Building a new music industry?

[jem777az]

God damn dude, if I was gay I'd demand that we run away forever.

I'm so sigging this.

 

[TribunalRecords]

The same kinda runs true for Line Of Fire. I know that 20 years ago we'd probably have gotten zero chance to do what we've been able to do in the last 10 years (2 good sounding full length albums). We're a decent band, but there are TONS of decent bands out there who are good enough to make a record.

Without what we have now (internet, home recording), 90% of bands with music available at this moment would not have music available period.

You used to have to hump the clubs for a year or have a rich uncle to save enough money for 8 hours at the local demo studio to get a shitty recording of a couple songs...then another year humping that and winding up with a closet full of leftover cassette demos. Now, bands can pool their funds (or hit up the rich uncle) to get a Mac and buy (or torrent) a copy of Pro-Tools and they're off and running! It's a completely different game.

I see my records on blogs and torrents all the time...I'm just glad people like it enough to share with other people. Me trying to fight global downloading is like trying to soak up the ocean in a napkin. I just try to stay positive and be gracious and thankful to those who purchase my records and even thankful to those who don't buy it but say "I liked your song on MySpace"...

BREAKING NEWS....LINE OF FIRE dropped by Tribunal Records! hahahaha. gotcha!

 

[Pelata]

Haha!! You know what I mean...we've talked about that...

And it's not just LOF...my other, non-Tribunal stuff is out there too...its unstoppable.

 

[General Zod]

So what you're saying is that you don't memorize every word of my posts?

Apologies.

This sounds almost like you've decided on a conclusion, and then will find (or ignore) facts required to support that conclusion.

Much like you, I have an opinion on the subject... hence this back and forth. Do I believe I know the answer? Yes. Does that mean I've closed my mind to new evidence? Of course not, none of my opinions are dogmatic in nature. However, as I've said, and as I still contend, I believe piracy to be the number one reason for lost revenue. And to be fair, this back and forth we've been having, enjoyable as it may be, indicates that you've also reached a conclusion that my conclusion is false. Unless of course you like spending your days playing devil's advocate.

Good point, I do not know that. It's probably some of both. Given the scale of the number, I think it's safe to assume that at least some of the effect of "unbundling" is negative for the industry (people buying singles when they would have bought albums before), and some is probably positive (new revenue from people who wouldn't have bought at all). I assume that when balanced out, the net effect is negative because revenue has declined while unit sales have gone up.

I wouldn't argue that it's a negative. Nor would I argue that all the factors you've championed contribute to the overall issue.

Another good point. My explanation for this one is that when people get old, they tend to die, and dead people stop buying music.

On this we agree; the dead buy very few CDs. Even worse, recent data suggests zombies prefer digital music, what with their transient lifestyle.

I'm not saying that the relationship between music revenue and video game revenue is directly inverse, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say there is *some* relationship. Do you dispute the idea that household entertainment budgets generally have at least soft limits, and that an increase in dollars directed to one form results in a decrease in dollars to another form?

Agreed, entertainment budgets and discretionary dollars are definitely finite. Perhaps because people are spending more on video games, they're downloading more illegal music?

Yes, I'm saying it's certainly a possible contributor. And not that they don't like music anymore, but they they just like other forms of entertainment more. Really, while we've been selling pre-recorded music for profit for a century now, that's a mere blink-of-the-eye against the thousands of years that music has been a part of human culture. So it wouldn't be a shock to find that it was just a fad. Do you dispute the idea that tastes in entertainment can change?

On this, I think we essentially agree. But it seems we disagree on what underlies the lack of profit we now see in the music world. While tastes in entertainment change, I find it difficult to believe that an entire generation has just decided music isn't all that entertaining.

No, it's the skeptic in me that recognizes the obvious answer is sometimes the incorrect one. It's obvious that the sun goes around the Earth, that ulcers are caused by stress, and that earthquakes are caused by angry gods. But luckily some smart people looked beyond the obvious, and now we can have man-made satellites tell us what the weather is going to be like, cure ulcers with an antibiotic, and build carefully near fault lines.

A very eloquent straw man argument that was. I'm certainly not arguing that the most obvious answer is always the right one. However, to be fair, very often it is. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

So if you're going to propose DRM as a solution to the music industry's decreasing revenue...

