Name This Album and Why Females Stars

I have to say that I disagree with the comments regarding Napster and file sharing.  It's just another rewording of the argument for radio stations paying for the right to promote music.

My take is that those who download, in whatever form, would likely never purchase the music in any event, at least without hearing it first.

Rabid fans will purchase.  And if you download and really like the music, much like hearing music on the radio, you'll buy it.  As far as I'm concerned, downloading is another form of promotion, and generates far more sales than losing them.

I'm not going to go into who I feel is killing the music industry, if indeed it is being killed, but it certainly isn't the fans.

I'm not sure. Napster became extremely popular and definitely used extensively by general public and mp3s sure seemed to become the primary audio format, physical media certainly took a major nosedive for awhile, so it appears quite reasonable to conclude that the record companies really did suffer substantially from it. Before the internet (and Napster) became commonplace you either bought new records and tapes or bought used at garage sales or Flea markets, or taped songs from on the radio - which was about the only ither way to get new releases other than recording a bootleg copy of someone who bought it.

With napster you could often download entire albums of new releases before it even hit the stores (movies too) and it didnt even cost a cent... I had done plenty of that myself.

To equate the downloading of music for free as just another form of promotion might be taking it too far.. I think his comparison of walking in the supermarket loading up with your favorite groceries and walking out without paying is pretty accurate. 

Here's my input....libraries ever since their beginning with books and then records and tapes and CDs let you borrow a book especially, go home and read it and return it and never buy it. So that book didn't get counted as a copy sold, same with records and CDs. The library even has copying machines so you can read a book there, go to a machine and take what you want even though at the beginning it says no part of this book may be copied in whole or in part. The library facilitates copyright infringement.
Books, records, are a measure of success on the part of singer, band, writer etc. Success is measured by number of copies sold. The Beatles for example sold 500 million records, a writer sold 50 million copies of a book(example) and that is a measure of success. If people just download, or go to a library, take what someone else created in audio and print then the band, writer, doesn't get credited with a sale and they don't make money on their work and with music if you just take it and don't buy it how is the artist to be paid? How is a record company supposed to exist? You say that the singers/ bands make their money with live shows.....but what about the record company that records the albums for you to take for free and the bands should make money from the sale of records which they don't now.
The Rolling Stones recently made a new album, knowing that not only will radio not play it but it won't have any sales of physical copies. No copies were sold. It was just for the enjoyment of doing it. They knew there would be no money in it.
Gene Simmons(Kiss) is right. Before PCs and MP3 players, you had records and record stores. The radio was where you heard that song you wanted and you went out and spent your money, supporting the musicians that wrote the songs and the record companies that signed bands/singers and recorded them. Your dollars supported the industry.
Now, there are no record stores, Yes there are book stores but why buy it when you can go to the library and read it and give it back. And even copy what you want. I agree with him.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aS4ipXcQfoo?feature=share

@mark You mentioned: "even though at the beginning it says no part of this book may be copied in whole or in part." . There was a big snafu concerning public libraries a few years ago, don't know what become of it but it had to do with how it was illegal to lend out more than one digital formatted ( and copyrighted) book title at a time.. in other words the title had to be returned to the library before another person could check it out - just as if the book were an old fashioned actual hardcover physical copy. It was all over the news for a few months and libraries were up in arms over the whole thing. Crazy stuff.

Speaking of legalities; as a kid I used to tear thse labels off of mattresses and couches just to see what happened. Nothing did.

Many years later during Napster years, I kept downloading despite receiving a few warning emails from my internet provider, just to see what happened. Nothing did.

Sorry, but I don't buy it.

Everyone I knew, including myself, would prefer to buy physical media.  Downloading is a good way to preview songs to see if you like them (although I should state that I never used Napster) - libraries are another, or listening to a friend's copy.  If you had the money, and the desire, you'd buy.  If you didn't have the money, you would never have purchased it anyway, so who loses?  Plus there would be the added bonus of word of mouth promotion.  "Hey, have you heard the song <x> on that album..."

Before downloading, people made tape copies.  But the same principle applied - if you could afford to, you bought the original material, which was higher quality and often contained added bonuses.

Heck, the Grateful Dead even reinvigorated the tape recording industry (and their careers) by explicitly allowing fans to tape their concerts, as long as the recordings met certain technical criteria.

I know that I never purchased so many physical copies of media as I did when Napster was around, and that was because I finally had the finances to do so.  I was old school.  A friend who was also into music would make mix tapes, I'd listen and end up purchasing lots and lots of CDs as a result.  My trips down to Seattle for Microsoft ended up costing me a fortune, as I'd save up my 'to get' list, and then visit Tower Records there (which had a much better selection than most stores in Canada).

I'm not sure where the library stuff being mentioned comes from.  Libraries can pay much more for their loanable material, particularly ebooks and digital media.  For ebooks, often there are limits on the number of times that the book can be signed out, and then it has to be repurchased.  And all of the sales are counted and the monies go towards paying the publishers and artists.

I personally don't know why any record company would pay millions of dollars to produce an album.  Some of the greatest albums ever were created with shoestring budgets (the debut album by The Clash comes to mind, but there are plenty of other examples).

I'm also not convinced that Napster was the cause of music sales declining.  It could be because a lot of the music produced after the 1980s was crap.

As a final word, I would have to say that these sorts of complaints tend to come from the big, successful, artists, who are already popular.  Their stuff will sell no matter what (there are always adoring fans who will buy anything) and they feel they don't need any further promotion.  They see downloading and somehow think that they're losing revenue.

My opinion is that the biggest issue today for most musicians is that it's difficult to get noticed.  I follow a lot of small, obscure bands and they basically give their music away anyway, through Youtube videos and/or almost complete samples on web pages, just to get heard.  I guess if they became famous, like Gene Simmons, then they'd go bonkers on downloading as well.

But maybe not.  They're not corporate bean counters who don't see the big picture.

Any way you look at it, it's a lot harder to sell something when it simultaneously becomes readily free.

... that was in reference to your comment: "I'm also not convinced that Napster was the cause of music sales declining.  It could be because a lot of the music produced after the 1980s was crap." - which I thought was pretty funny!