Correct me if I'm wrong, but songs are 99c on iTunes? Is it reasonable to expect a 20 year old intern to drop almost $11,000 on songs? It would seem being a music lover is an expensive hobby.
Is it reasonable to expect a 20 year old intern to have these 11000 songs? Does her life depend on it? What about other things which are unreasonable expensive for a 20 year old intern? The laptop to store the music on, external hard drive, smartphone with data plan to download and so on ... ?
This one has some background on numbers. And myths about royalties: http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emi...
He starts off by saying "I’m gonna give you a break" and then ignores the record company's cut, which is about 80%. And then proceeds to use this drastically reduced value to lay a guilt trip.
It doesn't work that way, the record company isn't going to cut her a break, it's going to charge her the full 99c. Which means instead of $17.82 a month, she would need to pay $89.10 a month, for 10 years between the ages of 10 and 20.
This girl is a thief, plain and simple. It's like walking into a Starbucks and just stealing coffee. The marginal cost of a cup of coffee is just pennies, however there are fixed costs involved. If you don't like Starbucks or think they're corrupt or whatever, no one is forcing you to consume their product. If you don't like Universal Records, then don't support their product.
Musicians must buy equipment and play, usually for years making next to nothing, playing in ratty bars for shitty owners and when they finally do get an album released, they certainly deserve to get paid -- the record companies deserve to get paid as well. For every hit song, they've blown countless dollars supporting musicians that never accomplish anything.
This anti-corporate argument is the argument of a cheapskate thief. There are plenty of Indie labels on iTunes that operate on shoestrings, yet people steal their music too.
And it's very likely that she doesn't listen to all those songs. She does want to work in the music industry though, so I can kinda see how she might want to sample a wide variety of songs. She should probably have used streaming services instead I guess.