I agree that it is stupid to go after your fan base like that. But people can legally do stupid things. I think it’s stupid for McDonalds to charge more money for 2 6-piece McNuggets than for 3 4-piece McNuggets, but they have every right to do so, and I don’t get to arbitrarily decide that I should only pay $1.50 for a 6-piece nugget.
I assume in many cases the music companies own the songs, because they have paid for the rights. If there is something immoral about how they get the rights to the songs, we should target that with legislation, but that’s a different issue. More artists are self-publishing these days, so they own their own songs.
Most songs cost 99 cents now, if you just want an MP3. I don’t know how much ITunes charges for WMA. On the other hand, even with the poorer-quality youtube video sound, there is a huge number of people using online tools to strip audio from youtube for their own collection. Sometimes the artist encourages this, other times it’s just taking something for free when it’s easy to buy it.
BTW, I understand the idea of downloading a song you want when there is no way to buy it anymore, because it’s out-of-print and nobody has ripped it. But if the song is on Amazon for 99 cents, you shouldn’t decide “I like that song, but I think 99 cents is too much to pay, so therefore I am justified in stealing it”.
My daughter, whom I’ve given enough lectures about this for her to understand the concept, was wondering what the problem was with SOPA, and why I didn’t support it given my disdain for people taking music for free. I explained that the biggest problem is it makes every content provided personally liable for what users do — like YouTube being able to be sued if a random video is posted and has a song in it that wasn’t properly sourced.
I think so long as a provider offers a way for content owners to get their property removed on request, we are good. I think that’s how things are today. I think some sort of new law is needed to protect from foreign theft, but SOPA as currently defined isn’t it.
BTW, It’s amazing how many MP3s are online now. I’ve been picking up MP3 albums from my college years, as part of my conversion of my old albums/tapes to MP3 so I can retire my oversized stereo system before it breaks for good. And sometimes I get entire albums for $4.99 (Amazon just had a sale) — I even bought a couple MP3 albums when I still had a perfectly good record, just because it was worth the $5 to not have to record each song on the album in my MP3 recorder and then enter the information for the file.
I can agree with almost all of that, except that in the case of YouTube, very often what you have is a video for which the audio may be available (very likely as a different recording) but the video is not available anywhere else, or is only available at some ridiculous price.* Personally, I almost never play YouTube vids just for the audio, and have yet to record audio from one, partially because the quality is so mediocre. Besides, if I like the music a lot, then I’ll buy the CD or DVD if it’s available.* However, the vids very often are entertaining, and it irks me to see material not available elsewhere taken down.
Though I understand and agree with your point about fan bases, my point is more that the music companies are missing a lot of potential sales by not simply asking posters to promote purchase of the CD’s or DVD’s, which can be of much higher quality. I think most posters would do that, and if it was marketed right, a lot of fans would respond.
In my younger years I taped everything I could, a lot of it off the radio... but I came to understand that it could sound a lot better, and eventually I ended up with a much larger than average record collection.
*In multiple instances I have paid $20 to $30 for a music DVD that I initially saw a piece of on YouTube, so that probably tells you where I am coming from. I would not pay over that, however, unless it was maybe for some very substantial work like a movies package (Lord of the Rings?) or something like that. I don’t have an income that will sustain more!
Also... You sound like someone who really enjoys music. I’ll bet that with the right speakers and a good amp, you’d eventually decide that MP3’s aren’t quite good enough. :-)