Politics of Downloading

[Johnny Townmouse]

I have been having a lot of discussions recently with friends regarding downloading, in particular 'illegal' downloading. I have changed my opinions on this at least a couple of times over the years, and still grapple with the problems, moral issues and politics of getting music for free.

When I first realised a few years ago that I could burn friend's CDs, or CDs from the library, it was quite revolutionary. I would say that overall it renewed my interest in music, and I certainly ended up buying more music than I was doing up to that point. I had experienced a number of years being quite dissilusioned with music and it was like some kind of epiphany (I was opened up to the majesticness of Dub for one). Now, I use peer-to-peer software to download music for two reasons. Firstly, I download music that I already own on vinyl, which I would have bought at a time when I had virtually no money in my teens, and which was usually bought from independent record shops in London (mainly Rough Trade) or directly from the bands at gigs. To me, this was payment enough and I do not have any moral/guilt issues with downloading this music. Until I invest in a USB turntable I will continue to do this. Secondly, I download music that I am simply unable to wait to buy. I illegally downloaded the Tindersticks album The Hungry Saw last year because its official release was the day before their London gig and I really wanted to hear the songs. I always knew that I would buy the album at the gig itself directly from the band, so for me this was not a problem.

A close friend believes that we should all download all music illegally, to basically crush the music industry which he sees as something that confines and constrains music. We often have discussions about this, which usually comes down to one thing. For him, music should not be about making money. Music should be an artistic process that is done for the love of creating and performing. When those Mississippi blues-men were making music on their front-porch it was for them and for their community, not to make money. For my friend it is an issue of artistic purity.
I sympathise with this view, and the recent views of Bono that musicians are also business-people has left a bad taste in my mouth. However, at the same time I consider myself a socialist and enjoy the idea that I am supporting an artist who is doing something valuable, and like the idea that they can eke out a living from their talent.

Part of the problem for me is that the fact that over the last 10 years, the vast majority of the CDs I buy are won as auctions on ebay. How does this benefit the band or musician? To me, that is buying music and not illegally downloading, but the money does not filter through to the musician. You can argue that for every CD I buy on ebay, there is one less and therefore a consumer will have to buy it new on amazon. But really, is illegally downloading and buying on ebay so different?

It has to be said that illegal downloading is snowballing rapidly at the moment, and within the next 12 months even the non-computer savvy will have cottoned-on to the fact that they access literally millions of pounds worth of music to save onto their 1TB external hard drive.

Or am I worrying too much?

[Famous Mortimer]

As I say every time this topic comes up on various forums, I'd suggest having a read of "Where Have All The Good Times Gone?" by this forum's very own Louis Barfe. It's interesting, comprehensive and by the end of it you'll feel a distinct lack of desire to give a major label a penny of your money ever again.

I'm trying to think of a way to formulate my ideas quickly, as I'm hungry and need to go out for some breakfast, but I think it's a matter of supporting musicians you love in other ways. Kristin Hersh, for example, has a load of songs available to download from her site, and also has a PayPal donate button. Great bands will tour live, and may not live in mansions, but so what? They'll be able to make a living doing what they love. The Radiohead "In Rainbows" will almost certainly become more and more prevalent in years to come. For those people who have less than mainstream tastes, very little will change. I'd still rather buy a Fireproof Press-made LP than download the mp3s, because it looks so nice and is an artifact on its own.

This is a bit higgledy-piggledy, but I'm sure I'll be able to think of more later.

[chand]

For him, music should not be about making money. Music should be an artistic process that is done for the love of creating and performing. When those Mississippi blues-men were making music on their front-porch it was for them and for their community, not to make money. For my friend it is an issue of artistic purity.

I love the idea of making music for free; it's what I do and I've committed myself to making everything I've ever done available for free, or rather, at a cost to myself, given that I will send people the physical product for nothing and soak up all the costs. However, I don't expect all bands to want to or be able work that way; it's great for me but then I work on a small scale. I still like to support artists and independent stores. I value online stores like Boomkat because they do things the right way, and have responded well to illegal downloading by offering high-quality mp3s and FLACs, but the main benefit is their reviews and enthusiasm for the music they sell, they've helped me discover a lot of great stuff and I'd hate to see downloading cause places like Boomkat to go under.

