i found this snippet on slashdot today, which says that p2p downloaders (read: music pirates) buy more music according to a study commissioned by the Canadian government (more and more i’m thinking that, despite popular american opinion, canadians RAWK). now this is something i’ve known for years, because it’s precisely the case for me. with the crap that is played on the radio and tv media, it’s hard to find music that is actually any good. so i build my own radio, and through that, decide what i like and don’t and what i want to purchase or not. if i like an album or an artist, i am going to buy their record, period. i’m not going to satisfy myself with the mp3s — that’s not an equivalent to the album to me. i want to be able to hold the complete product, and for that matter, i do want to support the artist. that’s why in the last two albums (possibly the first two albums, at that) in which you could choose to pay, or not, for full downloads of the album from the artist, i paid — because i like radiohead and i like saul williams, i want them to have my money for what they do, and because that money is not filtered through marketing, pr, traveling expenses, advertising, lawyers, and all the myriad bills that suck up the royalty profits of an album. now if only lawmakers and the recording industry could stop messing with something that’s apparently already working in their favor and making music fans into criminals. or, alternately, if only artists could follow the lead of these aforementioned indie acts and find creative and new ways to allow people to preview their album for free, or choose their own price, or purchase directly from the artist rather than a store (since record stores are already a dying breed).
there’s an uncertain future in the potd in that erin thinks if i’m gonna do it it shouldn’t just be the same thing every time, it should be somewhat more creative than that. the problem with that is that i usually blog when i first get up and don’t really have anything better to do because if i start making noise in the kitchen that might wake up gavin, it’s better to wait until the last minute to do that. and when i first get up in the morning, i’m not at my most creative…although, often i’m in my most foul mood, which helps when i’m writing one of my crazy rants. but i guess i’ll try to change it up a bit, since, you know, you already know what i look like in the morning. so really it’s just same picture, different shirt…
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