i buy CDs.

now i don't say that to position myself somehow above the fray because i download music too, there are a few CDs i have that are complete albums that i've burned that i really should have bought, and dozens of other spare songs that are on CDs that i likely wouldn't at all consider buying. usually i justify that by rationalizing that since i wouldn't have bought the CD anyway, nobody's losing if i download a couple or three songs off of it.

then there's the whole "lars ullrich is a dickhead who doesn't need any more money" argument, which i have to say is mighty compelling, mostly because lars ullrich comes across as a dickhead who doesn't need any more money. in any case, this morning i saw this here article at relevant which is pretty much the most succinct and convincing argument in favor of abandoning the practice of downloading and burning i've ever read.

it was written by steven christian, the frontman of the indie band anberlin, a band who's in the trenches so to speak. they don't have a huge following, so it's not like they're sitting around counting money from their million-dollar record deal, they're one of those bands that does a lot of touring and counts on the fervent support of a smaller number of fans in order to make a living as well as for justification to remain in the industry. he goes into detail about the simple cycle of the life of, well, nearly any musical act, and how it's, fairly or unfairly, dependent on record sales.

in explaining how exactly record sales are related to pretty much any other endeavor that a band might undertake, his words work to dispel some of the less thoughtful justifications for downloading and burning. there are quite a few people justifying CD burning with any number of reasons, maybe by saying that the band doesn't see much money from album sales and that the people who really get rich are the record company execs, so downloading is a way to carry out the time-honored tradition of sticking it to "the man." a lot of people justify it by saying that going to a live show is more substantial support for a band than is buying one of their CDs, and so on. those are true only to an extent, however, because while it's true that record companies make a lot of money off of record sales and that bands do make the bulk of their money off touring, christian shows that the level of support a band gets for touring, publicity and future recording is inextricably tied up with how many units they moved previous. so in the end, however valid those concerns may be, because of the fact that everything goes back to record sales, people who don't buy a band's CDs end up hurting the band more than they do anybody else.

what is boils down to, and this is me independent of the article, on its most basic level is that a lot of people just want to avoid giving up seventeen bucks if they can find a way to keep it themselves and get what they want.

feeling: educated
thinking of: thievery
music: "hero of the day" metallica