Locobot

Personally I support music and artists, not the Recording Industry. In fact I wish the Recording Industry ill. Pragma brought up some real and documented reasons for disliking the record industry: price fixing, stable thinning (fewer and fewer artists pushed more and more), and customer-hostile lawsuits but there are others. The major record labels (now all owned by 5 corporations) are bloated dinosaur fluff businesses especially in our multimedia age where anyone with a G4 could have their own record label.

The only thing about a record label that is intrinsically valuable is the talent: the musicians, writers, producers, and in some cases the recording engineers. A label can have all the executives, promo-people, paper pushers, marketers, accountants etc. but if it lacks the artists mentioned above its not worth, well, shit. Yet despite this, who takes the first biggest piece of the cd-price-tag pie? The execs and the people who make the cd "magic" happen. For every successful artist/group there are 100 (no exaggeration) who are swindled by the label ending up unpromoted and 100K+ in debt. The labels sign their artists early in their careers to binding contracts.

The system is unfair, harmful to artists, and limits diversity. That said, I do try to support smaller independant labels/artists, in cases where I know the money is getting to the artist. I buy independant cds from an independant record store. Major label cds I will buy used, copy from a friend, buy at an extreme discount direct from factory (a perk when you live 1 hour from where 25% of all cds are made), buy cheap pirated versions, steal, and download for free. I consider my choice a moral one. The question of copywright is moot as all major label artists sign their intellectual property rights over to the label.