While I won't pretend that downloading is justified, I also believe that having to pay 17$ for a single album is beyond outrageous.

Hey, at least you lost Atreyu. If I had any Atreyu, I'd pay someone to take it off my hands - they're seriously that bad.

Honestly, if I lost all my music that wasn't on CD, I'd have to spend at most a few days picking through various websites to get it back. Most of it is free, legal stuff (Fireaxe, Heathen, Anacrusis, etc.) but losing my paid downloads would suck.

Oh the joys of having a external hard drive

Why should music cost money?


Are these explanations...


...not justifications?

Because it isn't free to record/distribute.

Because it costs money to make.

Why should you be entitled to hear an artists music? It's their creation to distribute as they please. Some musicians want you too hear their music and they distribute it for free. Some musicians charge a fee. You don't have to pay, but if you don't pay then you are stealing from them. No need to discuss the musicians who just don't want you to hear their music.

If you cannot afford to buy cd's, why not burn your downloaded music onto [writable] cd's.... you can get quite a lot of them for a little cost....

And this is why I will never buy music digitally, and always on CD. If you buy digitally over physically because of price then you're not shopping on the net hard enough.

Yes you can, my aunt is in the middle of ripping her (HUGE) vinyl collection to her computer right now. There are a multitude of technologies out there which can do this. Don't be naive.

I'll tell you right now, you're not getting any album in Australian stores for $17, so consider yourself lucky. Most albums cost between $27-$30, sometimes more, depending on what you're looking for.

Paying $17 for a meal at KFC is outrageous, too, but we still do that, right?

I'll admit that I do download albums I'm not certain on, but I'll almost always buy them if it's possible (if I like it, of course ). I understand that there's a lot of people that can't afford it, too, so downloading is the only option. I just feel for the artists who put their hearts, souls, sweat, time, and occasionally sperm traces into an album, only to have it leaked on the Internet and millions of people hear it for free. It's one downfall of the MySpace era.


I won't get into the stupidity of this comment, as others have already established that...but this is a stupid comment.

Im really pissed that I didnt keep my heal- there can be only one demo. The only cd i have is scratched(skips a little) and its impossible to find.

Wrong currency.

No, I mean appreciation as in I know more about music and have expanded my horizons by leagues.

I don't really care about having a big music collection - I think my CD collection is fair enough as it is.

ForNaught made the first worthwhile post in this thread... well, after this one:


Indeed. Why whine if you never paid for any of the stuff you "lost"?

I've never downloaded stuff unless the opportunity has been offered by the band itself. I've never used Napster or its descendants, it just doesn't seem worthwhile. A physical copy is a physical copy, and it's extremely rare to find an album that can't be found in that format with a bit of effort. I didn't buy virtually any CDs in 1992...1997, because I was broke as hell (well, I still am, but in a different way...). And I don't really think that "I'm poor, I'm allowed to download" is a viable defence for downloading. I fully agree with ForNaught's idea that spending the money on a CD makes one pay attention to it more than a lackluster skim after a downloading spree .

Most of my collection is second-hand. The prices have been varying between 1 and 14 euros, but mostly 8 euros or less. It's extremely rare for me to pay more than 12 euros for an album, though, and those I've bought at full price can probably be counted with my fingers. I'm a cheap bastard.

If all you did was delete the files, it's pretty easy to recover them... provided they weren't overwritten by new data by the file system, they're still on the hard drive, just not indexed as "visible" to you. Look for a program called restorer2000 or recover2000, or there might actually be better recovery software for this, as I've only done it with hard drives that failed (Master File Table errors).

i'm not going to read the rest of the thread THIS is the correct reply, it would take a natural disaster to "delete" my collection!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And because the artist waste their money and time into making it.

Me, I buy when I can, and if I have some money to spare. Empyreal's posts kind of explains it.

Edit: I do dream of having a huge CD collection though. I have only 15 real CD's at the moment... and 8 of them are promos

Shouldn't appreciation, not money, be the currency through which the value of art is derived?


I agree with this.


However, I don't believe that it's so commendable to devalue one's art by promulgating it to be a mere commodity, nor do I find ethically tolerable the practice of forcibly depriving a man of his earnings in exchange for the appreciation of any art or the absorption of any knowledge, though the latter is arguably hyperbole.

Admittedly, this is a bit of a spontaneous idea.

Well, obviously. Who'd go and buy a shitty band's shitty album? You said that "why should music cost money" and I replied to that. Shitty music shouldn't cost money, but there's a market for every type of music.

