Totally. It's insane to think, we literally have the entire history of all music ever made at the click of a button. The fact that we are able to get anything and everything at lightning speeds is just mind blowing. I think there is a positive and negative effect to this. On the one hand, I think more music is discovered and listened to now a days. When I was in middleschool, I only listened to the albums I bought, which meant I usually only heard about 20-30 new albums a year. Compared to today, I could listen to that many in a given month. Peoples tastes are certainly widened. There becomes much more diversity, as they have a better outlet for finding new music.
But the negative side, is like you said, people stop caring on some levels. It becomes this easily digestible material, with no real second thought to it. I sometimes find myself overwhelmed by the amount of music I take in. I sometimes wish I would slow it down, and really listen to these albums with more focus and attention.
I do think overall though, the internet has been more positive than negative for music fans. I mean, let's be realistic here. How many albums have you heard, that you might never have heard if you had to go into a music store to buy every single album you listen to.
I guess for me, I just feel like the artist had to put a lot of time and effort into making their music. And it's true that not all artists care about people pirating. But it should be left up to them to decide that...and not the people? If Trent Reznor says it's okay to steal his music (I love Trent btw) - then that's cool. But if X artist thinks all his hard work and effort has a monetary value, should he not have the right to make money off his product? Do people have the right to listen and use his/her labors without paying?
That's the core question. It's not a question I have an answer to. I just know for me, I personally feel an obligation and a sense of responsibility to pay an artist for their work. I actually feel bad when I don't. But I'm also going to admit and say I am a hypocrite. While I do buy CDs every month (mostly the stuff I love), there is no way I could afford 20 albums a month. I would be broke.
So there's that.
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satanigatan, your post brought something I didn't even mention to avoid increasing my already gigantic post: what downloading music made of it. And this doesn't just refer to illegal downloads, although does play a big role in people not caring about music (since besides no effort, there's also no payment). People can download a whole artist's discography in 5 minutes, they put it in their 32Gb iPods and listen to the singles. They don't care. An old teacher of mine told me she and her friends used to go to one of their houses and listen to The Who records that one of them actually got when he went to the US - because there was no way of getting them here. They didn't talk, they just laid back and listened. I don't know anyone who does that nowadays.
except...there's the fact that this is the "getting called out" thread. that is what irks us.
