I have downloaded a number of LPs that have either never made it to CD or have no distribution.

This is mostly obscure soul albums I have never heard before from blogs run by people with an encyclopedic knowledge of the music and artists. Some are real lost gems and I have made a promise to myself that if I ever see some of these as CDs I will buy them.

I have also downloaded digital versions of albums I already own.

I have yet to buy a download album as I also much prefer the physical CD even though it goes straight into iTunes and the CD is boxed away. The only exception is the excellent Bowers & Wilkins Society of Sound monthly download

I won't use things like Limewire or Torrent or P2P file sharing sites but I will admit to downloading some old Psych or out of print records from Blog-sites like Twilight Zone or Progressive Post Punk Party etc.

What's the difference? I don't mean technically, I'm just curious why you're comfortable with one method and not another.

I know a lot of people that follow a new moral code. The big, established band are fair-game. They got more than enough money, so fuck ‘em. However, they wouldn’t dream of ripping of a new, up-and- coming bands.

without a twinge of guilt if I can't buy them legally.

There's plenty of great music that's fallen down the cracks between licencing agreements and remains unavailable for years on end.

A perfect example is the wealth of great music that was available for a while on the See For Miles label, like the Clive James & Pete Atkin albums for example. Once See For Miles went tits-up, the only way to get thse albums was to either buy them second hand (and pay a small fortune via Gemm or Amazon), download them illegally or borrow a copy and replicate it illegally. Since the second hand market doesn't benefit the artist, only the shyster asking £45 or more for a ten year old CD in less than perfect nick, I'll be buggered if I'll pay for it that way, so hey ho its off to torrent land we go.

Now that the albums are out again in remastered and repackaged versions (and very nice they are too) I've forked out for the real thing. Net result: no loss of income anywhere along the line, and I have had the pleasure of listening to the albums for the intervening years while the bloody lawyers got their act together.

Oh, and bootleg live recordings. I have no qualms about those either.

sharing and downloading bootlegs - primarily Zeppelin and Th'Dead.

The only non-bootleg stuff I'll download is stuff that's no longer commercially available and there's precious little of that these days.

I don't deny it. I download loads of stuff via whatever means necessary. However, the number of commercially available albums that I have downloaded illegally has practically tailed of to zilch since I became a fully paid-up Spotifier.

I buy more records and a more varied selection thereof as a result of both Spotify and BitTorrent. The situation is similar to how things were with home taping (which, despite thousands of sternly worded warnings on LP inner sleeves, never actually killed music. Pro Tunes, however, will probably do precisely that). Whatever happened to my zillions of cassettes? I replaced the ones I liked (hundreds, if not thousands) with CDs. The rest are all gone. What will happen to my mp3s? The same, no doubt.

And, of course, I grab whatever hopelessly deleted albums I can via music blogs. Check out this excellent music blog search engine: - http://www.captaincrawl.com. Find anything!

ps I've got loads of Spotify invites. Any takers?

behind what Rob wrote. This fantasy that everything should be free is ludicrous.

and you often find prereleases of new albums up for download sometimes several weeks before official release dates. For example, I had the last Elbow album over a month before it hit the shops. However, I ALWAYS buy the official release of anything I download when it is commercially available and then delete the downloaded version from my HD. Today, I have taken delivery of the new albums from Julian Casablancas and Devendra Banhart. I've had them downloaded for a couple of weeks, but now I've paid for the official product, which is as it should be, and the downloaded versions are gone.

Incidentally, in response to the original poster's query as to why Ed O'Brien from Radiohead was involved, Thom Yorke has made it abundantly clear that the band have differing opinions on many things, including file sharing. Yorke is a supporter, O'Brien is not. The compromise was the "honesty box" release of In Rainbows, which did allow users to download for free, but all were invited to pay as much or as little as they thought was fair. I paid a fiver. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the band made more money from that album than anything else they have released, ever.

More fool me for shelling out, probably.

I have made copies of CDs for friends. But I know that they'd never buy the stuff in a million years.

For me (like some others above), this is the key.

If I can buy the CD from a shop, or Amazon etc, that's what I do.

If the CD is deleted, but you find you can still buy a download of it legally from iTunes or the artist website, then that's what I do.

If there's no other way of getting hold of the thing (and this has actually only happened a few times), I will download it from a blog site or similar if someone has put it up. This is often some kind of ancient black metal thing with only 50 copies pressed - the original still remains highly desirable for scene fanatics, while everyone else can hear the music. Long deleted vinyl, too.

This bothers my morals far less than paying some huge price to a 'collector' who's selling on their copy and profiting from the artist not seeing a penny of the second-hand sale.

I had stacks and stacks of the Dr. Ebbett vinyl transfers of mint Beatles LPs - which were markedly superior to the commercially available cds.

