Okay let’s get a few things clear. By ‘punter’ I mean a person who goes to gigs most weekends, buys loads of records and is proud of their record collection. Not the sort of person who goes to Aussie Stadium to watch Robbie Williams and that event is their one live music outing for the year. Got that? Right. Moving on.
MP3 downloading can be broken into two broad categories; legal and illegal. I’m not going to go into the specifics or legalities of downloading.I am merely going to concern myself with my views on MP3 downloading, why is it popular, and its pros and cons as they relate to the punter.
I am a supporter of downloading music from the internet - in some instances. The first thing that ever drove me to download a track from the internet was a desire to hear a band I had heard a lot about. I wanted to hear the band before I made spent $30 on their CD. (I guess in the days before the internet this was done by buying cheap compilations or taping tracks from a friend.) I have continued to download music from the internet to this day, but I haven’t been doing it illegally. I always try to get stuff I am interested in from either the band’s website or a third party provider -ie: their label or sites such as MP3.com. This is a good thing as I get to hear material from bands that I may not have heard before. I first heard Gazoonga Attack by downloading MP3s of them playing live on 4ZZZ, just as I first heard The Spazzys by downloading their demo from their website. Great, free legal downloads.
It doesn’t hurt the band because they have placed these tracks on their website for the simple fact that they aren’t available anywhere else, the band isn’t signed to a record label or they haven’t had the money to record material, just demos. If a band chooses to provide tracks to download on their site (or any other official site) then it is fine to download them. I don’t think that anyone would have a problem with that. However, when tracks become available through illegal or unofficial downloads, then I start to feel a bit queasy.
To me, it is not so much that record companies and artists lose money. It is more the ethical concerns that I have. I don’t like taking from a band that I like. I pay to watch these bands play live so what is the difference between that and paying to have their music at home, work, the car, etc. These bands are providing a service – entertainment - and it is not unreasonable to expect some form of payment in return.
Downloading music has become extremely popular over the last ten years for several reasons I can discern. Firstly, the main reason is the prices that companies/stores are charging for CDs. $30 plus has always seemed a bit steep to me – especially when I was able to observe some friends pressing their own CDs and I found how cheap it actually is. OK, so perhaps I am not taking into consideration recording costs, PR costs, dance coaches, make up people and other expenses which seem to go along with becoming a major recording artist. However, with the exception of recording costs many of the other associated costs are of the artist’s own choosing.
So, is it fair to offset these costs with higher CD prices? Not really, in my opinion. Another reason people seem to be downloading so many tracks is the immediacy of it. It takes a minute or so to download a track (using cable internet access) so you can have a 12 track album in the time it takes you wait for the train - let alone going to your local store, finding the CD, queuing up for it, going home and popping it onto your stereo. This especially seems to make sense for younger kids who have grown up with the internet and for whom downloading music is almost second nature.
Now there are several pros in downloading for the average punter. You are able to hear new music that might inspire you to go out and watch a band you may not have heard of. It is free. You get the tracks pretty much straight away. You can burn rad mix CDs of downloaded tracks. If you have a MP3 player you can take the tracks anywhere.
But the cons seem to overpower the pros. The cons are that you can be imprisoned. The quality of the track can be less than great. There’s no artwork or packaging. You can miss some of the great bonuses such as interactive features. Your record collection doesn’t increase in size and therefore you lose ‘scene points’ for not having a huge collection. All right, so that last con pretty much relates back to the lack of packaging but I felt it was so important that I just had to mention it twice! And really that is what turns me off downloading the most I don’t get to have the record - to hold it, to look at the artwork, to read the lyrics and so on.
Downloading - while it is possible for it to be a good thing - generally works against the punter. The process is easy and quick but if you take it beyond that into downloading full albums then in my opinion you have gone to far. All artists give us music and entertainment and to expect that for free is taking liberties that just shouldn’t be taken. So be judicious next time you, the punter, choose to download some tracks.