I have yet to know a band who pay their bills with people's appreciation...
Sure some cds are overpriced, but if you look at the right places you could find some for cheap.

I never got the point of buying a used CD. It doesn't help the band at all. You might as well download the album for free, it has the same impact on the band.

Exactly. I exclusively use my spare money on (metal) CDs, recording equipment or beer.

I do pirate music though, and get a good laugh from reading rants by whiny artists who think it's hurting them. (I'm not referring to ANYONE IN PARTICULAR.)

You're a fucking cunt dude. Do you have any idea how much time, effort, and energy goes into producing a CD? The years of practice and dedication required to learn to play an instrument or become good at recording/mixing music, the tremendous amount of money required to have good equipment to make good music, and the sheer effort required to actually make it? Nowadays, releasing an album is basically saying, "Here, this is my passion, blood, sweat, and tears. Enjoy it! And if you can, please help us continue making music by buying the merchandise we make."

What he said.

By the way, what kinds of legal mumbo-jumbo does such a situation involve if you bought MP3s from a webstore and consequently lost them in a crash? Are there stores that allow you to re-acquire lost mp3s without extra payments?

Serves you right, you fucking scrooge.

It can help the distributor or seller of CDs stay alive. That in itself is good too.

Yeah, its all well and good to talk about supporting the artists but if you buy predominantly used albums they aren't going to see any money from that. Luckily for me, my lust for physical copies doesn't really stem from wanting to line the artists pockets; I'm just fucking selfish and want to own an "official" copy of albums I enjoy.

I've never really been able to conceive of paying for digital copies of music. I would much rather steal the mp3's and grab the physical copy when I'm able to track it down.

This is how I see it really. I buy CDs so I'll have a physical copy, when I want to support the artists, I do it more directly via concerts and merchandise purchases.

[quote="This is how I see it really. I buy CDs so I'll have a physical copy, when I want to support the artists, I do it more directly via concerts and merchandise purchases.[/quote]

What % of album sales goes to a band vs the label? I would think if you really want to support a band buy a ticket and their merch. I usually send the band an email asking them if they have a preferred site for me to buy merch from that gets them the most money the fastest.

I buy all the cd's I enjoy by bands are active. I download most everything first though becuase i've lost so much money on bad albums by good/decent bands that I will never listen to.

If the file is too big (like 1 GB or bigger), it´s deleted straight, not staying in the recycle bin.

ok for all of you that are calling me an idiot about this comment , thats fine , i actually really dont care but I am not naive. I'm just saying that when there was only vinyl to be purchased you couldn't copy it as vinyl to vinyl ya know . I understand copying to cassette and mp3 to cd and yes i myself have a ttusb that allows me to put my records on cd's but I do not distribute that . they are for me . Honestly it just gets to me because any way you slice it IT IS FUCKING STEALING . I'm no angel , i aint saying that all I'm saying is tihis shit pisses me off . it is my opinion(i dont care what people think) and yes i was friends with hundreds of death metal bands back in the day and yes they woulda kicked the shit out of half the idiots out there that are mp3 whores if it was back in the day and they found out . most bands just want a return on what they put into their recordings thats all , it used to be used for stupid shit like amps flyers fanzines and yes to make more of the precious music that people horde of the internet .

If you download illegally, you shouldn't be pissed if it accidentally gets deleted. YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT AGAIN... FOR FREE!!!

Now if you are one of these people that actually buys mp3s from iTunes, well then you are an idiot. For the same price, you can buy a physical CD.

No, you were just saying that vinyl couldn't be taken from the internet, which it certainly can be - your very quote on the matter:

And since you already have such software or what have you, you knew that very well.

In any case, since MA no longer supports illegal downloading, and since this thread has become a circlejerking clusterfuck of similar responses and chastisements, I daresay a lock would not be a bad idea. Mods?

The downloading debate is as tedious as ever, but there were a few quality posts. I don't think much more could have been asked for, considering the OP was barely FFA material.

This comment made me envision a semi-circle of people around you.

You: I only have 15 CD's, 8 of which are promos.
Everyone: AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Nothing against you, but that is seriously what I thought of.

As for me, I'm heading towards the 400 mark...I'm too lazy to count them now, but it's got to be close to that now, surely. Doesn't touch AUTOPSY_666's collection, though.

exactly-"VINYL" can't be take from the internet, music can be stolen when some idiot puts it on the internet for thievery , I agree with your last comment though because this is becoming a raging fuckfest of opinions including mine .

Thanks, that's less than I would have thought, and I guess I'll try to get one sometime.