I go the used route on Amazon quite a bit myself, but sometimes a new copy is less expensive than used for some reason. Obviously if a cd is 3 bucks used and 30 new, who wouldn't wanna go the used route. But I still tend to buy new (from amazon or another site) if it's only a few dollars more than the used copies.

Well yeah, that makes sense. Especially since if you buy a brand new copy from the official Amazon store there is much less chance of a fuck up happening. But I'm still not paying $45 for a copy of ARK - Burn the Sun, so I'll just stick with a download for a while...

Yeah, what's the ETHICAL difference between buying a CD pre-owned and simply downloading a free copy off the web? Either way, no money goes to the band or label. I mean, you could argue that the person who sold the CD may now have more money to re-invest in new CDs, but that's more than a small stretch. I guess you could also conject that if there was no demand for used CDs whatsoever, fewer people would purchase albums new since they'd be aware there'd be no way to recoup their losses if they wanted to get rid of it.

But still. Outside of these tragedy of the commons hypotheticals, I fail to see much moral difference between the two.

I buy cd's because i like having physical copies of the music i like....odin forbid my pc gets fucked, at least i have cd's.

CDs absolutely do cost $20 sometimes, and even more. The Barnes & Noble where I live had Burzum's 'Filosofem' reissue for $22. The FYE has Blind Guardian's 'Memories of a Time to Come' (2CD version) for fucking $45! I realize those are abnormally high, but the point is that it does happen.

I pirate albums and I don't feel bad about it. If I like an album I try to buy it, but I don't want to be kept from listening to it until I find a good offer. Downloading music has helped me discover a ton of bands, so the artists should have nothing to complain about. Ethics are far less real than the economic interests involved in this.

For the record: I find people who claim it's their right to perform illegal downloads as annoying as people who claim it's unethical. They both are being dishonest about their intentions and accomplish nothing.

Re-releases typically will be cheaper than an original, especially if it's a collectors item.

When you buy a used CD, somebody is still getting money. And even then - it promotes interest in the music and keeps people discovering new bands. For bands that are underground and really new, well obviously I'd go ahead and just buy brand new from their labels - that's the best way to go about it. But for anything else, older stuff from way back in a band's past and whatnot, honestly I don't see a problem buying used. Like trading used to be, I'd guess - just a way to keep interest up. Downloading I don't see something fundamentally wrong with either in that case. If I buy about three or four CDs every few weeks and every once in a while, download something I can't find very easily, no real harm there at all. Like I said on the previous page, the worst kind of downloaders are just the ones who act like it's some kind of right to do it and never buy anything at all. Buying new CDs straight from underground labels is the best way to go. But if people are interested in a band's music, aware of it, and can spread the word, that's at least a little bit of gain in and of itself. It's really just a case by case thing. It's hard to lay down some kind of law about this stuff.

I have a pretty decent sized collection mostly full of new releases bought from respectable labels, by the by. Just so you don't think I'm trying to make the kind of excuses I said I abhorred before.

I'd love to buy more CDs, but I just can't afford to do it as often as I'd like to, hence I tend to pirate. Also, not owing a stereo might have something to do with it. I mean, I would probably try to purchase CDs more often if I didn't listen music almost exclusively from my computer.

This is another thing I'd like to point out. Piracy is also rampant during hard economic times. No one is willing to spend their entire day's paycheck on an album that may turn out to be complete shit.

That's why Spotify and Youtube are so useful. You can hear the entire album before deciding whether or not to buy, while showing support to the bands you're listening to and upping their play counts. I'll make a blind purchase on a cd that just "looks cool" if it's $2 in a pawn shop, but gone are the days of paying $18 for a cd based on 30 second samples on CD Universe.

And then there's the bands/albums I already know I want, so I refuse to listen to the whole thing until I get the actual cd.

Hang on, everyone's missing the point. Neither restaurants nor liquor stores follow the same model as retail.