I'm not. Ultimately, all I'm saying is this:

1. Pirated music is the number one factor contributing to revenue loss.
2. The underlying cause for pirated music is technology, and the best way to solve a technological problem is with technology. 3 or 4 pages ago, when this conversation began, I wondered how much the RIA is spending on R&D, looking for a problem and tossed out one possible model. But as I've said, I certainly don't believe the solution is that simple.

Just out of curiosity, what do you think is the number one factor contributing to the decline in the recording industry?

 

[skyrefuge]

Does that mean I've closed my mind to new evidence? Of course not, none of my opinions are dogmatic in nature.

Ok, cool.

I thought it was kinda weird how I made such awesome posts throwing up a ton of alternate possibilities and that hadn't seemed to affect your position even one iota. I don't even want to see you change your position (because it may very well be correct), I just want you to be less sure about it!

And to be fair, this back and forth we've been having, enjoyable as it may be, indicates that you've also reached a conclusion that my conclusion is false.

No, I've reached a conclusion that you believe in your conclusion much more strongly than I believe in mine. In fact, the dearth of reliable information available and complexity of this topic means that I don't really have a conclusion at all that I would put any money on.

Contrast this with global warming. If required to place two bets, first on the #1 cause of increasing global temperatures, and second on the #1 cause of decreasing music industry revenue, I would place almost all my money on the global warming bet. Not because global warming topic is simpler or more knowable than the music industry topic, but because global warming has been studied by many independent sources, each trying to be more right than the other, in a scientific process that leads us to the truth better than any other method we know. In contrast, what we know about the music industry comes largely from the industry itself, the facts have not been subject to rigorous scientific debate, and everything just feels murky.

Unless of course you like spending your days playing devil's advocate.

I do. Well, it's not even that I really enjoy it, but I think it's useful. If we all had good devil's advocates, we'd all be much better thinkers. It's easy to trust your own belief and fall into groupthink if you never hear a contrary point of view.

While tastes in entertainment change, I find it difficult to believe that an entire generation has just decided music isn't all that entertaining.

This is the same generation that, decades after the telephone became an indispensable household appliance, decided talking on that phone isn't all that. But yeah, I'm not saying that's the sole cause either. However, this is why I keep harping on that graph. In that 80s/90s period, it almost seems like an entire generation *did* suddenly decide that music was really entertaining, and if it happened then, why couldn't the reverse happen now?

Just out of curiosity, what do you think is the number one factor contributing to the decline in the recording industry?

As you surely know by now, I don't have an answer for that. I figure all the factors I've mentioned in this thread (piracy, unbundling, redirection of entertainment dollars, macroeconomic conditions, etc.) each contribute 15% +/- 50% to the decline. With that kind of uncertainty divided between so many possible contributors, there simply is no obvious #1 culprit.

Neil

 

[skyrefuge]

God damn dude, if I was gay I'd demand that we run away forever.

Git in line, and you better hurry, because it ain't getting any shorter! But thanks, I'm surprised, flattered, and slightly disturbed at my ability to make dudes want to switch teams! And geez, I'm pretty sure I haven't even told y'all here that I tailor my own custom shirts!

Neil

 

[AeonicSlumber]

I never said I was switching teams Mr. Egopants. You're badass but not that badass.

 

[General Zod]

I thought it was kinda weird how I made such awesome posts throwing up a ton of alternate possibilities and that hadn't seemed to affect your position even one iota. I don't even want to see you change your position (because it may very well be correct), I just want you to be less sure about it!

Your points were indeed awesome, as always. Of all of them, I do believe the deconstruction of the album format, has had and will continue to have, a significant impact on the record industry.

No, I've reached a conclusion that you believe in your conclusion much more strongly than I believe in mine. In fact, the dearth of reliable information available and complexity of this topic means that I don't really have a conclusion at all that I would put any money on.

As it often is, money is a good barometer. And I would be willing to bet money on piracy as enemy number one.

It's impossible to accurately aggregate the actual impact of illegal downloading. The reasons for this are many. Not least of which are the multiple ways a CD can be illegally downloaded. Between the hundreds of torrent sites, newsgroups, blogs, FTPs, RapidShare, DC++, IRC, etc., everything is out there and very easily accessible. As I've used all of these technologies over the years, I've witnessed their explosion and maturation. In parallel, I've listened in on conversations with younger friends, nieces and nephews, etc., about how they have everything (music), but pay for nothing. I've interviewed musicians, who consistently tell me, that despite plummeting record sales, their live audience is stable or growing. And I can't even count the times a musician has recounted the tale of watching an audience sing along with songs from an album whose release date was still a month away. This last point also speaks to a factor we really haven't discussed; the time between leak date and release date. How many would be sales are lost (to piracy) because people have already tired of the music by the time the music is available for sale?