I always said that if/when EMI/Apple finally got around to releasing decent remastered versions of their catalogue, I'd buy them. Having already bought the 1987 EMI discs and found them lacking, I might add. In addition to having most of the records on vinyl, bootleg versions of mono releases, etc.

So, when the Mono remasters came out, I bought the box in addition to stereo versions of Pepper, The White Album and Abbey Road - I prefer the 'Naked' Let It Be.

Currently, I'm using bootleg versions of Let It Be, the film and Magical Mystery Tour the film- having bought VHS versions previously.

And when Apple get their act together, I'll be buying their official releases, until then, I don't particularly object to getting bootlegs - be they via the internet, or from record fairs, specialist shops or wherever.

How is downloading bootlegs different from buying them from a record shop/fair?

Official releases, maybe not, but bootlegs are fair game to me.

I thought is was a highly entertaining read too. But it strikes me that what musicians have got to realise is that the world doesn't revolve around them. They are going to have to change to survive, just like we all do.

The central issue that people must be paid for the work they do is obviously true. Being a composer/performer is not sustainable unless you make money, however little. That's why the Reverend is an idiot...

It seems to me that the real issue is that once you produce anything in a digital format (music, films, software, pictures) you will lose control of it and to a greater or lesser extent people will reproduced and share it, you just can't stop that happening. You can go for 'the get the dealer' approach but this is the internet we're dealing with, and someone will think of a way round that sooner or later.

Record companies and musicians have to put their energy into producing stuff that people want to buy.

Personally I'm fed up with buying MP3 files that give me nothing extra from someone who's downloaded a bit-torrent. I'm spending my money on a product but the person that produced it doesn't seem to care. Just give me something extra to reward me. It doesn't have to be much, a special website to look at, send me a lyric sheet, tell me who's playing on these songs, invite me to a secret gig, show me you care. Someone should at least try.

http://labs.timesonline.co.uk/blog/2009/11/12/do-music-artists-do-better...

In short: Artists are making more money, labels less.

Not my cup of tea. If I'm buying something, I want something tangible for it. If your hard drive full of legal mp3s crashes, nobody's going to replace them for free.

In addition, if you transfer your vinyl to MP3/WAV for personal use - MP3 player for instance, how is it different if you download someone else who's done the same thing? It saves you a job, if someone's already done it. If you've got the vinyl in the loft, does that make it okay?

I sure as hell taped records onto tape for my walkman in the dim and distant past. If that's illegal, I think it stinks.

I don't know the legal position on that, but I would imagine it's fairly wooly.

As for 'poor' musicians, I think people would be more likely to download legally from the artist themself, given the choice.

Everyone surely knows by now that the lions' share of the cd price goes to The Man and a tiny rate to the artist. It's not very different with ITunes, is it?

The artist has always been shafted financially, usually by record companies. As has Joe Public. I have more Stone Roses recordings than is realistic - more fool me, maybe.

Now all that's happening is people can get something pretty similar to what you pay for, for free. It's tempting, isn't it? Having paid out thousands upon thousands over the years.

Record company contracts now make sure The Man benefits from merchandise sales, concert ticket sales, etc. The companies have had their days of rolling around in money, laughing.

Realsitically, it's not going to stop. And the only new music will be made for the joy of it, rather than writing another swimming pool, shall we say?

Is that really a bad thing? Because I'm not convinced it is - completely, anyway.

It might be a great idea - never buying music again.

What's the problem with artists after they've made money?

They have nothing to write about other than the travails of being on the road, being a pop star, all that.

Now, they'll have to do something else, which will give them something else to write about.

Perhaps all we're going to say goodbye to is the record company model of record/tour/write/record/tour/write.

New recordings will take longer and won't need to be commercially viable and will contain an artist's impression of reality, rather than a rich person's view of the swimming pool.

The more I think about it, the more it sounds good to me.

Lily Allen might PREFER to sit on an expensive cushion, eating caviar with golden cutlery, but maybe her records would be better - and certainly more 'street' if she didn't get what she wanted.

I will buy it. I shop around and buy at the best price. If its not available (and I mean no longer released), I have been known to downloaded a few albums without paying. If I could buy them, I would.

I do not see how me stealing someone else's product will enable that product to be available long term. I don't go to many gigs (work and family make it difficult) so I am unlikely to fund music that way in any significant sense. I am bewildered that this equation is beyond some people.

I found Audiogalaxy, a great P2P site and downloaded absolutely stacks of unavailable obscure late 70's / early 80's stuff. The only naughty thing I got was Joe Jackson's Real Men and felt guilty about it. I apologised to him when I bumped into him in Waitrose a couple of years later and he told me not to worry. So I felt better.

