Musicians and Piracy

Okay stop whining. You are a millionaire musician making ungodly amounts of money compared to my broke 18 year old self. So when you tell me I am wrong for downloading your song of the internet for nothing, then sue the pants off me leaving me with nothing left to my name, all over a 99 cent download. Think again.

South Park, a TV show on Comedy Central hit the nail on the head with this one. The boys get themselves into trouble when they download music off of a free file sharing web site. The cops show up to their doors and take them in. The boys respond saying its not a big deal. One of the cops loses it and takes them on a tour of the “suffering” musicians, who can't make ends meet because of internet piracy. The boys end up at Britney Spears’ house where due to piracy she now has to save up to buy all the lavish things she wants. The boys quickly learn their lesson. The makers of South Park tend to have a message behind all of their episodes.

Can you guess the message?

That is right, piracy is not a big deal, and when rich artists complain about not making enough money we need to stop sympathizing with them.

Jack White has had an extremely successful music career. He has been in three bands, (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, and The Dead Weather) and had a huge solo career. He is considered an incredible musician and has a sound that is uniquely his. He was quoted saying “I don't mind [piracy] that much, really,” later on he explained how he felt that he only wants to have music in its physical form of records and CD’s and how he felt that when buying music of the internet he doesn't feel like he is buying anything saying “you think that its there, but you can't see any moving parts and that's disappointing.”

Neil Young’s approach to piracy is simple “Piracy is the new radio, that's how music gets around. That's the real world for these kids.” He says how piracy is the new radio and how that's how us kids listen to music, and lets face it most of us kids are broke. So when artists expect us kids to shell out 15 bucks for their newest album we might think twice. But think back to the 60’s when certain music was banned from being played on the radio so what did people do? They set up boats and broadcast songs over the radio that people wanted to hear.

So you might be wondering why do they care so much. Because the HUGE record labels behind them care. They don't want some 30 year old hacker in Sweden uploading all their artists hits because they loose sales. And who pirates the most... Teenagers and College Students. Because we either make little to nothing at our part time jobs or we don't work and our parents give us spending money every couple weeks. Us teenagers also love to rebel and pirating music is one of those easy ways to rebel. Record labels could probably solve all their pirating woes if the latest CD was not $15. Because when you market music to Teens and College Students you need to understand we don't have the same disposable income that our Adult counterparts do.