There isn't much difference between downloading and buying a second-hand CD, that's true. I would say the only difference is scale; I often buy second-hand CDs in the course of my shopping, but I do know people who now illegally download everything and claim not to have paid for music in years. I'm not sure I agree with the 'support musicians in other ways' routine, it's all very well saying that but, y'know, I've seen probably less than 1% of the bands I own music by live. I'm not sure why seeing someone live is obviously A Good Thing and paying for their album is obviously bad; in both cases someone who isn't the band is making money, except gigs are quite often more expensive, frequently inconvenient, and fleeting compared to the value you'll get out of a really good album you'll spin for years to come. It's easy to say 'fuck EMI', but I still think there are independent labels doing a good job and I don't really want to see them fall by the wayside in favour of an odd kind of 'live music is the correct way to compensate a band' ethos; if you believe music has to be free and that bands have no choice in the matter, then you should be refusing to pay for gigs as well.

Anyway, basically I'm all for bands who want to embrace the new and try different ways of making a living, be it fan-funded albums, giving their music away, 'doing a Radiohead' etc, and I don't think the odd bit of illegal downloading does much harm, certainly when it comes to introducing people to bands it has a great benefit. My concern is that the hardline 'I want to crush the music industry by insisting on not paying for albums' point of view is a bit black-and-whie for my liking. I hope eventually everyone meets in the middle somewhere.

[thugler]

I've seen more than one study that explains that downloading may be benefitting the music industry rather than hindering it, and in my case my love of music only really took off with the advent of the internet and ability to listen to a lot more music than I would have otherwise. I don't understand where the other end of the argument comes from except from big music labels unable to comprehend that people don't perhaps want to be charged 16 quid for one album anymore.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Music in now costs potentially very little to make.

People who get picked up get promoted mainly because the label thinks it can make money out of them. That's the music industry. Music will still exist with or without them. Albums would still exist, popular tracks would still exist, live gigs and tours would still exist.

It seems to me you would need a personal motive to now want to continue to spend money on a particular band or person. Paying money for a CD/Vinyl is still justifiable in certain circumstances- paying money for digital audio I can't understand at all.

[chand]

I don't understand where the other end of the argument comes from except from big music labels unable to comprehend that people don't perhaps want to be charged 16 quid for one album anymore.

Is anyone routinely selling new albums for £16? Surely like a lot of things, the price of CDs have dropped in real terms? I remember routinely paying £13-£14 in the mid-90s, but now with online shopping and supermarket competitiveness you can get most mainstream music for less than a tenner an album, which in real terms must be a lot cheaper than music used to be.

[NoSleep]

A close friend believes that we should all download all music illegally, to basically crush the music industry which he sees as something that confines and constrains music. We often have discussions about this, which usually comes down to one thing. For him, music should not be about making money. Music should be an artistic process that is done for the love of creating and performing. When those Mississippi blues-men were making music on their front-porch it was for them and for their community, not to make money. For my friend it is an issue of artistic purity.

Those Mississipi bluesmen were playing the Blues, sometimes instead of a more localised folk form, because Blues was selling.

No matter how much you love to create or perform, you need to be paid in order to make time to do so. Being able to create and perform on a full-time basis will be the goal of any artist.

Also: regarding the crushing of the music industry - well, how about artists that have resolutely work outside of the mainstream music business - people like Recommended Records (AKA ReR Megacorp), El Saturn (Sun Ra's independent label during his lifetime), R.Stevie Moore, Sun City Girls, Incus Records (Derek Bailey's label)? These are all people running businesses to allow them to keep on doing what they love.

As my colleague, Blade, a UK rapper who released his own records to maintain artistic integrity (and made a fair job of it, too), said;

"The baby needs to get fed."

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm not sure I agree with the 'support musicians in other ways' routine, it's all very well saying that but, y'know, I've seen probably less than 1% of the bands I own music by live. I'm not sure why seeing someone live is obviously A Good Thing and paying for their album is obviously bad; in both cases someone who isn't the band is making money, except gigs are quite often more expensive, frequently inconvenient, and fleeting compared to the value you'll get out of a really good album you'll spin for years to come. It's easy to say 'fuck EMI', but I still think there are independent labels doing a good job and I don't really want to see them fall by the wayside in favour of an odd kind of 'live music is the correct way to compensate a band' ethos; if you believe music has to be free and that bands have no choice in the matter, then you should be refusing to pay for gigs as well.