So while all of this evidence may be circumstantial in nature, it is at the same time overwhelming. Again, if someone could show me that I'm wrong, I'll accept that. I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again. However, I must admit, I feel pretty confident that I've got this one right.

Contrast this with global warming. If required to place two bets, first on the #1 cause of increasing global temperatures, and second on the #1 cause of decreasing music industry revenue, I would place almost all my money on the global warming bet. Not because global warming topic is simpler or more knowable than the music industry topic, but because global warming has been studied by many independent sources, each trying to be more right than the other, in a scientific process that leads us to the truth better than any other method we know.

I couldn't agree more.

I do. Well, it's not even that I really enjoy it, but I think it's useful. If we all had good devil's advocates, we'd all be much better thinkers. It's easy to trust your own belief and fall into groupthink if you never hear a contrary point of view.

Very well stated. If it's not already abundantly clear, I like the way you think.

This is the same generation that, decades after the telephone became an indispensable household appliance, decided talking on that phone isn't all that. But yeah, I'm not saying that's the sole cause either. However, this is why I keep harping on that graph. In that 80s/90s period, it almost seems like an entire generation *did* suddenly decide that music was really entertaining, and if it happened then, why couldn't the reverse happen now?

Did they suddenly find it more entertaining, or did something else cause this spike? Was this not the exact same period in time when CD players became affordable, and people were converting their collections en masse, as CDs and CD players represented a significant upgrade in fidelity from cassettes? I know this is the period during which I did my conversion, and repurchased all the titles I had previously owned on cassette. Might this one factor alone not explain the spike?

As you surely know by now, I don't have an answer for that. I figure all the factors I've mentioned in this thread (piracy, unbundling, redirection of entertainment dollars, macroeconomic conditions, etc.) each contribute 15% +/- 50% to the decline. With that kind of uncertainty divided between so many possible contributors, there simply is no obvious #1 culprit.

Might all the factors you mentioned, together, represent a bigger loss in revenue than piracy? They might. Do I think that any one of them alone is comparable to piracy? I don't.

 

[Dr.Froth]

I agree with both theories about the major problems being both piracy and the amount of music available these days.

I have put quite a bit of thought into this over the last few days and came up with a possible solution that addresses both concerns. I have no doubt that this will be picked apart, as that is the nature of this forum and part of the reason that I enjoy reading it so much...haha. But...before you just call me a moron...read what I have to say and try to make it better. I don't know anymore than anyone else and so this is just my two cents on the subject. However, if you can (and some of you undoubtedly will) improve on this seedling thought...perhaps we can find a solution together.

I quit thinking about his as a musician and an artist and took a good look at it from a business standpoint. How could money be made from the current situation? How can you take people who have been accustomed to getting music for free and suddenly convince them that they should pay for it? Anyone with moral qualms about it are already paying for it so the short answer is...you can't. Hmmm... so then I started thinking about movie theaters. Movie theaters do not make money off of the OBVIOUS PRODUCT (i.e. the movie tickets) they make the money off of the concessions.

Then I came up with the idea. For this example we will call it "Freebeat."

The only way that Freebeat would work is if several labels got on board with it. So for the sake of argument lets say that Nightmare, Sensory, and several others signed on to Freebeat.

Freebeat’s main section would be a massive index where you would look up the artist you were searching for or browse by style, label, etc. Lets say we want to find Halcyon Way so we browse for them and, since Nightmare is available on Freebeat...we find them.

Clicking on Halcyon Way brings us to the Halcyon Way page. Here we can download individual tracks or the whole album FOR FREE. That is right...this does not cost a dime.

When you download a single track, during the download process you are presented with a single ad for six seconds or whatever (this time can be forced regardless of download speed). When you do an entire album, make the ad time 60 seconds and run 10 different ones like a slide show while the customer waits. (On a side note...why can't full album downloads include things like pictures, a PDF with the lyrics, a brochure for merch...)