Restaurants do not freely distribute little portions of their food to entice you to purchase a full meal. Liquor stores do not mail you free samples to try to get you to come in and buy a whole bottle. The trailers produced by movie studios are really just advertising, not samples, and everyone knows they're bullshit anyway. Publishers are starting to get into the free sample game, which is good.

And in any case, understand this - if a meal ends up being terrible or a bottle poisons you, yes you ARE entitled to your money back! And you should ask for it. Most people don't bother and just bitch about it later, just as most people don't bother to download individual songs (legally) and continue to shell out full retail. And hello, you can always return the CDs.

A calculated return rate is built in to every retail outlet's business model. All of them, no matter what they sell. If people find out, after they've made the purchase, that the product is utter shit, it is a calculated certainty that most people won't go through the hassle of returning the item. Therefore it is most cost effective to produce just enough quality to keep people buying, and no more.

Well, why not just release just the quality then? Why bother with 2 promotable songs and 6 or more filler songs? Because two promotable songs could only sell for $1.98 maybe, whereas filler doesn't cost appreciably more to produce yet enables you to charge (on average) about $9.99 for a full length CD, during initial release. And there's where record companies are different from other manufacturers of pop culture. It's all a trick. It's like the potato chip bag that's actually only 50% chips and inflated with air to look fuller. It's bullshit and it rubs people the wrong way.

But like I said in my post awhile back, there wasn't much anyone could do about it. If you wanted any music, at all, then you shelled out retail. The record companies had a great opportunity to increase their bottom line astronomically by adopting electronic means (downloading) as their main form of distribution, but instead they fought it. They fought for no fucking good reason. They fought it because even though there was great potential in it, they would have to stop with the bullshit. And they didn't want to stop. Over the decades, bullshit had replaced quality as their main profit engine.

Everytime I go to a restaurant, within minutes of getting the order, the waitress always asks how the meal is. Id assume if you dont like it, theyd replace it.
Returning cds? Ive never known ANY store that lets you return a cd, unless its unopened or defective. Only way is to take it to a used cd place and get, usually at the most $4 for it.

That's not the same though. A restaurant is responsible for the food they serve you because they made it. Their livelihood depends on people liking the food they make, or else word will spread and they'll eventually go out of business. A record store does not make the products they sell; their only responsibility to the consumer is that the item function, not that it be to the consumer's liking.

Most cd stores I know would only give you around $1 cash for any cd (maybe a few bucks more if you intend on TRADING it for something else). Even if you buy a brand new cd and immediately take it to your car to listen and then deem it terrible, they'll try to give you a dollar if you walk back in and try to give it back. That's just how it works, though. You ought to not shell out $15.99 for a cd you've never heard any more than you should shell out that money at a restaurant for food you've never had and aren't sure you'll like. I guess the point is, if you don't wanna risk getting "screwed", stick with what you know you already like. Buyer beware, indeed.

When I used to buy cd's, I almost always bought the "limited/special" edition(depending on the price). All you overpay for is the packaging, since you could easily find a lot of those albums still. The bonus dvd's are easily found on youtube. I just think it's unnecessary for bands to be making videos, when it would just be on youtube anyways, when its costing them money to do it.
To be more on topic, have any record companies actually gone out of business because of downloading? I dont know of any, but apparently David Vincent does in that interview he did when Illud came out.

Basically I download music because I can't afford it. Sure I could probably afford the odd CD now and then, but I never listen to CDs anyway, it's just quicker and easier to listen to it all on my computer. As for the whole 'there's nothing like actually owning the album' - I get it, but it was only for the first time I looked at it and played it. I know it probably works out at some insignificant number, but I'm also conscious of the amount of unnecessary plastic that comes with owning all the albums on CD, vinyl and tape. I'm thinking of selling my CDs tbh, they're just collecting dust. The same idea goes with books and Kindles - it's so nice to have all your stuff in one place and to get rid of all that 'clutter'. Maybe if more artists were going down the crowdfunding route I'd be more inclined to give a few quid here and there. I've noticed Cloudkicker and Alaskan have already taken this route as I'm sure many others have. As a few people have said, just make acquiring music quicker and easier.

