bought 2 CD's in the past 4 years. U2 best of and Beatles anthology.

I have gigs of mp3's. Many from CD's I allready own, but can't be bothered to root through and listen too. i don't even think I've listened to a non-burned CD in years. mp3's are so much more convenient.

I think in 5-10 years when speeds go up. You won't see any video stores around. You will be able to download a full length DVD for a fraction of the cost and play it for x amount of days.

And yes €1 is a ripoff for 1 song considering the costs of distributon, storage and labour are negligable for an online service. I used to work at the head office of a major music retailer and the markup on CD's is surprsingly low. ITs the suppliers, the big record labels that really make the money.