What this does is force a PPC (pay per click scenario for generating ad revenue) when the customer gets his FREE music. The ad companies pay Freebeat for this who in turn pays the label. An addendum to the record contract would dictate what the label would pay the artist, obviously.

Let's say that Freebeat ends up with .20 cents for the ad click. In truth, I only did a small amount of searching on this...but the number would not matter. Whatever the amount is...just split it up accordingly. With the above example it might break down like this:

Freebeat: .04 cents
Nightmare Records: .08 cents
Halcyon Way: .08 cents

Again, the dollar amounts do not matter really, and how the money is split would be a decision made by the owner of Freebeat and the label. Truthfully, how that goes down is not really important to this post so I'll stop talking about it now.

Everybody wins here. Freebeat makes a larger volume profit over all the artists and the label gets some money and so does the artist for EVERY download. The music fan gets his music for FREE. The companies providing ads reach more potential business. Sweet.

Lets go a bit further. On the Halcyon Way page you can also buy the CD from Nightmare. That way collectors can get the physical copy with no problem. Also, perhaps in a column on one of the page sides, could be all the Halcyon Way Merch. Like the band, download the music for free...buy a damn T-shirt too.

That would help the piracy issue. Sure, .08 cents a song is not much...but nobody is getting shit when it is being downloaded FOR FREE right NOW. Off of 4000 downloads Halcyon Way would put $320 bucks in their account and probably sold a few T-shirts along the way. If the 85,000 folks downloaded, it would be $6800. That would buy several Asian massages here in Houston...lol.

Lets go a bit further. All our favorite Prog and Power labels have their catalogs on Freebeat. What about Dump Consumption, the crappy ass local band with the pirated copy of protools that wants to pull your attention away from..say...Myrath. This album sucks uncircumcised donkey dick (Dump Consumption's album...not Myrath's)...and this is the type of band that would have flooded your myspace and facebook accounts and email with bullshit.

They would not be able to be on the main portion of Freebeat. Why? Because Freebeat only partners with record labels that have at least 5 or more artists (or 10, or whatever). This keeps Dump Consumption from starting Dump Records and getting this crap in the way of quality artists.

But...wait...what about Octatestonic. They are an unsigned band and they do kick ass...why can't they be on Freebeat.

Hmmm...aha...the solution:

On the main page of Freebeat you can select a tab called "Amateur." This brings up a second index of artists that are not signed, or signed to extremely small labels. Instead of Freebeat PAYING these artists...Dump Consumption must PAY for a years listing on Freebeat in the amateur section. Something like..hmmm...$500 bucks.

All of this space rental money and the ad revenue generated from people trying them out would go into an account that would be distributed every quarter among the major players: Freebeat itself and the labels that have partnered with it.

This gives you back the dream of the record deal...on a smaller scale anyway. When Megamoist Records, a partner of Freebeat, wants to sign a new artist...don't you think they might check the higher rated folks from the amateur section??? They just might. Once you have a deal you start to make a little bit instead of paying a little bit. Those of you (myself included) that like to find the diamond in the rough will have access to all of the amateur bands to check out FOR FREE. Those that want the filters can stick to the main page and only see the bands that the labels believed in enough to sign.

O.K. Keep it going a little bit further. If it became the mainstay this could become a financial juggernaut. Do you know how much money advertisers spend for a commercial on the Super Bowl? A FUCKLOAD. So...how much would they spend to have the first ad slot when you download the new Lady Ga Ga single. More than they would for Dump Consumption??? They probably would. This starts bringing in more money for labels and artists as they become bigger. It costs more to advertise with the big boys and girls. This is a proven market strategy and nothing new. But it works.

Want to advertise with the artists that have gone digital platinum...Sure..but you are going to pay more for it.

So...this helps with piracy (you can not make it go away but since this is also free and all in one place...it will help quite a bit), filters the bands in a more traditional way, and does not stifle anyone's creativity. Sure you can start a band and make a record. If you believe in it you might as well put it on Freebeat amateur for the cash. Enough folks like it and you might get picked up by Megamoist Records. Do well enough there...and...who knows???

Anyway...that is my idea. I don't have all the answers but I don't see any other ideas at all so far. You got to start somewhere.

Let's pick it apart. See something in there that you do not think would work? How could it be done better? What would you do instead.

Let the debate begin.

 

[General Zod]

So...this helps with piracy (you can not make it go away but since this is also free and all in one place...

