The whole copyright issue has come up again...

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertai...html?icn=puff-8

 

Anyway, the gist of the thread is : if you could not illegally download songs/albums, what percentage of that music would you actually buy instead?

 

This is about the industry's claim that 1 pirated copy = one lost sale.

A very interesting topic here :thinking:

I guess it would be around 20-40%. It's really song I would rate 4.5-5 stars I would be comfortable paying for. Or I could just stick to listening on YouTube the ones that I haven't bought. Tricky question really.

I would definitely only pay for at most 20% of the music that I download otherwise. 1 download definitely does not equal 1 sale as you would download a song you maybe only sort of like or haven't even heard maybe, but not all people would pay for a song like that.

I don't really know, it's a hard question to answer. I guess it would be less than 50% though.

I don't download anything illegal.

There's practically no reason to download any more, legally or illegally. MP3s are going the way of records in that there isn't any need to keep a copy of a song when you can stream it from the cloud via Spotify for just £10 a month.

 

For older / rarer releases and intentionally small time independents it's still necessary to keep a copy of the physical or quasi-physical digital file but, in the majority of cases, it's not required.

 

You can argue that streaming quality is not the same as ripped FLAC files but I'm blessed with an ear that can't really tell the difference or doesn't care.

 

As for the poll, if I want to support an artist then I generally buy an LP of theirs from a gig or an independent retailer. These are nearly 100% independent artists due to the nature of the music I like and that I don't see the need to support major labels as their modus operandi is money and not music.

Edited June 24, 201510 yr by richie

I never download illegally.

Probably about 20% or so. I buy songs I really LOVE, but I download so much stuff that A) I couldn't afford to buy it all and B) I don't LOVE it all, so if I had to buy everything then I'd listen to a lot less music as streaming is a no go for me for various reasons.