Who actually pays for music downloads?

rainbow_carnage

The music industry has yet to decide what exactly it is that it's selling.

When you're buying a CD, are you buying a physical item or the right to listen to the music? If it's the former, then sharing mp3s isn't theft - files aren't physical. If it's the latter, then why should I pay to have to upgrade formats? If I already own the song on vinyl (or, to date myself, on a cassette tape), I should get the CD version or the mp3 for free. I've already paid for the right to listen to that music.

I buy a lot of music second hand. The artist gets nothing from that. It's perfectly legal and hardly frowned-upon. I don't see record companies campaigning for the government to shut down Music and Video Exchange or second-hand sales on Amazon. This leads me to believe that record companies see CDs and records as physical products that can be bought and sold. In that case, they shouldn't get to complain about torrent sites.

cepheus

esuhl wrote: »

Of course not - theft is when you illegally steal something with the intention of permanently depriving the original owner of that property.

Downloading music without the copyright-holders permission is not illegal (so long as you're not doing it for profit or on an industrial scale), although you can be sued for copyright infringement.

Organisations such as the Federation Against Copyright Theft exist (and are so named) to deliberately confuse and mislead consumers in the hope that this will drive down such infringement.

According to this it is, although I guess it varies from between jurisdictions

Is file sharing legal? It can be, but the vast majority of files shared on P2P (peer-to-peer) networks like KaZaA and Shareza violate copyright law.

What is illegal is unauthorized copying of commercial music. This usually means MP3's that are made from CD's and then put on the Net by individuals who haven't sought permission from the artist or music company.

What do copyright laws allow? To put it simply, you may make a copy of your own CD for your personal use. That means you may record it to a cassette tape or rip it to MP3 files. You may not, however, give this copy to another person. Many people believe that if no money is involved, then no law has been broken. This is false. Whether you give the copy away or sell it, this is still a violation of copyright law

http://www.worldlawdirect.com/article/1395/downloading-music-legal.html

esuhl

That quote doesn't mention anything about copyright infringement being theft - it isn't. Neither is copyright infringement murder or embezzlement or any other un-related crime.

It also says that it's illegal to copy commercial music, which is also wrong. It's only illegal if you're doing it on a commercial basis (i.e. piracy) AND you don't have permission. If you are doing it for personal use it is unlawful but not illegal (i.e. you may be sued in civil action by the copyright holder, but cannot be prosecuted in a criminal court). I have made copies of commercial music and distributed them to people, BUT I had written permission from the copyright holder to do so as part of a publicity excercise that I was helping with.

The quotation also says that you can rip CDs you own into MP3s, which again (unless the law has changed recently) is unlawful. If you have a CD and want to put those songs on your MP3 player you must buy the MP3s.

It sounds like the quotation may refer to US law, but who knows...

EDIT:
I had a look at the link and it clearly relates to US law which is obviously different to UK law.

The relevant UK legislation that you might like to peruse is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which is available here:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/contents

-Dogleg-

I buy downloads from Amazon, usually, I'm not above searching for the cheapest download, but I don't steal music via pirate sites. I know how hard it is these days for most musicians to make any kind of a living. If you love music, and want the most original & talented people to keep releasing new songs, you have to remember that someone needs to buy them, or the well will dry up. Playing live in the UK is not an earner for independent artists, and several of my friends and musical heroes have given up recording (too expensive) and now only tour abroad. This is a direct result of illegal downloading. I don't release anything on download anymore because it affects CD sales which eventually fall off anyway as the tracks are pirated on the web.
It's complicated: surveys show that people who download the most pirated music also tend to spend more buying songs legally.
In my opinion it may be too late, but the only way to prevent the Simon Cowells from taking over completely is to stop cheating musicians out of a fair reward for their talent and dedication.
In short: if you love music - pay for it.

JamesK10

Dogleg, as long as your friends also boycott Spain where they haven't bothered updating any laws to even start combating modern piracy, then I'd support their stopping UK tours, it's also one more reason for Kate Bush not to bother coming back.

I wonder how many people moaning about excessive commercial background music in TV programmes, are also illegal downloaders, considering it's only big companies that would pay the licensing fees and compensate the artist regularly anymore. That leads to a lot of the same old stuff being used at certain times of year Christmas being the best example. Sometimes it works out well eg Massive Attack being used for the opening credits of "Luther", which led to my buying their last album.

Thanks to DVD and Blu Ray there are now multiple options, I wouldn't buy another Sting album again whilst he keeps rehashing best ofs but the last album is combined with a DVD. Similarly Radiohead's last album, I did download and didn't regret not buying the CD, because they rushed out two other tracks later on - when those are combined onto The King Of Limbs, maybe with the other track about The Last Tommy, I'll be happy to pick up the CD.

The industry's not helping when you get the CD and they they reissue it, sometimes not even waiting a year, with extra stuff and for less. That just meant legit buyers like me, will just wait around for version 2.

Neonoptic

You can make all the excuses you wish regarding sound quality, downloading without paying is theft, plain and simple!

jayme1

I've just got spotify premium and it is literally the single best thing to happen to music ever, best thing the artists I would normally only have listened to on the radio or on youtube but wouldn't have bought their music are still getting at least some money, whereas they would normally have got nothing from me and I wouldn't have ever listened to (or wanted to listen to) their music.

Neonoptic wrote: »

You can make all the excuses you wish regarding sound quality, downloading without paying is theft, plain and simple!

don't know who you are saying that to, but I only buy CDs, I don't download music full stop, the CD you can make into mp3 and in the future you can make to any format without any loss in quality, whereas if I bought an album on iTunes you get it in 256aac which is a lossy format, worst of all it is not the best quality of acc (which is 320aac) and in the future if nothing used aac format you would have to convert it which would either bring across the loss in sound quality or make it worse.

the point is buy CD buy once, buy lossy and you will be forced to buy again in the future, from now on I am going to listen to all music from spotify but still buy the CD for artists I actually love and care about until a legitimate DRM free lossless music site sells the music I want to buy.

atruefaker

Hi All

I want to buy my music, and some people have referred this downloading site to me, it looks pretty cheap. However, I want to know is it actually legal if I buy off them please - http://www.goldenmp3.ru/legality.html

Thanks in advance!

johnnyreggae

If you had read this (not very long) thread you'd know the answer

Whilst your downloads may or may be legal it appears no artist in the West has ever received any royalties from the Russian copyright organisation so you might as well not be paying for them at all

jonesMUFCforever

jayme1 wrote: »

I've just got spotify premium and it is literally the single best thing to happen to music ever, best thing the artists I would normally only have listened to on the radio or on youtube but wouldn't have bought their music are still getting at least some money, whereas they would normally have got nothing from me and I wouldn't have ever listened to (or wanted to listen to) their music.



don't know who you are saying that to, but I only buy CDs, I don't download music full stop, the CD you can make into mp3 and in the future you can make to any format without any loss in quality, whereas if I bought an album on iTunes you get it in 256aac which is a lossy format, worst of all it is not the best quality of acc (which is 320aac) and in the future if nothing used aac format you would have to convert it which would either bring across the loss in sound quality or make it worse.

the point is buy CD buy once, buy lossy and you will be forced to buy again in the future, from now on I am going to listen to all music from spotify but still buy the CD for artists I actually love and care about until a legitimate DRM free lossless music site sells the music I want to buy.

You make some very good points.
However what worries me about downloading paid for music is that if my computer breaks then I have lost it.
Cloud with online 'holding' facility is perhaps the way to go.