I know artists need the money, but I think they're going to make music whether they make money on it or not. Sure a helping hand from sales are nice but I'm fairly sure they don't see much from album sales anyway, it's all merch and touring.

Call me a liar if anyone will, but I do not download a single thing. I buy ALL of my music. When I was in school I got SGD$40 from my parents, and every week I went down to a metal-only music store called Hell's Labyrinth(at the time, run by Mike Priest, ex-Impiety, Absence Of The Sacred) and spent $28 on an album I wanted or an album he'd recommend. Got by on $12 by buying the cheapest food available in school, or making a sandwich at home instead of buying breakfast. It also helped that a cuppa only cost 20 cents in school

I'm not saying everyone should do the same. Download all you like. I've uploaded a bunch of songs from my band(in my sig) on youtube, if you use a video converter and rip the audio, listen to it everyday and claim to love it but just refuse to spend a cent via the 3-4 easily ways to get the songs/albums, I don't care either. But downloading IS piracy, and piracy IS wrong because it is THEFT. If you want to do it, just do it. Trying to justify it with all the pathetic arguments I've seen in this thread is laughable and displays a lack of confidence in your own actions and insecurity in your own moral fibre.

Can't be. Theft means things go missing.


100% agree.

Can't tell if serious. But...he's not getting money. Not getting compensation for labor, when one expects compensation for labor, is theft (slavery is theft, here, yes)

If it was slavery you'd be forcing the artist to work. It's piracy. Why are people always insisting it's also something else if the term is specifically meant to describe something that is not those things. The reason is of rhetorical nature of course. One says piracy is theft to give it a bad rep, not because it's anything like theft.

Juristically the ownership of ideas and the prosecution of unpermitted duplication of information became an issue as late as the 17. century, the prosecution of material theft is as old as the concept of ownership. That's how little these two things have to do with each other.

Slavery is a bit much, but Frog has a point and you're being a bit willfully obtuse. It's not theft in the traditional sense, but there is money being lost. This is coming from someone who downloads a lot BTW.

On a side note, I used to post at a forum with a somewhat similar discussion to this, except with movies. A poster had a subscription to Netflix and justified he could download any movie he wanted via torrents and whatnot because he was paying Netflix the $15 or whatever it is. His rationale was that it "all goes to the same place" meaning Hollywood in general, I guess. I disagreed with him, but that's a different story. Do you think subscribing to something like a music subscription service should allow you to download any file from Mediafire or
Rapidshare and still be in the moral right?

I see why you'd call me obtuse, that's implying I'm refusing to aknowledge an obvious link between these things. But my point is that this link is a misconception based on moral bias which keeps people from asking the right questions, that is, juristical and materialistic questions. "Piracy is theft" is nothing more than a moral point, but moralty is 100% subjective and therefore something that needs to be dealt with last, not first.

I used to always download albums and buy rarely. However I decided I wanted to have my own music collection so started buying music again. Sometimes used on discogs. I think if bands release vinyls they should always give a download code or else give the cd version with it. I had to download albums that I have on vinyl just so I can listen to them when I'm out of the house. Just creates pointless downloading.

This is the first time I'm hearing of this perspective. Pretty interesting! I have a Netflix subscription too, but I've never looked into how they compensate the content providers. Do they receive royalties for each play?

I use Spotify almost exclusively now. I recently gave away all my CDs (with just a couple exceptions) and even purged my digital library. So here is something I'd be interested in hearing opinions on: Does anyone think it is morally dubious to sell or give away the hard copy of an album, but keep a rip?

If you sell used albums, you are "hurting" the artist in roughly the same way as if you are pirating them: "Lost" sales. Especially if you wouldn't sell the album if you couldn't keep a ripped copy. If that's something you care about, don't do it.

If you rip the album and then sell the copy to some one else. You made a piracy act and its illegal, if you just sold the album as "used" to some one else its not hurting the artist because albums are durable goods that last you longer than a year under proper circumstances and maintenance. You can say that reselling ANYTHING hurts the original sellers. Cars (hurts GM), furniture (hurts IKEA), your bike hurts Giant). The seller got their money for the product once and why should they get money again for it if (theoretically speaking if some money paid for a used CD still went back to the artist in some way).

