Yeah...following societal norms...LOLOLOL! How quaint! How provincial!
At this point, downloading data for free is pretty normal in society, so this would scarcely be considered a highly unusual or abnormal activity.
Yep, totally. This is why when I want a Big Mac, I run into a McDonald's, grab one without paying anyone there, and then send a dollar to the farmer who raised the cow that provided the beef patties. That's undoubtedly a lot more than he's getting from McDonald's for each sale. Of course, this way the actual vendor doesn't get my money, so they have no way to pay the cook who put the Big Mac together, the man who cleans the bathroom that I used on my way in, the farmer who grew the wheat to make the bun, or any of the other parties who were involved in getting that Big Mac into my stomach. But, whatevs! At least I'm not acting like one of those moronic sheep who still pays at the counter!
This is a rather poor example. A physical product is not analogous to digital music. You don't even have to go as far as big macs... even stealing a physical CD would not be analogous, because you would be stealing an actual product, not just making copies of 1s and 0s. In this thread, we are talking about downloading an album either way, the only potential point of disagreement is where someone downloads it from. Also, when someone wants a big mac, they obviously value the supply chain which brings the physical product to them, and the beef producer himself is not the only player in the creation of this value. Decades ago, something similar was true in the music industry... the record label, manufacturer, distributor, retail outlet, etc, all provided some valuable service to you as the end consumer of music, because they served to deliver into your hands the large black vinyl discs or small silver plastic discs that you needed in order to listen to music. But someone who is on this board, talking about bands they discovered online or from people online, and talking about downloading those albums digitally to begin with, is not exactly getting much value from the various parts of the distribution chain (the way the big mac consumer is), they're only getting value from the people who actually recorded the music.
According to
the WSJ, for Amazon's $3.99 daily deals, these are loss-leaders where Amazon still pays the rights-holder the $7-$8 wholesale price for each sale, and eats the difference. It also mentions that the $5 deals like those in this thread are likely negotiated with the rights-holders, but we still have no idea if that affects the artist's share, or if it's the label eating the difference. Either way, it's something all parties involved have agreed to.
Oh, I have no doubt someone, somewhere gets paid at least some small amount. But considering that many independent-label or non-label musicians have told me they haven't made any money from albums, or have sometimes even taken a loss on them, it's tough to figure what part of that $4, $5, $7, or $8 actually gets back to the musician in some cases.
