2004-01-14 - 1:23 p.m.

It seemed like a great idea: upload the songs from your CDs onto your computer, converting them into MP3 format, and then you can share these files with your friends, while also downloading some of theirs. Your music collection, not to mention your taste and discrimination, is enhanced. This is equivalant to a poor man receiving free gourmet food. His culinary tastes are heightened -- no longer is he a poor man digging through garbage cans, no! He is a viruoso of rich sauces and fine wines. So it is with downloading music. Unfortunetly, this is angering the artists. They feel as if they are not getting paid for their talents. They are entitled to money, the physical fruits of their labour. I know we're all sick of hearing it, but I must say something at this point.
It is nice to receive a cash reward for something you have produced, something that others find enjoyable enough to pay for. But whatever happened to doing something because you love doing it? I am not saying that musical "artists" don't deserve a paycheck, but I am saying that perhaps the musical industry is forgetting what art is about. Let's not forget that Edgar Allan Poe died homeless and lonely in a gutter. Nowadays, art is not done by someone for the sole purpose of self-expression -- there is greediness involved, the lust for money to buy new clothes, which will then enhance your public image and win you more money. We are lucky enough to be alive to see this wonderful evolution of art: artists being mass produced to emit the same crappy music to slightly altered melodies and the old and tired whiney vocals. This greed and forgetting the true meaning of art seems like a logical follow-up of that.
I am not going to stop downloading music, for free, onto my computer. The artists put up a fuss about it, but does anyone notice that there are thousands of people with reproductions of famous paintings in their houses, paintings which were not done by the artists? Isn't this stealing, too? The difference between buying an original Rembrant and purchasing a reproduction seems akin to the difference between purchasing CDs and downloading MP3s: one is cheaper and easier, and the other will cost you too much money and can be a real pain in the bum (in most places, you can't go shopping for CDs in your underpants).
When I download instead of buy, I am asserting my right as a consumer to choose not to shop at CD stores where the little plastic discs are overpriced and the service is sub par at best and can be, and usually is, downright rude. Plus, where besides peer-to-peer networks can I find that elusive cover of "Sunday, Bloody, Sunday" by The Electric Hellfire Club, or find a Lower Class Brats CD? I choose not to pay twenty dollars for a CD with about eleven songs, some of which I may not even like, instead downloading only songs I like and burning them onto blank CDs for less than a dollar; and more songs can fit, too.

There is just one more point I'd like to make before I am done, and that is this: file-sharing programs have broadened my taste in music and allowed me to experience bands whom I had either never heard of or would never listen to unless it was free. Some of my favorite bands I discovered through file-sharing programs, and now that I know that they exist, I will be attending their shows or concerts, buying their posters, and I may even buy some of their CDs, because there are actually some bands I do want to patronize. Some bands work for more than just their next paycheck, and I respect that. The bands that are only in it for the cash, however, will never get a single penny from me.