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Comment by abraxasz | Hacker News Reader

What you say makes sense, but I think it misses the point. This whole post reminds me of another article that was posted on HN a couple weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3633985.

The question is not whether what the OP is doing is right or wrong. Like he said, it's a fact. You can call him whatever you want, this is not going to solve the problem. What you want to do is to be pragmatic: "ok, so that's how some of the pirates think. How can I make sure to sell them my stuff".

As for your last point, that's one way to look at it. Another way is: maybe we'll come to a point where artists will get a higher percentage of each album sale, since there won't be as much overhead in distribution, packaging, etc.. So one out of four will be more than enough for them to keep producing.

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> The question is not whether what the OP is doing is right or wrong.

I agree; I did mention the word "right", but I then went on to say that that wasn't the real point.

> maybe we'll come to a point where artists will get a higher percentage of each album sale

First of all, if artists are selling direct over the Internet, why do they need to sell "albums"? Why not just sell songs? Or better yet, why not sell "content" in whatever form the customers actually want to buy it?

But if anything like this happens, then the effect will be to reduce the prices of content to the point where the economic "signal" sent to the author or artist by a single purchase is about the same as it is now.

Anyway, my point is that the OP went to all this trouble to write a long blog post trying to explain how "content creators" could get him to spend more money; but he never seems to realize that a better way of communicating that information is already available to him: actually spending the money on things that are worth it to him.

In general I think that I agree with what you're saying. The only point I'd like to make is that he does repeatedly say that he does spend the money on the things that are worth it. He wrote this with the objective of telling content creators directly instead of assuming that they'll just figure it out. If the money backs what he's saying, all the better.

> The only point I'd like to make is that he does repeatedly say that he does spend the money on the things that are worth it.

Yes, he does, and I agree with his general point. I'm only pointing out that his definition of "worth it" appears to me to be somewhat inconsistent. If the fourth album by that artist he mentions was "worth it" because he liked the other three, why weren't the other three "worth it" as well, once he knew he liked them? The fact that he already had them for free is irrelevant; by his own admission, he could have gotten the fourth album for free as well, but he chose not to. I don't see why the same logic that drove that choice wouldn't also drive him to go back and pay for the other three after seeing their quality.

> He wrote this with the objective of telling content creators directly instead of assuming that they'll just figure it out.

This brings up another key point: the distinction between "content creators" and "content distributors". Much of what he says really applies to distributors--the media companies--rather than creators--the actual artists. The main conclusion an actual creator might draw from his post is that he should look for a better distribution channel than the big media companies. I would agree with that; in fact I've written about it myself:

http://blog.peterdonis.com/opinions/internet-blackout-day.ht...

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