The problem is, it's already "free" and mostly in one place. From the perspective of someone who has no interest in paying for music, the only wrinkle this solution introduced is you now have to sit through a 60 second advertisement. The other problem you would have to contend with, is hosting a massive and growing catalog of music, and paying for the bandwidth to distribute it all. Keep in mind, with torrent sites, the costs of bandwidth and storage are passed on to the downloader.

 

[dcowboys311]

The problem is, it's already "free" and mostly in one place. From the perspective of someone who has no interest in paying for music, the only wrinkle this solution introduced is you now have to sit through a 60 second advertisement. The other problem you would have to contend with, is hosting a massive and growing catalog of music, and paying for the bandwidth to distribute it all. Keep in mind, with torrent sites, the costs of bandwidth and storage are passed on to the downloader.

However you also eliminate the risk of bad quality files, viruses, and incorrectly tagged music. Get a lot of benefit for not much work.

I like the idea for the most part. Server fees are definitely an issue but that's something that could be worked out.

 

[General Zod]

However you also eliminate the risk of bad quality files, viruses, and incorrectly tagged music. Get a lot of benefit for not much work.

Maybe it's the sites I use, but I've never downloaded a file that wasn't the quality is was reported to be, and I've never had a virus in a torrent. As I retag all my files anyway, to unsure that my iPod, my Droid and my Squeezebox will all read them properly, the sixty seconds I spent watching an advertisement, would still be more time consuming.

 

[dcowboys311]

Maybe it's the sites I use, but I've never downloaded a file that wasn't the quality is was reported to be, and I've never had a virus in a torrent. As I retag all my files anyway, to unsure that my iPod, my Droid and my Squeezebox will all read them properly, the sixty seconds I spent watching an advertisement, would still be more time consuming.

I don't doubt you (as I've never really had much problems) but we're likely in the minority when it comes to...sophistication? of file sharing. I'd imagine that the average person probably has some issues when navigating torrent sites, and I've seen some fakes uploaded (generally of albums not yet out). Because of my experience I know what to avoid but I don't think many people do. People like us are probably in the minority when it comes to file tagging, too.

 

[AeonicSlumber]

actually I remember reading an article saying that the majority of most viri nowadays comes from blogs. In fact, you can get more malware and viruses from downloading music than from porn, because more people download music thesedays and obviously the people who write malicious software take advantage of this.

 

[skyrefuge]

I have put quite a bit of thought into this over the last few days and came up with a possible solution that addresses both concerns.

Your ideas are rather good, they're just old news. For the second time in this thread I had to check the posting date after wondering "was this post actually written 5 years ago?"

If topics like this are interesting to anyone here, I HIGHLY recommend reading Glenn Peoples' blog. He used to have his own blog called Coolfer, but then got hired by Billboard. If you bookmark this link it will filter all of his articles out of the billboard.biz site. He's an excellent thinker and writer, and covers all the latest activity going on in the "building a new music industry" realm (which is far more activity than people here seem to be aware of).

So, ad-supported music. Spotify is probably the most notable. It's a very popular ad-supported streaming service that has been active in Europe for over two years. They've been trying to get a US launch for over a year now, but apparently it's more difficult to strike the necessary deals than they expected.

Ok, you said "download" instead of "streaming". SpiralFrog was an ad-supported download site that was almost exactly what you described. Its files were still DRM'ed WMA, and you had to visit the site at least once every 60 days to keep your downloads alive. It failed.

Qtrax was another one. It also failed.

YouTube has been experimenting with pre-roll ads, just recently enabling videos from Vevo (the industry's official music video source) to be played on Android devices in exchange for making users watch pre-roll ads.

In general, integrating ads with content is the great conundrum that Internet content providers have been trying to solve for years now. It's a high-wire balancing act. They all know that successfully integrating ads is the solution to their problem, but they also know that if they make their ads too obtrusive and annoying, their customer base will leave and go elsewhere. Heck, this was the main dramatic conflict presented in "The Social Network", the recent movie about Facebook. Customers come to a site because it's "cool" and gives them what they want, and ads threaten to make it "uncool". So how do you make that transition in a subtle way without making your users realize that you're now "uncool"?

Also, how do you convince advertisers that your audience is worth anything?

All this is such a big deal in the world of content that I bet there are already entire college curricula focused on training graduates to solve these problems, and surely many theses have been written!