So I dont see how you can say that reselling an item is like stealing from the original seller.

Piracy in itself is getting a product or a service without an exchange of any monetary value. There is a monetary exchange for a product - between two sides. No one said that one of the sides MUST be the original owner/producer/seller.

When you said that piracy isn't theft because stuff goes not go missing - thus its not theft. You took a product/service and didnt pay for it. Its not about it going missing. Shrink counseling doesn't go missing, its ideas and words in the air, but if you dont pay for your session - you steal from that person the time they invest, the money they invest. Same goes for music, there time and money invested into it. If the product/service was offered for free then you are ok but if the product/service has a price tag on it regardless if its physical/tangible, and you didnt pay for it you perform an act of theft.

My view between movies and music as far as piracy are almost opposite. I used to always buy cds and lately, Ive bought a few albums, either cause I love the bands and/or the albums were cheap....
As far as movies, when Hollywood is milking franchises and giving actors ridiculous salaries(ahem, johnny depp) and films ridiculous budgets, not to mention it costs so much to go to the movies. Personally, I try to find movie ticket deals online, but I never actually buy food. Theyre also trying to milk 3d, which id say maybe 10% of the 3d movies Ive seen have actually been worth it. Theres also remakes/reboots. So do I care if hollywood is "losing money" due to piracy? Hell no.

I didn't say anything like that. Please pay attention. I think I explained my standpoint sufficiently.

Used cd's cant be hurting artists that bad, since people have been doing that for what, 20 years? Ive never heard a single band complain about it. The metal section at the store I used to go to was a very small fraction of what they had.
The main one they had were pop/mainstream, or trendy shit that lasted for a few months. Ive traded way more cd's than Ive actually bought. When I traded, it was usually $3 a cd, which was roughly 3 for 1 album. I havent been to the place I used to go to, since last time I was there, they didnt take 3/4's of my stuff, since they were "too scratched". Ive put everything on amazon and have sold roughly 75% of my collection. It works out better, since you actually get money, instead of store credit(though you could get cash, but it was a dollar off each cd).

Even if a cd is bought used, at least it's keeping interest in a band up. If I had a cd out, I'd be happy with someone getting it regardless of whether they got it new or used. In some cases, it's just something like 80% cheaper to get a used cd, and I don't think alot of us are made of money. If I was made of money, I'd go online and add ridiculous amounts of brand new cd's to my cart. But that's not gonna happen. I buy cd's new mostly from my favorite bands. Most of the rest I buy, are random cheap ($2 or $3, usually) used cd's. Half of them end up sucking, so I trade them back in. If they won't take what you have to trade, just go back the next day. With my experience, one employee might turn down everything you have, and another will take literally everything.

Couldn't the same be said for downloading, though? I learned to download music using tools like limewire and morpheus long before I ever purchased a single CD. And I don't think bands complaining about it makes much of a difference, partially because this existed at one point:



Do you feel the same way about someone who downloaded an album without paying? It seems to me that downloading has the potential to keep interest in a band high as well, and more efficiently so since it becomes much easier to acquire.

And more to the initial point in the OP, I think that there is no way to reduce CD piracy. The focus should instead be on a general increase of CD sales by broadening the base. I think that one way of doing this would be by informing people of the sound quality difference between the average downloaded file (be it legal or otherwise), and the quality of the CD in terms of bitrates. Granted, it would be slightly misleading since many or most people would not be able to hear any difference anyway, but it may put a band-aid over the gaping hole on the sinking ship.

Downloading could keep interest up, I suppose, but some people have 20,000 downloaded songs on their hard drive that they'll never listen to, but you don't see as many with giant libraries of actual cd's because that takes more effort. I'm not anti downloading, but it simply means more to pay money for an album, even if you're only supporting a used cd store, at least you're supporting music on a whole.

