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  • » Name: Amanda Bassa
  • » Location: VA
  • » Member Since: 09/21/07
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The Undisputed Truth

To Buy? Or to Download?


September 27, 2007 | Tags: album sales, illegal downloading


A lot of music industry higher-ups like to blame illegal downloading on disappointing album sales these days.  Sure, downloading an album off the net after it leaks is technically stealing, but what are the artists really losing from this?



Do album sales really matter?



I’m sure beginning to wonder. For starters, a lot of people download albums or songs from artists that they know they wouldn’t spend money on if they couldn’t download things anyway, just so they can expand their musical knowledge and be able to speak on the stuff they don’t necessarily like. Some people download because they can’t afford to be out buying albums all the time, what with them being sometimes between $16-18 these days at the wrong spots. Some people download something, then go out and buy the real album the next day.



Yet all of these people could be considered criminals. Go figure. We’ll clog up our justice system trying to sue people for everything they got for downloading songs, yet there’s child molesters still running our streets. Oh, the logic.



ANYWAY, back to the point at hand…



These people may be jacking the small fraction of the sticker price of an album that the artist would actually see, but they are really giving the artist something valuable in return: free promotion. Back in the day when people bartered their goods for other goods, rather than for actual money such as we do in our debatably capitalist society today, this would have been a very successful concept. Think of how many people you know that download something then tell you about it shortly after they acquire it. Or perhaps they burn it onto a CD or put it on an iPod and blast it in the whip. They’re getting the artist’s name out there. That’s the hardest part of making it at anything you do in life – getting your name to a recognizable status. Somebody may not buy an album, but after they hear it they might like it enough that they’ll pay to see a live show. It all sort of evens out.



The question at the end of it all is this: should people who download albums really be considered the bad guys? The artist has a lot of other ways to make money. And from what I’ve seen, these downloading fiends do a damn good job at marketing artists. Is suing them for spending a couple hours on Limewire really the way for the artists to make more money? If anything, you’re alienating your audience by doing that.



 



Perhaps I will do a part deux to this blog exemplifying what I consider to be an example of proof of my theory. Look out for it. But for today, this is all you guys get. College does that to a girl.





The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the writer and not necessarily those of HipHopDX.com or Cheri Media Group.

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