I think you're putting up a slight straw man. I'll put myself forward as an advocate for it, as I have more mp3s than most. It's not that I think all music should be free, I just don't think for the minimal sliver of cash the band actually gets, I should have to pay full album prices. I was mates with a guy from a semi-famous indie band, and I ended up buying his album from him directly, and I didn't mind doing that. Very very few people genuinely believe all music should be free and that no-one should have to pay for it ever.

I don't think live is always necessarily "a good thing". My point was (I hope) that it's a way for bands to make a decent living without getting the royalties from album sales, and they certainly make a greater proportion of the money spent on gigs than they would from albums. There's an alternate business model which can work, and means no decent band will go without - it just means we don't really need the major record labels any more. Donations for records (like loads of bands do), gigging, radio play royalties...

The argument in favour of keeping the system is that these labels pay for publicity, studio time, and so on, and without them we'd never hear of these bands. It's just not true any more - recording has got cheaper and cheaper, I'm sure most of us are more likely to hear a band thanks to someone like Peel playing them, or via Myspace or Pitchfork, than we are from the sort of advertising that the majors did.

I think, chand, I'd be interested to hear an argument for why we should keep the major label system. What do you think it has to offer these days? I'm never happy to see people lose their jobs, but equally I'm not happy at having been charged way over the odds for decades for the music I want to listen to, and am not going to apologise that the scales are finally tipping in the other direction.

[NoSleep]

You're wrong about the value of gigs, chand. Many bands outdo their recorded output in performance: it's where you see the actual reality of an artist, and why we call the other stuff "records". CDs are merely an aide memoire of many artists.

[chand]

You're wrong about the value of gigs, chand. Many bands outdo their recorded output in performance: it's where you see the actual reality of an artist, and why we call the other stuff "records". CDs are merely an aide memoire of many artists.

All well and good, does fuck-all for the vast amount of bands I've never got to see, that either haven't played here or I've been doing something else when they're in town etc etc. Live and recorded music are two different things, for example I do the latter but not the former. I'm merely saying that the logic of economics as much as anything would suggest that it seems weird to just accept that it's fine to pay for gigs but not albums, even though a lot of people involved in the recording of albums don't receive money from gigs.

[SavageHedgehog]

This would be a good name for Re-Flex's long delayed but surprisingly contemporary second hit.

I don't download because frankly my computer can't really hack it (so to speak). I have copied a fair few CDs in my time.

[thugler]

something is skewed here, what is the argument exactly? That downloading is bad for artists because then people don't buy their records? Thats completely untrue. Fact is that many smaller artists only get heard for the first time due to the rise of downloading. I think most music downloaders still buy records, but it's just not sensible to resist the urge to try out so many new bands so freely.

[chand]

There's an alternate business model which can work, and means no decent band will go without - it just means we don't really need the major record labels any more. Donations for records (like loads of bands do), gigging, radio play royalties...

But I endorsed bands using alternative business models:

Anyway, basically I'm all for bands who want to embrace the new and try different ways of making a living, be it fan-funded albums, giving their music away, 'doing a Radiohead' etc, and I don't think the odd bit of illegal downloading does much harm, certainly when it comes to introducing people to bands it has a great benefit.

I definitely think it's great if bands can record their material themselves, self-release it and make money; I've bought music from bands like that, and as I said I deliberately run my own music at a loss and refuse to take even a penny for it.

I think, chand, I'd be interested to hear an argument for why we should keep the major label system. What do you think it has to offer these days? I'm never happy to see people lose their jobs, but equally I'm not happy at having been charged way over the odds for decades for the music I want to listen to, and am not going to apologise that the scales are finally tipping in the other direction.

I don't hold much of a candle for the majors, and I know that the world of even the indie labels is depressingly full of grubbiness. I totally support the idea of bands doing it themselves, as I keep saying, although I do wonder whether my musical collection would be worse if I hadn't found a lot of bands through their labels (it's still one of the ways I find music, there are lots of good labels that work pretty much as a stamp of quality). If the major labels die, I'm not going to cry about it, I just sort of want it to come from bands choosing to bypass the labels and doing it themselves, as opposed to consumers endorsing a system whereby the label funds the albums we listen to and then gets nothing from it. Or perhaps I just resent the possibility of me paying higher prices for albums because other people are paying nothing. I know that there are a lot of people with well-thought-out arguments for downloading, and I'm not knocking them, but there are people who it seems to me are just retrospectively justifying their decisions to get music for free because it's so easy to do.

