Why? I don’t like CDs or vinyl. I have a room full of the stuff and would rather be rid of it. I listen to files these days. Much more convenient.

* Not MP3s. As a musician/producer, MP3s sound awful to me. They’re fine for podcasts or previews, but I’d never pay for them. These days I mostly listen to FLAC files, that I either download or rip from CD.

* Online music stores mostly suck. I will never pay for anything with DRM and I refuse to pay the current prices for crappy mp3s.

If there was an online store that sold FLAC files at, say, $5 per album, I might start spending thousands again. In the mean time I have no qualms with my behaviour.

Much of my favourite music these days is on free netlabels, and that’s a culture that I fully support, like open source software. In fact I run a free netlabel of my own, which I believe distributes some of the finest experimental music around.

Experimental music. Remember, many genres of music are not financially viable from the pov of selling CDs, and never have been. I have the scars to prove it.

Unfortunately we’ve been sold a lie by the mainstream media that all artists can make a living from CD sales and are therefore having their livelihood stolen every time someone shares something.

Even many obscure artists still believe this nonsense. Deep down everyone wants to be a pop star. It’s an illness.

but maybe that’s cos it’s still so bloody hard to compare music and ‘art’ with practical things like food and toilets (things we need). even though food can be 3 chef hats like calico says, or 2 minute noodles.

basically, ppl will justify their actions til the cows come home – to suit their own desires.

ie. the most self-righteous music lover may pontificate about the ethics of to receive music and being fair to the artist – but then simply download til their personal bandwidth maxes out. *hey, worst comes to worst, at least the knowledge they gain can help further ‘expose’ the starving artist.*

ethics are a load of crap. one person won’t download from a torrent site but then will completely rubbish an artist unfairly. whose ripping who off?

Personally, my problem with blogs that are simply mp3 smosgasboards is that do little to nothing to actually think about the music they’re posting. The possibilities of a music ‘community’ around blogging are great – and on blogs like your’s and others that type of thing is happening – but so much blogging is so uncritical that’s it’s painful.

She says MP3s are starting to act more like unauthorised time shifted radio – which rings true, because people now have vast troves of MP3s, many of which won’t get a repeat listen. The question really doesn’t become how to stop it, it becomes how to harness it.