I recently recieved in the mail a clear yellow 7" vinyl of Hellogoodbye's single, "When We First Met." When I called up a friend, fully prepared to wax poetic about the beauty of my new posession, she told me I was ridiculous, and that I should have just pirated the song instead.
For those who don't know, pirating music is the act of illegally downloading a song from the internet for free. This is illegal. Programs like limewire have made this a very simple process, though, and many people pirate music regardless of the legality.
Personally, I've always treasured physical CDs and LPs, and I've never understood the craze of pirating music. If no one buys a musician's music, how will he make money to make more music? In theory, it's a lack of morals that keeps individuals pirating music, but I believe it is more to do with the apathetic nature of today's society.
Being raised in the world of instant-access everything, kids today want music when they want it. So instead of getting a ride to the local CD store, hunting the racks for a specific album, and then waiting in line to finally purchase it, people are more likely to use an application like iTunes or Rhapsody. So with music literally at people's fingertips, why do they still pirate it?
If there was a bin of free things dropped at everyone's front door, it's almost guaranteed that everyone would sneak those things back inside and happily keep them, even if they knew the things probably weren't for them. The same thing applies to music. If we can get it for free, and everyone else does it already, why shouldn't we get it?
Due to these beliefs, however, bands are constantly forced to disband, unable to make enough money to release new music, dropped from labels, and pushed back into corporate 9-5 jobs. By pirating music, you destroy music. Can you live with that?
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