Why Pay for Recorded Music Anymore? Part 1a (first post on this subject)
These days, it is so easy to find music to listen to for free. You can burn copies of your friends’CD’s more easily than you can make toast. You can browse the MySpace web pages of various music groups and listen to the song samples they have posted there for you to sample. There are many “file sharing” web sites and software where one can easily download all kinds of music for free.
So why buy music at all? Especially CD’s, given that they are still generally about $15 new?
The short answer is: As a recording artist, I need the money!
Don’t like that one? Okay. A slightly better short answer might be: It’s stealing. And stealing is stealing, however easy and consequence-free it might seem.
I realize, however, that neither argument might give you any real motivation to forgo copying your girlfriend’s copy of the latest “Counting Crows” CD, or your boyfriend’s CD collection of Frank Sinatra’s recorded tunes. It’s so easy and quick. And it doesn’t seem like you’re really hurting anyone. Why hassle with ordering from amazon.com and not only have to part with some of your hard earned money, but THEN, to add insult to injury, have to wait a few days to get the darned thing! Or drive to Border’s, waste gas, and shell out money to some heartless corporate chain.
Believe it or not, there are actually good reasons why you should be delighted and eager to pay for music that you actually love. Music that you are not only eager to listen to more than once, but many times. Perhaps many times in one day. These reasons are in your own self interest.
The first reason to pay for recordings of music you really like is that this ensures that more of that kind of music will be produced in the future. The music you most love today will probably be the music you most love tomorrow, too. After a while of wearing out that Broadway favorites CD from constant playing, you may finally get tired of hearing the same songs over and over, and would like to hear something new, but in a similar musical or emotional style. You might want access to more of the same type of music, only different songs. You may have also gotten used enjoying the high quality of the writing, the arranging, the production, and the musical performances.
What if you couldn’t get any more, because no one could afford to produce it?
It may belabor the obvious, but those greedy capitalists, or independent recording artists, will not continue to go to the incredible time and expense of producing music that no one is willing to pay for. If we can’t recoup our losses, much less make a profit, why would we continue to go to the trouble and expense of making, marketing, and distributing collections of romantic tunes, (or folk music or heavy metal rock or reggae or yada yada yada).
Oh sure, there will always be hobbyists, amateurs (even talented ones), or desperate indie artists willing to record and distribute music without charging. And a lot of it is good music. And it’s how a lot of people get started in the business. But if they were the only ones doing it, I can promise you that the variety, vibrancy, quality, and availability of new music would decline drastically.
Think how more dismal your cultural and emotional life would be without access to the fire of the artistic and creative excellence of seriously committed artistic professionals.
Think of your life as a garden. If you never watered or tended your roses, or gardenias, or cumquats, or whatever type of beauty or food brings your joy, what would happen? You’d awaken every day to a garden of weeds.
Paying for music you love is like watering the roses in your cultural garden of life.
To be continued….