[Pedro_Bear]

You sick fucks, how do you sleep at night?



My sister's a recording artist you bastards. How do you think she'll keep affording cocaine if you just rip her stuff off of pedobay?

"I wasn't going to give her money anyway," is the kind of low, self-serving logic I expect from people who support drug dealing and terrorism.

Educate yourselves, criminal scum.

[chand]

Fact is that many smaller artists only get heard for the first time due to the rise of downloading. I think most music downloaders still buy records, but it's just not sensible to resist the urge to try out so many new bands so freely.

I agree, and I accept the argument that a lot of downloaders do still buy albums, in many cases albums they would never have heard, but I do know people who intend to buy albums and never end up doing so because they've got all the songs already. What I would like to see is for bands to run their shit themselves and get some control over it if they want. For example, if bands stream their albums or release half of it as free mp3 downloads, then they can bypass the justification for illegal downloading as 'try before you buy' mechanism. But if bands are so concerned then they should be fucking the labels off in the first place, self-recording, self-promoting and organising whatever business model they see fit.

Again, I'm not against illegal downloading or changing the business model. My position is basically 'free shit FTW, bands should take control'. I just find the idea of letting the labels fund records and then consumers not paying for them, with the justification that if they play live gigs it'll all be alright, a tad odd. Label funds album = label should get a cut, promoter puts on gig = promoter should get cut, seems fair enough. Label funds album, people say 'I don't pay for albums, I pay for gigs', band and gig promoters get cut, that seems skewed to me.

I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here, cos in my experience these threads end up with everyone agreeing that the labels suck. The only other thing I'd say theoretically in favour of the label system is that I do have slight reservations about a situation where the music world is dominated by media-savvy bands; I can see an argument for the creative talent leaving that shit to the suits. The one downside of bands taking ownership of their distribution and recording and shit is that they're then required to be technical whizzkids and PR twats as well as musicians. But hopefully it will just end up with a situation where the music world isn't dominated by anyone, and everyone can find their niche.

[Pedro_Bear]

You fucking murderers!

In Britain, 21 illegal Chinese immigrants drowned in the rising tide of Morecambe Bay while harvesting shellfish at night in treacherous waters. The victims had been forced into servitude by a slavemaster whose accomplice was found to have 4,000 counterfeit DVDs, copiers, and other equipment used for film piracy.

Eh? EH? I don't want to hear your compartmentalising lies, you are godless scum, worse than rapists. This is your fate.

[NoSleep]

Chand: I suggest you re-examine the value of experiencing a performance. I would suggest you are missing out on something. Some of my greatest experiences occurred at gigs, some by artists that never managed to capture their sound on record. It was worth every penny, and, despite the records being rather good, they were a disappointment in comparison.

[chand]

Chand: I suggest you re-examine the value of experiencing a performance. I would suggest you are missing out on something. Some of my greatest experiences occurred at gigs, some by artists that never managed to capture their sound on record. It was worth every penny, and, despite the records being rather good, they were a disappointment in comparison.

Eh? I'm not criticising performances, I've been to some magnificent gigs. Performing is not something I want to do myself though, it's just a completely different art to recording. My reaction to the argument that not paying for albums is okay if you go to gigs though, is, why listen to the albums at all then? Just go to the gigs, enjoy live music, no problem, let's make all music live and be done with the outdated album paradigm. The fact that people still listen to recorded music though suggests it serves a function.

I wonder if we'd be having this argument the opposite way round in an alternate universe where it was impossible to copy albums and easy to see gigs for free and bypass the grasping Ticketmaster cunts that inflate gig prices and add fuck-all value? To that extent it feels like recorded music has got a bit unlucky in that it's possible to take albums for free, but much less so for gigs.

[confettiinmyhair]

Is there such a thing as being in the possesion of too much music? To the point that you are unable to give each track or album an adequate amount of listening time. I sometimes feel like a kid who has been given the keys to the Sweet Shop, and now after the initial sugar rush I'm beginning to develop a bit of a headache.

[thugler]

I agree, and I accept the argument that a lot of downloaders do still buy albums, in many cases albums they would never have heard, but I do know people who intend to buy albums and never end up doing so because they've got all the songs already. What I would like to see is for bands to run their shit themselves and get some control over it if they want. For example, if bands stream their albums or release half of it as free mp3 downloads, then they can bypass the justification for illegal downloading as 'try before you buy' mechanism. But if bands are so concerned then they should be fucking the labels off in the first place, self-recording, self-promoting and organising whatever business model they see fit.

