Download or buy ?

[Shurik]

[StragOvariuS]

Let's say it outright: the question is not download or buy, the question is steal or buy.

nope...then if i get a sample im "stealing" too.

of course not, samples are made to download them and check it. It is like sample goods in shops. They are free for customers, to check and choose the one that suits the best. Nonsensical argument...

Ok about the goods on shops...

But like the Strato samples that were located in a site even before the guys release samples were a good example of stealing too.



Well...this subject will never find a end. All seems so much beautifull, "i support the guys" and all that stuff, but...isnt everybody that have money enough to put only in albums, dvd, whatever...i agree what Aresius said.

Buy or not wont make the cd's prices lower, shit man...i pay 60% more cheaper in a good-condition vynil than in a new fucking cool digipack cd.
Thats really crap. So, the point is, what we can do to find in the stores cheap cd's? buy?

I would love to have the full discography of cannibal corpse, chris rea, sodom, iron maiden...but hell, i can pay almost a used car with this money.

[MaFiaBoY]

I don't spend my cash on something that millions of ppl rather than thousands, buy. That's naughty, but the mainstream have plenty of income and no towering student debts.

You have a good point.
but in my opinion, if you REALLY REALLY love one album, the huge income of the artists is not a reason not to buy it, even if I really understand your point.

Agreed ! Like here in France, in all record shops Floyd and Beatles Ds are among the most expensive : over 23 euros ! C'mon, they sold over 30 million copies of Dark Side Of The Moon, they could lowr the price a bit. And still there are suckers like me who buy them (and they're definitely worth it) but it's quite a pain in the ass...

[cliff]

Agreed ! Like here in France, in all record shops Floyd and Beatles Ds are among the most expensive : over 23 euros ! C'mon, they sold over 30 million copies of Dark Side Of The Moon, they could lowr the price a bit. And still there are suckers like me who buy them (and they're definitely worth it) but it's quite a pain in the ass...

That's totally right.
i guess it's a business thing. When a label sell an album for "half-price", it's because the artists don't sell enough anymore (or at least they put a mid-price to their best album so people buy the others for the full-price). With The Beatles or Pink Floyd (or even Elvis), they just know that people still buy the albums.
Otherwise, you can still use PriceMinister or eBay or iTunes or second hand stores... or "la mule"

[MaFiaBoY]

Agreed ! Like here in France, in all record shops Floyd and Beatles Ds are among the most expensive : over 23 euros ! C'mon, they sold over 30 million copies of Dark Side Of The Moon, they could lowr the price a bit. And still there are suckers like me who buy them (and they're definitely worth it) but it's quite a pain in the ass...

That's totally right.
i guess it's a business thing. When a label sell an album for "half-price", it's because the artists don't sell enough anymore (or at least they put a mid-price to their best album so people buy the others for the full-price). With The Beatles or Pink Floyd (or even Elvis), they just know that people still buy the albums.
Otherwise, you can still use PriceMinister or eBay or iTunes or second hand stores... or "la mule"

That's not totally right, you can find albums of major bands (Maiden, Dream Theater, old Helloween, Gamma Ray, Priest, Running Wild, Kamelot, Vai, Satriani...) for 10 euros or even 7 sometimes. Well, at least there was a store in Brest where I went quite often last year who did it and for Maiden I saw their albums at 10 euros pretty much anywhere (except our dear Fnac :p).

[Pikkusielu]

Try-Before-You-Buy.

[Dragon77]

Also, if we're going to talk about "stealing", then the aforeposted cartoon is right on the mark. The record companies have been stealing artists' work for decades - and I do mean stealing. Record companies take from artists FAR more than they give - but, for the most part, like the "buying public", artists don't have a choice. That's all their (the record companies') argument against downloading is all about - loss of control (same goes for the movie industry). The internet has allowed many smaller bands to dispense with having to deal with record companies entirely - and the record companies don't like that (it puts them out of business in the end). If everyone can remember back to the "dawn" of CDs, they came out at about the price they are today - and people complained that they were too expensive - the response from the industry was that as the technology spreads and becomes more common, the price of CDs will drop significantly. Well that never happened, did it? When one breaks down the economics of things (and I'll link to a wonderful article by Courtney Love [yeah, she's screwed up personally, but professionally she's dead on with this article] - "Courtney Does The Math" http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/ )

I will maintain that, for the most part, downloading does not result in any substantiated loss for artists - the people that download and do not later buy, are the same people who would never have spent the money in the first place. No loss of sales - only loss of potential sales - and there is a big difference between the two.

Someone earlier mentioned about trying food before you buy it - yes, that can and does happen - ever cater a function? ever buy a wedding cake?

And on returning items that you don't like - happens every day with every kind of item. Your get a tie for your birthday that you don't like - you return it. Look at the RETURN lines for any retailer - people return stuff they don't like ALL the time - music & movies should be no different. Hey, that lousy movie I just spent money on has cost me not only the money, but my TIME - and that's something that can never be reimbursed.

