Free Song downloads

Have you seen this? Click here for the story of a Minnesota woman who was convicted of "illegal file sharing". Basically, she was using Kazaa (or limewire, or bittorent, or etc...) to download songs and upload songs to other users of that software.

The great thing about these types of software is that only 1 person has to go out and purchase the song, then they make it available to everyone else to download for free. That's right: FREE. The bad thing is that the label companies are only getting paid for the song once instead of potentially 100's of times from the other users that would want to listen to it.

Now PC's were just becoming popular when I was in college, so I bought every "record" I listened to in high school. I did occasionally record a song from the radio onto my cassette tapes and then played them back later, but the quality was poor at best. And I certainly didn't mass produce the tapes for all my friends to take home and enjoy. So I always paid for a song if I wanted to listen to it over and over and not wait for it to come on the radio.

What I really find interesting is today's kids (12-18yrs old) have always had computers and they have always shared files. Unless some parent figure or role model told them specifically that it is wrong, they have downloaded files from these software programs for free. And to be perfectly honest with you, I never thought to have that conversation with my kids. Now I am starting to look at this and it is obvious that I have to pick a side and make a stance and make it known to my children which side of the fence we will (or should) stand on.

I see that the label companies lose money (they estimate billions are lost just from illegal file sharing of music files), but that really doesn't bother me. I think more so about the artists themselves. If you are busting your ass to get a CD out there, and make a living as a musician, doesn't this cut into their profit? Many file sharing advocates will argue that they will find artists for free that they would never had heard if they had to go into a store and buy a CD unheard. And then they will see a band live, even though they have never "purchased" a CD from them. The artists will still make money from touring and merchandise.

My thoughts right now are to choose not to download files from these "sharing" programs. At least my family won't be running any out of my house. But I do believe that there will be a big shift in how music is sold/shared/or distributed because of what I am seeing in the kids growing up today. Maybe the label companies could drop the prices on a CD to make it more accessible to a broader market. I do like the fact that you can now buy individual songs, instead of having to get the whole CD. Anyway, what do you think? I'm very interested to know.