Maybe I'm just a goody-goody who was brought up "right" and likes to follow the rules. Certainly I think of myself as Responsible. I find myself at a loss to understand how the whole music industry could be in such turmoil based on the widespread illegal downloading of music in bulk.
I try to stay connected with what's going on in the music industry, and I can certainly see that it's a real problem. Total music sales are way down. It's logical that CD sales have fallen off drastically with the availability of good online options for accessing music. But less logically to me, a lot of people seem to be resistant to paying for music downloads, despite the cost of music being the lowest ever. I guess I equate stealing music to driving down the side of the highway to bypass a traffic jam... it appears to put personal gain ahead of the good of society.
Personally, I still like to get my hands on a nice CD once in awhile, but I will admit there are few options to find a good selection of CDs at reasonable prices, particularly after the demise of Vancouver's A&B Sound a few years ago. So mostly I buy online, pretty much exclusively from iTunes. As a consumer, the shopping experience there is pretty good, the prices are better than brick and mortar stores, and of course there's the instant gratification factor.
I know quite a lot of people who claim music collections in the many tens of thousands of songs. My iTunes is a bit over 2500 songs, which I find to be quite a lot of music. And I find it hard to truly appreciate all the music I have, which leaves me scratching my head about how people can enjoy collections an order of magnitude bigger than that.
I loaded my whole CD collection into iTunes a number of years back and enjoyed listening to my music on the computer while I worked. The addition of an iPod made that experience much more mobile and enjoyable. For many years, I mostly played my tunes randomly, listening to whatever came up. Or skipping the tune if I wasn't in the mood for it.
My iPhone 3G has changed my habits a bit. With 16G for music, apps, photos, etc. I've found that I can't load all my music on the iPhone. So I have become somewhat brutal with it, and offload anything that gets less than 3 stars in my rating system, since I only have space for about 1500 songs. New music isn't rated, and gets on the iPhone until I've given it stars.
What I found interesting, though, was that I've also started listening to Albums a lot more than I did, and really getting a bit more into the "old" music experience. With so much music coming to us so easily, it's hard to get the level of appreciation I used to have for albums I'd had to save to buy. I used to listen to new albums many times, and read all the liner notes. In the past few years that wasn't happening for me, and I wasn't enjoying the new music I bought as much as in the old days. But my new focus on ensuring I listen to new stuff quite a few times is paying off in a deeper appreciation for that music. [I'm also thrilled that liner notes are starting to reappear in a lot of downloadable albums... Joe Bonamassa's Black Rock is a great example.]
A nice side-effect of the new technology, though, is that I can throw out the crappy tunes, and pare down albums after a number of listens to include only the material that I think is good. And I suspect that because I then don't have to listen to the mediocre tracks, I get more enjoyment out of the remainder of the album.
Of course, many good albums have little or no material that I dislike. But some others still turn out to be full of quite a few dogs, even though I've typically test listened to the 30-second samples on iTunes before buying.
I appreciate the huge effort it takes to make an album, and I want to ensure I support the artists who are creating great new music. It makes no sense to me to steal the material, when music is so important to my enjoyment of life. I probably get twice the new music per year now than I did 10 years ago, despite paying probably a similar amount of money. And right now, I'm probably enjoying that new music more than I did 10 years back, so to me this is win-win.
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What's wrong with paying for music?
Maybe I'm just a goody-goody who was brought up "right" and likes to follow the rules. Certainly I think of myself as Responsible. I find myself at a loss to understand how the whole music industry could be in such turmoil based on the widespread illegal downloading of music in bulk.
I try to stay connected with what's going on in the music industry, and I can certainly see that it's a real problem. Total music sales are way down. It's logical that CD sales have fallen off drastically with the availability of good online options for accessing music. But less logically to me, a lot of people seem to be resistant to paying for music downloads, despite the cost of music being the lowest ever. I guess I equate stealing music to driving down the side of the highway to bypass a traffic jam... it appears to put personal gain ahead of the good of society.
Personally, I still like to get my hands on a nice CD once in awhile, but I will admit there are few options to find a good selection of CDs at reasonable prices, particularly after the demise of Vancouver's A&B Sound a few years ago. So mostly I buy online, pretty much exclusively from iTunes. As a consumer, the shopping experience there is pretty good, the prices are better than brick and mortar stores, and of course there's the instant gratification factor.
I know quite a lot of people who claim music collections in the many tens of thousands of songs. My iTunes is a bit over 2500 songs, which I find to be quite a lot of music. And I find it hard to truly appreciate all the music I have, which leaves me scratching my head about how people can enjoy collections an order of magnitude bigger than that.
I loaded my whole CD collection into iTunes a number of years back and enjoyed listening to my music on the computer while I worked. The addition of an iPod made that experience much more mobile and enjoyable. For many years, I mostly played my tunes randomly, listening to whatever came up. Or skipping the tune if I wasn't in the mood for it.
My iPhone 3G has changed my habits a bit. With 16G for music, apps, photos, etc. I've found that I can't load all my music on the iPhone. So I have become somewhat brutal with it, and offload anything that gets less than 3 stars in my rating system, since I only have space for about 1500 songs. New music isn't rated, and gets on the iPhone until I've given it stars.
What I found interesting, though, was that I've also started listening to Albums a lot more than I did, and really getting a bit more into the "old" music experience. With so much music coming to us so easily, it's hard to get the level of appreciation I used to have for albums I'd had to save to buy. I used to listen to new albums many times, and read all the liner notes. In the past few years that wasn't happening for me, and I wasn't enjoying the new music I bought as much as in the old days. But my new focus on ensuring I listen to new stuff quite a few times is paying off in a deeper appreciation for that music. [I'm also thrilled that liner notes are starting to reappear in a lot of downloadable albums... Joe Bonamassa's Black Rock is a great example.]
A nice side-effect of the new technology, though, is that I can throw out the crappy tunes, and pare down albums after a number of listens to include only the material that I think is good. And I suspect that because I then don't have to listen to the mediocre tracks, I get more enjoyment out of the remainder of the album.
Of course, many good albums have little or no material that I dislike. But some others still turn out to be full of quite a few dogs, even though I've typically test listened to the 30-second samples on iTunes before buying.
I appreciate the huge effort it takes to make an album, and I want to ensure I support the artists who are creating great new music. It makes no sense to me to steal the material, when music is so important to my enjoyment of life. I probably get twice the new music per year now than I did 10 years ago, despite paying probably a similar amount of money. And right now, I'm probably enjoying that new music more than I did 10 years back, so to me this is win-win.