--- Dragon77

[SETH]

Both. and at Christmas and birthdays my mother always asks me which ones i want and she buys them from a cheap catalog. now that i have a job i will get them myself.
I download, but carefully.

[DestinyDream]

Myself, I download lots of songs, but buy probably 95% of what I download. Kinda like Try-Before-You-Buy.

that's usually what i do.....unless it's a band i'm really into and i'll buy the album reguardless because it's kind of for my collection even if it sucks

plus...downloading = not fun on my computer....

i only really do it when i really want to hear something....but i have friends that get other stuff for me

[Fireblade]

In a CD sale, 80% goes toward the label and shop that sells it.
12% to the artist.

In legal download, 80% and 6%, not 12.

Are you sure of those ?

Well I saw it on a mini-documentary on the news. Which of course does not mean it's 100% reliable, but it doesn't involve WMD's, oil, taxes or pensions, so there seems no reason to lie.

[stratovana]

Buy, I will wait a little bit longer till I have enough money to buy original stuff from the band then that I download something. Since my last computercrash six months ago I will not have any download programms anymore.
My computer is more stable than before. So if I want to have a cd or dvd I save my money first a couple of weeks or months.

[Simo Solkki]

I buy only strato-albums!!!

[Jaakko]

1. Download one song
2. If liked, download 3 more
3. If liked, download whole album
4. If liked, buy another of their albums
5. If liked, buy the rest of the albums, including the one you downloaded

My philosophy.

That's how it pretty much goes for me too when discovering new artists. It's strange how I never end up buying the album I first encountered with, probably because it's never on discount price in Keltainen Jäänsärkijä (store I like to buy everything from). I usually just take the cheapest one and often don't even like it too much at first, as they're often the oldest (and usually worst and least popular) by the artist, yet I end up collecting some more.

Strangely though, in the past couple years I really haven't discovered much anything new, haven't been downloading, haven't bought albums either. So much of the old stuff to get deeper into. My shopping list is growing huge though, that's one reason why I never go and buy just the one album I could afford at once, becoz I dunno which one I should get. I guess the day when I get bored enough with Dream Theater I'll go and buy something new, but that's very unlikely to happen Of course the day when I have a couple thousand extra euros to spend I'll go and see how much of Jäänsärkijä's inside I can fit into my car in one go.

About the moral issues in downloading, I really don't have any opinion. Simply, what people can afford they buy if the product itself is worth it. Many albums nowadays aren't worth the high price tag, especially when comparing to many other things you can get with the same money. Often two great DVD movies with the price of one new decent album. HEY IT'S GOT A PICTURE THAT MOVES, WOW!

And for myself, I listen to lots of pop/rock music I never even think of buying because the artists (well, some of them) already have their millions (and some have already retired) and often the albums have too many fillers to keep me even interested. Compilations work better for old "evergreens" that don't have worthy company of the other songs on the original albums. Most of my mp3's are stuff like that, very few full albums and every full album in my mp3 collection is on top of my shopping list and ending up into my record shelf sooner or later.

[OPOJ]

I only download to know new bands (then I delete them) or those songs I can't find anywhere to buy.
Usually, the only MP3s I keep are those I ripped myself, so I don't have to carry 300 CDs.

[Hellovarius the Simp]

Stratovarius - buy, other - download

[Electric Eye]

But like the Strato samples that were located in a site even before the guys release samples were a good example of stealing too.

That is right. But in case samples we should be aware if they are available to download legally or not. If don't, and someone broke the law by publishing them, we support thievs by downloading them. Statement that you downloaded samples who someone stole earlier is no excuse. An example of legal samples is, for example, Gamma Ray - they published five or six pieces of their new album on official web page. I think all of artist should do that.

I would love to have the full discography of cannibal corpse, chris rea, sodom, iron maiden...but hell, i can pay almost a used car with this money.

well, it is a matter of choice. I also grieve that I cannot buy few things spending the same amount of money

Someone earlier mentioned about trying food before you buy it - yes, that can and does happen - ever cater a function? ever buy a wedding cake?

sure, but let's do not mix two different things: sample of the goods and the goods itself. No one opens for you to try only a box with cake which is designed to sell, but may treat you with a sample of the same cake prepared fot customers to taste.

Stratovarius - buy, other - download

This is indisputably politically correct here.

