[Zepp88]

Originally Posted by Xaios

Imagine you're an artist of some sort, even a painter. You're the kind of painter who puts his soul into his work. You make some paintings that you're pretty damn proud of, and that even by critical standards are well received. So you decide to hold an expo to try and sell off your work, because you've gotta make a living, not to mention recoup the costs of materials. Someone comes to your expo, grabs a painting, sticks it under his arm, and just walks off. When you go "Hey man, what the flying fuck are you doing?!?", he turns to you and says "Well, the publicly accepted stance is that paying for music is bullshit, so I reason that this applies to your creative output as well."

Downloading is bullshit. If a band offers something up for free, that's one thing, because the people who created it have said "okay, we can give this away." If someone pirates an album and sticks it on bit-torrent, that's another, because he has no right to make that call.

If you like a band, pay for their music, because you're ensuring that they can make more of it. By not paying for it, you're saying that it's not worth paying for. And if you don't want to pay for it, you have no right to possess it.

I pretty much agree with this. Personally as a musician I would certainly release a lot of cool stuff for free, because that's what the people want, and that's what I want them to have, I would just hope that an album sale and a fan would be the result.