Also, I believe that when an artist has as much success as Al, they don't really need the money. Al can easily live well for the rest of his life with the money made before poodle hat.
First let me say this isn't directed at you, but just how I feel in general.
I don't get how so many people seem to think there's nothing wrong with downloading music for free.
Even if Al is rich or very well-off (I have absolutely no idea whether or not he is--he does have to pay a lot in royalties to the artists he parodies...), doesn't he deserve to be paid for the work he does?
Most people would agree that we don't have a right to see an artist perform at a concert for free: he deserves money for performing for us. He does his job, and we pay him for doing it.
When we buy the CD, we are paying him for months of song writing, recording, remixing, etc. We get the chance to have a mini Weird Al concert whenever we pop in the CD or listen to the tracks. For that, he definitely deserves something, doesn't he?!
Not to mention that there are hundreds of other people involved: the other members of the band (who as much as they love Al, I assume they would like to get paid for their work!), guest performers, Al's manager, studio technicians, the people involved with the photo shoot, the people who work in the plant where they manufacture the CD, etc., etc. They all get paid because of the revenue generated by the purchase of the CD.
i don't see a problem with downloading a couple songs from even worse or off the deep end because I'm not rich enough to spend 18 bucks on a cd.
Based on what other people have told me, and maybe you're different, most people who use Kazaa do not download a couple songs. They download songs on a regular basis. Some people are good and buy the albums they listen to, others don't. I used to be dirt poor, as in "my clothes didn't fit me and I would get made fun of" kind of poor, so I know it sucks not being able to buy the cassettes or CDs you want, but that's unfortunately just the way things are sometimes.
believe me, if the record industry charged 7 bucks an album there would be a lot less downloading. :choon:
I agree the record industry is fleecing consumers. It costs a lot less money to make a CD than a cassette, and yet cassettes are often sold at half the price of CDs.
But if you don't buy CDs, it's more likely you're hurting artists, especially lesser-known ones, than the companies themselves. In many cases, these are multinational corporations for whom music is only one part of their business. They wouldn't tell Britney Spears they have to let her go because of declining sales in the industry--they just won't sign as many bands and we'll have even less variety in popular music than we already do these days.
Believe me, I don't usually defend corporations. If there were a way for prices to go down some and/or for more of that money to go to artists or other people involved with the album instead of the CEOs, I'd be all for it. But as long as we live in a system where people receive money for the work they do, there's no reason the music industry should be an exception. Everyone, from the multi-million dollar artists to the minumum wage worker in the CD plant, deserves to be paid.
That's just my 27 cents on the issue. [/rant]
