Music Piracy War: A waste of time?

[DarkFish]

First of all, the forum rules on piracy specifically mentions software and game piracy, nothing about other forms of piracy (like music piracy). So I assume we can safely discuss this topic and also admit anything we want without getting infractions, which would make things a lot easier. Could a mod please confirm this?

Originally Posted by TarJak

I've always subscribed to the theory that people who access pirated material are not potential customers anyway and would be unwilling to buy the content regardless of the cost.

Originally Posted by jimbuna

IMHO the people who pirate the music only do so because a, it is free and b, they have no intention of paying and wouldn't anyway if that was their sole option.

I don't think so. I think people who would not buy the album anyway would not listen to it as you only listen to music you like.

I don't know about other cultures, but amongst metalheads it's pretty much an obligation to buy albums of bands you like. Not for the music, you can get that everywhere across the interwebz, but to support those bands. In the same way that you buy band merchandise (shirts and stuff) from their official retailers. You can print your own shirt for half the price, but you don't support the bands by it so it's considered really cheap to do so.

A positive thing about piracy is that it brings music to a much greater audience. Without piracy loads of good bands would have never become known. Bands that are already famous will probably not gain much from this, but I think for smaller unknown bands piracy is actually a real blessing.