The one idea you presented that I haven't heard being implemented yet was your pay-for-shelf-space idea. I guess it hasn't been implemented because most industry players don't really see "too much choice" as a problem. Sites tend to compete with each other for customers by saying how extensive their catalog is, so I think it would be hard to convince users that a smaller database actually *adds* value.

This is because most people don't find out about music at music retailers, so that wouldn't be an effective place to limit it. Even in the days of browsing music stores and randomly picking up albums based on cover art, I think we were in the extreme minority. Most people find out about music they want to buy from radio/TV/friends/etc., and THEN go to the store to buy exactly what they want. So they don't even notice whether the store carries or doesn't carry artists they don't care about. But they WILL notice when your store DOESN'T have that indie album they want to buy, will say "WTF?" and never come back.

Neil

 

[skyrefuge]

I don't doubt you (as I've never really had much problems) but we're likely in the minority when it comes to...sophistication

Agreed. I think people will happily "pay" a premium for a service that they know is sanctioned and "just works". I only need to mention the words "Hulu" and "Apple" to prove this point.

Of course while they will "pay" something for that "just works" convenience, there *are* limits to the amount, hence the high-wire balancing act I talked about in my last post. You can't roll a minute-long video ad before a three-minute song, but there's a big range between "nothing" and "minute-long video ad" that companies have been experimenting with.

Neil

 

[skyrefuge]

While tastes in entertainment change, I find it difficult to believe that an entire generation has just decided music isn't all that entertaining.

Some interesting new data from a study that attempts to determine what percentage of Internet traffic infringes on copyrights:

http://documents.envisional.com/docs/Envisional-Internet_Usage-Jan2011.pdf

I highly recommend the entire paper, it seems very well-researched and balanced. But here is the relevant point for this discussion:

Of the top 10,000 torrents on a day in December 2010, only 2.9% of them were music. This is eclipsed by computer software (4.2%) and video games (6.7%). It is stomped by TV (12.7%) and movies (35.2%).

But the largest share (35.8%) is devoted to a category of entertainment I had not even considered, but surely competes against music: porn! Obviously, the youth of today are way too busy jerkin' it to bother listening to music. Heck, if I had such access to free porn in my early teenage years, I likely never would have even discovered a love of music!

They also broke down figures for cyberlockers (RapidShare, etc.). Music is slightly more popular there, but still only 10.1%, again stomped my porn and movies.

Now, maybe to create the kind of revenue decline the music industry has seen only requires music to be 3-10% of illegally downloaded content, so this doesn't really prove that downloading isn't the main problem. But I think it's a good indicator of what kind of content illegal downloaders are interested in today, and it shows that they aren't very interested in music.

And it again raises the question: if piracy is the main problem, why has the video game industry performed so much better than the music industry over the last 5-10 years, even though its content is pirated as much or more than the music industry's content?

One of the best bits of the study: of the 10,000 top torrents they looked at, they found only a single one of them that was not copyrighted material. And it was a blocklist of IP addresses of Bittorrent-snooping companies.

Neil

 

[Cheiron]

Copyrighting is a bogus concept anyhow. But if I was a T1 ISP I'd probably block it all

 

[Corsair]

I think that's because most people tend to think of music as something you listen to at parties and in the car.


Regarding the video game industry:
Console gaming is harder to pirate and has been more successful financially than PC gaming. It's not difficult to see this trend manifest with companies like Bethesda making games more console-centric than PC-centric...that's just where the moneiz iz. I mean, I don't pirate games (unless they're abandonware or too old to profit from ) on principle, but I do know the process involved with playing burned games on an xbox360 and it's something that is well out of most people's ability (or desire) to do, and that's the best means of deterring piracy I can even think of.

 

[seh750]

Copyrighting is a bogus concept anyhow.

What's bogus about actually earning money from a product you've spent thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars developing? Just because a product isn't physical doesn't mean it costs any less to develop.

I'm a software developer by trade and I take steps to protect my work to be able to recoup my expenses. But I see thousands of downloads of my product on sites like RapidShare and MegaUpload claiming they have cracked the copyright protection. I don't download them because I don't want a virus, but it's very frustrating seeing more people download a pirated copy than who actually pay for my work.

I have to believe bands seeing their work freely distributed around the internet feel the same. And that's why I buy all the music in my collection and all the software on my computer.

I'd like to hear why you think copyrighting is bogus?