the file traders (though I suspect there are a few among their number)
never mind all this mccarthyite "suspecting there are a few among our number" .... I'll happily stand up and admit to filesharing
I cant be fucked with this hiding and pretending i dont do it and disapprove of it on forums. Yes i download pirate psy cds (amongst all sorts of other stuff). I wouldnt do it if I hadnt weighed up the moral aspects carefully in my head, and having done that, and been satisfied with myself, it would then seem an immorality to lie and be ashamed of it. so, i wont.
anyway.... for me its something like this:
number of psy events in my city per year : 0
number of psy events in the
next city per year : 1 if i'm lucky
number of shops selling psy in my area : 0
number of people i know in my area who like psy : 0
number of radio stations broadcasting psy i can recieve: 0
in this situation, how else is a relative newcomer to the genre like me supposed to discover new music, keep on top of which new releases are worth buying, which new artists worth checking out, etc, other than by using the internet?
true, i could just go to review sites like goatrance.free.fr and see what people say. but, i did that before once. under entheogenic there were
multiple rave reviews declaring anybody who liked shpongle would LOVE this. so i shelled out my cash (which is literally nonexistent, given how indebted i am) and recieved a cd which i hated. blargh. i could see the shpongle link , alright - it was just that i saw it as a bunch of people who dug shpongle and set out to make a half-baked copy of it, but lacking all the brilliant melodies, classy musicianship, technically flawless production and innovative studio skullduggery.
i'm very fussy. of the hundreds of cassettes, vinyls and cds i have bought over the years, i probably listen to a few dozen these days. money is at an extreme premium, so i dont want to be buying stuff i dont like.
so i got onto p2p. and met much the same thing. 15 people saying "ooh you must download such-and-such a release, best cd of the year, its KILLER, etc", which i find to be an epitome of mediocrity. but in every 10 or so recommendations, something comes up good. not a problem. buy the good one, delete the other 9.
so for the 1, my filesharing was a good thing, because in me they got one more customer than they would have done without it.
i guess its harsher on the other 9 - i heard their complete cd, once, without paying anything. but at least i had the
opportunity to hear their music and see if it was worth buying, whereas otherwise i simply would not.
anyway... yeah... thats me
and if it tempers people's response to these views, bear in mind that i have tracks signed, and when they are released, i will (a) overall, probably lose money thanks to filesharing, but (B) continue to apply this same philosophy to those filesharers who download from my tracks (ie, implicity condone it, on the hope that if they like my music, and listen to it a lot, they will buy it)
aside from anything else this is total pragmatism. technologically speaking p2p cannot be put back in the bottle, and it will also outstrip legal attempts to crush it. its here. its a new world order. deal with it.
as an old chinese man once reputedly said:
he who feels the wind of change should construct not a windbreak, but a windmill