Again, I'm not against illegal downloading or changing the business model. My position is basically 'free shit FTW, bands should take control'. I just find the idea of letting the labels fund records and then consumers not paying for them, with the justification that if they play live gigs it'll all be alright, a tad odd. Label funds album = label should get a cut, promoter puts on gig = promoter should get cut, seems fair enough. Label funds album, people say 'I don't pay for albums, I pay for gigs', band and gig promoters get cut, that seems skewed to me.

I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here, cos in my experience these threads end up with everyone agreeing that the labels suck. The only other thing I'd say theoretically in favour of the label system is that I do have slight reservations about a situation where the music world is dominated by media-savvy bands; I can see an argument for the creative talent leaving that shit to the suits. The one downside of bands taking ownership of their distribution and recording and shit is that they're then required to be technical whizzkids and PR twats as well as musicians. But hopefully it will just end up with a situation where the music world isn't dominated by anyone, and everyone can find their niche.

If there was any evidence that downloading has done anything but improve the industry and been a positive effect on artists and labels then maybe you would have a point. The only ones who seem to have a problem with it are the very biggest labels, who have been ripping everyone off for years. And those labels are the ones involved with spreading all this guilt about downloading.

[Retinend]

Is there such a thing as being in the possesion of too much music? To the point that you are unable to give each track or album an adequate amount of listening time. I sometimes feel like a kid who has been given the keys to the Sweet Shop, and now after the initial sugar rush I'm beginning to develop a bit of a headache.

Yeah, I need at least 5 proper listens to an album to feel I've fully digested it. Sometimes more. If I really like it I'll listen to it incessantly. If you acquire an album a day I can't believe that you've really given it due consideration. That kind of collection seems quite vain.

[chand]

If there was any evidence that downloading has done anything but improve the industry and been a positive effect on artists and labels then maybe you would have a point.

I'm not saying there is, my understanding of the research as it stands at the moment is that downloading has had a statistically insignificant effect either way. I'm just interested in the principle of it, it's interesting seeing how people justify not paying for certain things that have real costs in their production. Especially when, as you question them about it, they often respond as if their free-downloading stance is saving the music industry; it's like some kind of amazing direct action they can do sat on their arse that coincidentally saves them money. I'm not defending the BPI or RIAA and their laughable accusations of funding terrorism, I couldn't give a shit what Bono or Lars Ulrich are losing, I think suing downloaders is massively counter-productive and wrong, and I think it's awesome if people are using downloads to increase their music education and getting into bands they might never have heard, eventually supporting better and more interesting artists. I'd love it if music was largely free of the corrupting influence of money; I've known bands trying to get signed and the compromises involved made me want no part of it. I'm just unconvinced by some of the arguments I hear, particularly the idea that paying for gigs will achieve some kind of karmic balance and justify not paying for the album. The only part of that that makes any sense is the idea that the musicians don't make as much money from records as they do from gigs, but it still feels slightly hand-waving, and I wonder how discerning people really are about which labels get their money and which don't, and how people rationalise the decisions.

[thugler]

Me and all those of my friends who partake in significant amounts of music downloading all have the same thing in common, we grew up while music downloading was starting to get popular on a large scale (napster etc.) and basically used it to educate ourselves on music. But we still buy more and more music/go to gigs, as much as we can, but it's expensive and never enough.

[chand]

My totally-unsupported-by-data hypothesis is that the type of genuine music fans who would bother coming into threads to debate about downloading have probably spent a lot more as a result of it, while casual buyers have probably ended up spending a lot less, which is arguably a good thing. I certainly think the internet in general has been massively good for music, I know I've hugely diversified from the days pre-internet when I used to get all my recommendations from NME, I've learned so much about music thanks to the internet. And pre-internet it was unthinkable that someone like me would be able to self-distribute CDs and find a (tiny) audience worldwide, so it's been pretty amazing for really, really obscure musicians to get out there.

[Johnny Townmouse]

"Those Mississipi bluesmen were playing the Blues, sometimes instead of a more localised folk form, because Blues was selling. No matter how much you love to create or perform, you need to be paid in order to make time to do so. Being able to create and perform on a full-time basis will be the goal of any artist."

