P2P Music Sharing -- The Radio of the New Millenium

Date: 22 Jul 2003 12:55:09 -0700
Newsgroups: alt.music.mp3
Size: 1,925 bytes

Sharing music is nothing new.
No matter what the RIAA claims, sharing inevitably leads to higher
sales.
Why do recording companies want their artists' songs played on the
radio? To increase their popularity and reputation which increases
record, concert and merchandise sales. Raking in extra money just for
playing the song is an added bonus.
Before "payola" was outlawed, it nearly became standard practice for a
recording company to pay popular radio stations to play their artists'
songs more often than others. Clearly getting an artist more exposure
(airtime) is something worth paying for.
People listen to "free" music all the time on the radio. For the past
few decades people have also recorded their favorite songs off of the
radio, and also have copied songs from album to tape, from compact
disc to tape, and more recently from compact disc to recordable
compact disc.
The recording industry certainly isn't going broke. What's the
crisis? Projected lost sales? Record sales certainly don't appear to
be suffering.
Perfect copy or not (and believe me, a 128Kbps MP3 file is not a
perfect copy) if I really like an artist enough to buy their CD,
grabbing a few MP3's off of someone isn't going to do anything but
encourage me to buy my own CD.
People naturally prefer to "try before you buy", and tend to spend
their money on things they like.
For me personally, radio, lyrics search engines as well as P2P music
exchange play a major role in what music I purchase.
I may catch half of a really cool song on the radio. I'll search what
lyrics I can remember on the Internet, and find the song name and
artist. I'll then try to locate a copy of the song to listen to, and
if it's the right song, I'll check out some more of their songs. If I
like them, I'll go out and buy the CD -- or order it online.
If I didn't have these tools available to me, I would never have given
it a second thought.