With so many people on here getting on their high horses about how evil it is to download music, I've got to be honest - I download and still buy CD's and if you don't want to fine then don't but why preach to us???

But......

When i was in school I and almost everyone used to tape music from the radio (I'd love to say it was Andy Kershaw or John Peel but I'll admit it - it was the Top 40). Everyone did it.

Then we'd all tape each others albums anyway. The industry wasn't in uproar then and I'd bet a few quid that a lot more people had tape recorders than have the capability to download.

So - what's the difference and why the fuss

Discuss

[gringottsdirect]

When one of us in school bought Billion Dollar Babies by Alice Cooper it was copied onto cassette by no more than half a dozen friends, generally the people you taped things for were those who taped things for you, so still a lot of original vinyl was bought, then often if you liked a tape you would buy the original album anyway.
If I buy St. Anger by Metallica then make it available to download from a website, millions of CD sales could be lost, some will like it and buy the original CD, but it is a different scale altogether.
One difference is that you wanted to have proper vinyl with substantial cardboard sleeve artwork to collect rather than a cassette copy, nowadays downloading digital music files onto a CDR complete with sleeve artwork to print, the difference between a copy and original is minor unless you are a devoted fan.
I prefer to buy originals, particularly in hi-res SACD or DVD-A.
The fuss is nothing new as you say, Home Taping Is Killing Music with a skull and crossbones over a cassette logos on LP inner sleeves, the argument was that if you don't buy the original, record companies won't make money and won't invest in new artists, existing artists won't get paid, whole thing grinds to a halt.

Coming from a pretty small town in a rather remote area of Canada, I can tell you that without copied tapes (both video and audio), I wouldn't be the same music fan that I am today. We had very little access to diverse music, and since me and all my fans were metal-heads, up to 80% of our music was copied in the beginning. When someone went on vacation and brought back a couple tapes or CDs it quickly got shared to just about everyone.

Years later, when I actually had money, I purchased a ton of CDs. Either I was picking up some of these old copied albums for real, buying newer albums by the same bands, or buying other music in the same genre.

Simply put, if it wasn't for music sharing, I probably wouldn't have a CD collection right now. And if I did, it would most certainly be top 40 mainstream pop.

Music sharing hurts mainstream artists by letting people hear better bands that aren't as popular. That's the real reason why the industry is against file sharing.

[hornydragon]

personally i listen to a lot of radio, or did anyway only tend to buy the tracks/albums that really do something special i dont download a lot of stuff infact virtually none now I think the thing that scares the industry is that a £300 PC can copy CD with no quality loss!!!!! every since CD was launched it was all about quality, cassette even the very best could not match CD but a CD-R compared to a commercial pressing???? Do a bilind test!!! Also CD is far higher quality than most peoplesplayback gear so they dont notice the drop when going to MP3 and why buy an album rip and transfer it to a portable when you v=can download it faster??? I have actually raced my girlfriend at this me rip an album take a track and burn it to a CD-RW, She downloaded it to a CD-RW in half the time!!! Same track sso it does beg a question...