Like I said before, most of us ain't rich, but definitely don't be one that downloads entire discographies and purchases nothing.

By the looks of this thread, there are more than enough people interested in owning physical copies of things that piracy has effectively been defeated already. It may be happening, but it isn't hurting anyone. If some broke ass motherfucker who wasn't going to buy the album anyway gets a free download of something, he has not removed a dime from the band's pocket. I never understood why people gave a shit about ending album piracy. Is it just a way to further justify to yourself all the thousands of $$$ you spent on metal albums?

As for the topic.. Uhh.. Maybe a drastic decrease in the cost of CDs would help reduce piracy. PEople download shit because they can't afford to buy it. Surprising, I know. I would love to own every album in existence on vinyl and stare in wonder at the beautiful artwork as I remove them from my enormous rack, but I am a poor metalhead who cannot afford such luxuries. Collectors need to realize that piracy is not a bad thing at all. Besides, real artists do not write music to make money.

edit: heh.. enormous rack.

I know five or six people personally with extremely large record collections. edit: not 20,000 big, but you get my point.

I think the amount of people who buy music are usually people who actively buys music. It's not a every-now-and-then thing like with pop music. I go look for music like people go looking for clothes. People like me keep the music industry alive and I download a lot of music. But the music I usually download is older stuff (70's and 80's metal, 80's and 90's punk/grindcore, etc.) so to even think that what I am downloading is taking away from a company in my opinion is ridiculous.

If there was a copy of Overkill's Feel the Fire at my local record store I'd buy it, but there isn't. I think the difference between me and someone else is that I actually buy records I download.

I know people with large collections too (I have a fair amount myself) but I've met way more people with 5 cd's and a media library full of downloads. It doesn't bother me, though. Real music fans are going to want the full experience, which doesn't include listening to everything at 128kbs.



I don't think that $10 for a new album is expensive. True that real artists don't write music to make money, but that music costs a hell of a lot to produce, especially for independent bands. Alot of them need the sales to pay off their expenses, or else it just makes it that much harder financially to continue playing in a band.

I think the ratio of profits to piracy stayed the same. Lables that have Gaga, Drake, Bieber, Carey are doing enormously well comparing to 20 years ago. So did the piracy rise but when Each and every year a few pop/crap artists breaks another record on the top billboard 200 to surpass The Beatles and such. They cant simply say that piracy is hurting them. They are a typical greedy corporation that want to make more than they made yesterday. Its the law of capitalistic business.

Do I download illegally my stuff - yes. Do I support the artists by going seeing them live - yes. And I hold the same theory as Muha said - lower the prices of the music and people would buy more. Label companies treat music like its gasoline - that we would pay any amount for the product in the short run because we need it. Not really, if the price goes up and its hurting us we surely buy less or go to easy illegal sources.

Battling piracy isnt about how we battle piracy but what is causing the piracy and that is what we need to battle.

The bands that I know of that have complained about it have made some really mediocre albums, specifically: David Vincent, Jon Schafer, and Scott Ian. Dave's interview last year was almost too funny with all the user comments. Scott mentioned that the new album could have sold way more than it did. I think he should be glad it did what it did, considering the John Bush albums werent that great.

Lately, Ive been finding a lot of new horror authors(an author on facebook is posting their amazon links) and Ive been buying the ebooks cause they look interesting, and the price, $3. When I bought actual books, they would be at least triple that.

Another thing I've been thinking about: record labels could probably encourage a lot of people to buy music rather than illegally downloading if they would get more active in the way of politics. I mean the music industry practically depends on the freedom to express radical and/or "obscene" ideas. It would be in everyone's best interest if they would just start investing more in fighting censorship (both blatant and the more subtle forms of it) as well as the general ignorance that's rampant in the world. Of course they shouldn't have to do this, but I think its definitely a practical strategy. The record companies would end up making more money and the consumer would be more than happy to spend a few bucks for good music and the added feeling that their money is making a bigger impact.

I know I'm generalizing here but that's just my two cents for people to make their own judgement on.