Self-Promotion, Mass-Consumption

File-Sharing has certainly played an huge role in the development of music and the music industry in general. Personally, file- sharing has affected me in multiple ways, and just like its affect on the music, some of the changes are good, some are not so good. Obviously there are two sides to the argument over file-sharing. The anti-piracy group's most strong claims are that file-sharing is an illegal usage of copyrighted content, which not only breaks laws, but also causes a significant loss of profit from an artist's work. The "pirates" are made out to be criminals, and the RIAA states that "downloading is just as wrong as shoplifting from a local convenience store". The supporters, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, use a very similar rhetoric to that of the anti-net neutrality crowd. They claim that the RIAA's war on file-sharing is pointless, not generating money for the artists, and has made file-sharing even more popular, now with more sharers than presidential voters in the U.S. Their goal is to find a happy medium where the artists receive payment and the fans can still download without a guilty conscience. Most of all, though, the supporters claim that stopping file sharing cuts off "innovation", the same thing the cable-model supporters claimed the phone-model people were doing by not letting tiered pricing and content control become the new way of the web.
For me, all of this downloading mess seems a bit chaotic. I am personally a strong believer in vinyl recordings, and the artistic quality that comes with a physical LP. I don't purchase music unless it is an LP because otherwise i feel as though i am being ripped off. A CD is small, easily ruined with scratches, and the artwork is virtually non-existent. Beyond all of that, a CD is a digitized version of the music, and consequently the warmth humanistic side to the recording is lost in the format. I do download music, but only when i want to "try it out". I hear about a new band, and based on if i like it or not, i will decide to support the artists, either through purchasing the recording or attending their performances. I would say 90% percent of the time i download anything it is either posted on a blog approved by the artist, or has been uploaded as a bitTorrent file with approval of the artist. Most independent artists cannot afford to press large quantities of records/cassettes/CDs and instead focus on making D.I.Y. packaging that displays the artist's devotion to their craft and release limited numbers of recordings. Then, they upload their recordings on blogs, simply asking the downloaders to comment if they like the album. From this information they can then monitor how much of a demand their is for any particular recording and can decide to do a second pressing if their is a high enough demand. This is not at all the same as stealing from a store, because the store has already purchased the recording from the artists. Thus in stealing from a store, you're just taking money away from the store, not the artist. Therefore, in allowing your material to be released online, you are sacrificing a minuscule profit in return for wide exposure which in turn will lead to
As a musician who records extensively myself, i don't quite understand how independent artists are hurt from this form of downloading. For any struggling artist, the number one form of "payment" received is exposure. Anytime a person who cares about art downloads recordings from these artists, they are simply become exposed to something they otherwise would not have ever heard or purchased. They same goes for small scale sharing, whether it be through the copying of purchased material for friends, or posting the material on your blog for download. To me, i feel as though only those who are truly interested in doing the digging and searching through small blogs and by word of mouth with friends are interested in pursuing new music and supporting artists who actually make real art, and in this scenario the process of illegally downloading is legitimized in my eyes.
On the other hand, major label artists are a different matter. I personally do not support most major label recording artists, at least the ones currently producing "music", and so in my opinion i feel that downloading music from major label artists and spreading it in any form is wrong solely because in the uploading/downloading of their music, people are just furthering the vitality of really bad music, and continuing the destruction of our culture's perception of musical art and performance in general. Also, this mass downloading of major label artists is just perpetuating the notion of music as a commodity to be consumed by the listener and spit out. People download 50 albums a day, eat them up, and then drag it off their external hard drives into the trash to make space for the next 50 albums. The "digital death" that music has seen from its format transition to the CD was hard enough, but now i'm afraid that the whole idea of a recording existing as a physical piece of art work that you can feel, hold, watch, and experience will be destroyed with this current hyper consumption.