[doc_holliday]

I only buy Stratovarius, System of a Down and Anti-Flag

[BERTA]

I Think that everyone knows their possibilities,about money..so.I buy only the albums of the bans that i like a lot,not the rest

[Dave]

try before buy

[cliff]

well, well... the more I see how music industry act, the more I tend to download instead buying.
Let me tell this straight :
- You are a fan of music, you respect the artist and buy his CD, even if it's 22€. Bad for you, it's copy-protected, you can't make a backup copy for yourself, or even put it on your MP3 player.
- You want to make backups of the CDs that you bought (and already payed for). Bad for you, you still pay a "copyright" tax when you still have to buy blank medias or even MP3 players! Same thing goes for songs bought on iTunes.
(at least it's the case here in France)
- You buy CDs. Do you know that about 20% of the money that you pay goes directly to the government = VAT! (to feed ministers' huge cars with oils). If the governement really want to help the music industry like it always claims, why doesn't it get this VAT lower to 5% for ex, like books ?
- Soon, subscriptions to ISP will probaby cost more, because the movie and music industries want to add a tax, because of the lack of incomes due to illegal downloading. (downloading will still be illegal).
- And later, those industries will add a(nother) tax on ISP subscription (around 6 or 7€ if I rem right), which will give to the internet subscriber a right to download!

I truly believe that music and movie industries are NOT much in danger, at least not for the big majors. They just want to keep their huge money and have a peaceful life smoking cigars and drinking whisky. All those things is only a matter of money, those industriesonly want to get more and more money.
The artists should stop signing with big labels which anyway abuses them giving 1€ to an artist when they keep 7€ in their pocket. I guess you all got my point. I think it's great to respect the artists, but on the other hand the labels and industry should respect the loyal fans in return, without asking them to pay over and over, and without putting those stupid copy-protections on CDs. Like I always always say, it's not the customers like you or I who steal the music. It's the journalists who get promo copies and put them on internet. Do they pay a copyright tax ? Do they buy cds ? Noope.

[MaFiaBoY]

Bad for you, it's copy-protected, you can't make a backup copy for yourself, or even put it on your MP3 player.

iTunes is your best friend :p

[cliff]

Bad for you, it's copy-protected, you can't make a backup copy for yourself, or even put it on your MP3 player.

iTunes is your best friend :p

Actually no. iTunes doesn't even recognize the new copy-protected CD.
Musicmatch and Db Power Amp are the best friends!

btw, do you know that in Finland, really soon, if you have a "COPY-PROTECTED" album on your iPod or computer, even if you own the original album, it will be illegal !
So what's the point in buying albums, if no matter if you buy or not, it's illegal !
(soon policemen will give you tickets if you whisper a song in your car while waiting at the red light, because of copyrights !)

[MaFiaBoY]

Bad for you, it's copy-protected, you can't make a backup copy for yourself, or even put it on your MP3 player.

iTunes is your best friend :p

Actually no. iTunes doesn't even recognize the new copy-protected CD.

The last I tried was Maiden's Dance of Death and it worked fine...

[cliff]

The last I tried was Maiden's Dance of Death and it worked fine...

I know, it worked fine for me too. The thing is that there are many different opy protections. The one on Dance Of Death is nothing, you can still rip the CD. But some albums have a more recent protection (like last After Forever album), which causes lot of pbms, at least with iTunes. Usually you can still rip the tracks with other softwares, but most of the time one track (generally the last one) can't be ripped at all. Stupid system, why buying an album if you can't do anything with it ?

[Dave]

well.. owning a vinyl or a cd is not the same as a little mp3 file on your harddisk.. downloading is cheaper, but it's not the same feeling as putting a vinyl in your player and watching it turn

[nepi]

that's bloody true!
and when you only burn a cd you have one like every other cd-r, without inlay, without a great booklet with many pictures, without the songlist....

... and then you stand before your heroes and have a cd-r for signature.... *blame*

[Dave]

you could download the covers
but still that's not the same, it feels just better when you know you've only got this music because you've paid with YOUR money, that YOU had to work to be able to buy this album

[MaFiaBoY]

... and then you stand before your heroes and have a cd-r for signature.... *blame*

THAT would ROCK ! Next time I see the guys for autographs, I'll have all Stratoalbums on CDR to be signed

[JenniBunni]

... and then you stand before your heroes and have a cd-r for signature.... *blame*

THAT would ROCK ! Next time I see the guys for autographs, I'll have all Stratoalbums on CDR to be signed

And make sure you ask Jens to sign it in the middle of his dinner

[Heiserich]

I never ever downloaded a single song. In the end, it's something completely different to have the cd because it really carries a value for you if you bought it.

I experienced quite often that it took quite a long time for me to realize the true quality of a band / album. For example when I bought "Dominion" from Kamelot I really hatet it in the first place and banned it to the dustiest corner of my room. Two years later I found it and listened to it again - and suddenly I liked it. Now Kamelot is one of my favourite bands, and this would never had happened if I just had had a MP3 or whatever on my computer because I would have deletet it immediately.

In the end, this is also what's my experience with my friends who only download and burn and so on. The music has no true value for them. And that's a real pity in the most cases!