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>"The internet allows for piracy at a scale that far surpasses the scale of sharing tapes among friends, but it's not going away and need to be capitalized on."

With services available like the Pirate Bay, an artist might have millions of fans enjoying his music but there will be no way for him to capitalize on it. The only way I can see to monetize bit torrent for artists are very indirect and way out of proportion to the enjoyment they create, akin to putting google ads on a popular website. Examples include using recorded music as an advertisement for big, expensive concerts and begging people to donate after they already have your music for free.

>"The argument that a pirated copy equals a lost sale is total bunk. I would have bought maybe 1% of what I've downloaded."

How much of that did you actually buy? For many people it is 0%.

Money has flowed out of music lately. The industry as a whole is shrinking. Downloaders sometimes say it is because "music isn't as good as it used to be". The music industry blames it on easy free downloads. I am more inclined to believe the latter. There is still lots of great music out there.

That said, I don't think there is any way to stop what is happening, and it is incumbent on artists that want to survive to deal with it as best they can. Unfortunately, that might mean going back to that day job at Starbucks for most of them.

Musicians have always made a majority of their money from playing live shows(with some large exceptions, obviously). Do you need this backed up with facts? It's pretty well known. Albums are a great way to advertise your live music. It used to cost a ton of money to make a crappy recording. Now it's practically free to create a good recording.

I don't see the point of the recording industry, frankly. I'm not willing to give up my right to share with people in order to ensure that the record companies exist. Sorry. Listen to the crap that is put out by record companies. They control the radio stations. You here the same thing all day, from DJs who don't even know what they are playing. Most of the quality stuff is made without their help, they merely act as a distribution channel.

I see music as being much more home grown in the future. Maybe DJs will once again play what they like instead of what corporations force down our throats. One thing is for sure, if people love music they will continue to make it. We will be left with a lot less crap once the record companies are gone.

And, in this home-grown music future, would people pay for recordings of good music? Or is recorded music just worthless?

I produced a recording last year that cost about $20,000, to get best-of-class session players for the sound I was after. While I'd rather people hear the music than not, even if they don't pay for it, I would sure appreciate folks buying a copy.

Since under his utopia those session players will be basically out of work, they would be a lot cheaper and you could still make your album.

> Examples include using recorded music as an advertisement for big, expensive concerts and begging people to donate after they already have your music for free.

What? But this is exactly how musicians earned their living since the forever.

> Downloaders sometimes say it is because "music isn't as good as it used to be".

That's not true. Many people simply claim that the good stuff isn't being promoted as it should. Instead what you'll see all day on MTV are boy bands.

I do pay for the music I like. Not because I want to reward the artists, but because it's a lot of fun going to the mall, looking at entire shelfs of CDs, meet girls, stuff like that. And when I'm going to a concert I feel the need to re-listen to the songs I just heard.

>"The only way I can see to monetize bit torrent for artists are very indirect and way out of proportion to the enjoyment they create, akin to putting google ads on a popular website."

They don't necessarily have to do it over bit torrent. Television is available over bit torrent as well, and a lot of people use it to download shows. But now that hulu is around a lot of people are getting the same desire met through a channel that compensates the copyright holders.

I'm not sure what the corresponding setup would be for music.

"If someone can find it I'd be grateful, but WIRED had a chart in an article sometime about 2004 showing that: average length of song is trending down, number of songs per album trending down, number of new artists trending down, number of albums per artist trending down, cost per album trending up, piracy trending up, and sales trending down. So yeah, it must be solely the fault of the internet and those dirty pirates that the music business is slowly falling....."

Uh, what? All those facts seem pretty consistent with artists losing sales due to piracy. Fewer new artists and existing artists making less music could indicate that piracy is taking away incentives for people to make music. Even cost per album could be due to trying to re-coup more revenue from falling sales (not saying this is a rational strategy, but not inconsistent with losing music sales to piracy).

That is the record label's argument verbatim. There is not shortage of new bands or artists and most artists make almost nothing off albums sales. Most touring bands make the majority of their money on merch sales.

> Uh, what? All those facts seem pretty consistent with artists losing sales due to piracy.

All? I don't see the relationship between piracy and the number of songs on an album or song length.

Music competes competes with other things for attention and "wallet share". For example, online gaming is exploding among the population that is not buying as much music.

same goes for movies too, most of them nowadays barely go longer than 1:30.