Well, I'm not sure that is true. I know many people across all the arts who are quite happy to do it without any kind of financial renumeration. That's certainly how I felt when I was in a band. It was a venture that only ever cost me money, and I was happy to just be making music. I think there is a strong argument that commerce and art are two concepts that do not naturally go together.

"Also: regarding the crushing of the music industry - well, how about artists that have resolutely work outside of the mainstream music business - people like Recommended Records (AKA ReR Megacorp), El Saturn (Sun Ra's independent label during his lifetime), R.Stevie Moore, Sun City Girls, Incus Records (Derek Bailey's label)? These are all people running businesses to allow them to keep on doing what they love."

This is really the main problem with illegal downloading as far as I am concerned. I do think there is a moral drive to pay for music produced and distributed by labels that are clearly not making a profit, and who simply pump money into the next set of records. Recommended Records is a good example of a label, and the shop (These Records) that really cannot even be included in the same sentence as the multinationals or the fake independents (subsidiaries). I think my illegal downloading is partly a response to the 90s buy-ups of the indies which really fractured the idea of supporting small labels.

Edit: To make sense.

[Johnny Townmouse]

Is there such a thing as being in the possesion of too much music? To the point that you are unable to give each track or album an adequate amount of listening time. I sometimes feel like a kid who has been given the keys to the Sweet Shop, and now after the initial sugar rush I'm beginning to develop a bit of a headache.

Yes, there is definitely a romantic, probably nostalgic, notion that owning a handful of albums is a good thing because of the investment made in them. I have memories of only owning Sugarcubes 'Lifes Too Good', My Bloody Valentine's 'Feed me with your Kiss' EP and The Smiths 'Strangeways Here we Come'. I knew them inside out, every guitar manouvere, and the text on the run-out groove. But my main memory is being extremely hungry for music I could not afford, taping Peel and staring at the racks of records in Rough Trade salivating and frustrated that my parents had no money and I lived on a shitty council estate (boo hoo!).

A cursory glance at my iTunes tells me that I have just over 12 weeks of music. I could press play on the Bad Seed's 'Get Ready for Love' and my iTunes would play until approximately the 18th June. There is something unsettling about that.

[Johnny Townmouse]

Me and all those of my friends who partake in significant amounts of music downloading all have the same thing in common, we grew up while music downloading was starting to get popular on a large scale (napster etc.) and basically used it to educate ourselves on music. But we still buy more and more music/go to gigs, as much as we can, but it's expensive and never enough.

Well, this is true. The people I know who illegally download are also the same people who promote music to their friends and spend tons of money on gigs, DVDs and t-shirts. Without question. In fact, my very good friend only illegally downloads these days - mainly because he spends half his wages on gigs.

[Robot DeNiro]

something is skewed here, what is the argument exactly? That downloading is bad for artists because then people don't buy their records? Thats completely untrue. Fact is that many smaller artists only get heard for the first time due to the rise of downloading. I think most music downloaders still buy records, but it's just not sensible to resist the urge to try out so many new bands so freely.

From my point of view, that is complete nonsense.  My band released three albums between 2002 and 2008, and each one sold half as many as its predecessor.  That's despite the fact that our fanbase clearly grew over that time, with gigs of increasing size, large festival crowds, myspace and youtube promotion etc.

We never expected to make a living from releasing albums, but getting a bit of cash was a definite incentive for making music.  It's got to the point now where it's simply not worth making another album, so we've effectively retired.

Now it's been a long time since I've paid for any music myself, so it would be hypocritical of me to be bitter about this, I just accept it as the way things are these days.  But you're kidding yourself if you think illegal downloading doesn't have a negative effect, and it hits the smaller players first and hardest.

[Pedro_Bear]

^^or was it just that a Christian speed metal revival seemed like a good idea in 2002, but alas was not to endure?

[Johnny Townmouse]

We never expected to make a living from releasing albums, but getting a bit of cash was a definite incentive for making music.  It's got to the point now where it's simply not worth making another album, so we've effectively retired.

An argument might be that as cash is an incentive for making music for some, illegal downloading is purifying music, filtering out those that don't think it is worth making music unless there is a financial reward. The point has been made that music is now really quite cheap to produce and distribute. Perhaps the future will offer up music made by people who genuinely only care about their self-expression and the (non-financial) rewards that produces. We certainly would have been spared U2, who would not have had any kind of career to retire from, becoming investment bankers or stock brokers instead.