I saw the front cover of The Monkees "Headquarters" and removed the black vynyl disc from it's paper wrapper with the selophane circle in the middle buying music was about more than the songs. You buy the whole package good, bad or indifferent. The cover, sleevenotes and lyrics with the incredible cartoon artwork on "Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy" gave me more pleasure than the album and I love the album. I had to get used to CD's like everyone else and with fading eyesight and tiny writing on the sleevenotes it's not perfect but there you go. I've downloaded a couple of albums from I tunes and felt nothing. If I was to tell you one of them was Justin Curries solo effort you'll get my meaning, it only became real when I bought the CD and owned something tangible. With my narrow musical knowledge I can't bear the thought of streaming something, yuck, waste of time. For some of you guys with your exotic dare I say fanatical love of the wonderful and the obscure I just don't get how that works with downloading legally or not. It's like sugar free chocolate, decaffinated coffee or alcohol free beer, pointless.

...to see if in the longer term the likes of Spotify change our approach to keeping the physical artefact. I certainly feel less compulsion to buy CDs than I ever used to, and the whole experience of acquiring mp3s by whatever route has none of the sparkle that buying a hard-earned piece of vinyl did back in the '70s. I've justified (to myself at any rate) illegal downloading from blog sites on the basis that I've been a music obsessive for the best of 35 years and have hugely overpaid record companies for well over 3 decades now, but that's little comfort to aspiring artists in the here and now. The genie's out of the bottle, however, and I think little can be down other than getting down to your localmusic venue, supporting new acts, and buying their CDs - usually at the same time.

I think more information needs to be given to the public about the differences in legality between uploading and downloading. As I understand it the 3 strike rule is going to apply to the worst repeat offenders using p2p and uploading their music to be availible to anyone.
Downloading as long as you delete it from your computer or make sure no-one else can copy it is far more difficult to prosecute I would have thought.
It is like in the old days,if I make a tape for you I am infringing copyright,but in taking it you are not. Or are you?
I think the industry is happy for this confusion to continue in the hope that all users will be put off by the 3 strike laws.

if Lily Allen is behind the artist getting paid does she turn down every comp ticket to gigs that she goes to and buy a ticket?

If Word staffers come out on Lily's side I am sure they would never accept any freebies or they would be hypocrites surely?

can you really stop the tide from coming in?

The music industry and the world are changing vastly due to the internet with all its freedoms and new complications.

Certainly at the moment it is very tough for new or hoping to be new artists coming up and it is easy for the super rich artists right at the top.

That is the same in music as it is EVERYWHERE. In every industry. In every art form. You have super rich. And you have hopeless hopefuls bitter because they have to struggle by all the time. The rest are somewhere in between.

People will download illegally. I have even known of a policeman who had no qualms with it. The attitude to it has generally changed. Right or wrong we have to deal with where we are. We can't criminalise that many people, well we can, as we do with the smaller (large) minority of people who take drugs, but like with drug users, downloaders will always happen, and the measures put into place to stop it will be costly, will seldom harm the people organising it and making the most money out of it etc... It's another war on drugs. These things are really in some ways wars on human nature. They aren't pragmatic and sensible campaigns that are realistic and put the crimes into a true perspective (based on actual harm rather than economic damage).

We have to have a rethink. We have to find new business models and ideas if, as everyone seems to think it is, having music as something that is free and is shared and is collective property is a fantasy, then we have to think of new ways for musicians to get paid for creating the things we love.

There is a lot to suggest that free music/art/etc... is an impossible dream, unworkable in society as it stands. But that said the democratisation of music is generally very exciting. There are new ways for people to interact with music, to examine and explore music, and so good comes with the less good. But that assumes that society as it stands is able to continue on as it has done indefinitely. That we can all keep having everything with little hardship (the hardship is currently farmed out to other countries at present.)

I speak as someone who makes music but doesn't have a label helping them distribute it. Obviously I want to find a way to make a living from making music (or writing which is my other main thing). But the modern world is changing and what I want is not really relevant. The world is as it is. More people can make music than ever before, there are millions of ways to distribute it. The smoking ban has killed much of the small venue/unsigned gigging scene in terms of audiences. The big gigs are big money, obscene money when you think of ticket prices, they are big, brilliant circuses. Ultimately everyone is downloading or streaming music and less and less people buy CD's, those who do buy CD's are unlikely to ever know about mine or many other small time musicians. And any musicians that do make money from it will generally not make much. There is so much more on offer that what money their is gets spread thin with everyone liking their little niches... or else gets put into the same pot (U2, coldplay, rolling stones, Jay Z. Kylie... whatever)

That's the way it is.

Ultimately my fantasy has always been to live in a world with less extreme difference between rich and poor and where ideas and art are a shared property of everyone, where people cover each other without fears, sample each other without fears, share stuff because its fun and wonderful... credit each other sure... but that's all that's needed. My band releases work under a creative commons license, which is lovely, but can people really be trusted to not profit out of other peoples stuff, if they find a way to do so.

None of its simple. Freetards are idiots sure, but there is idiocy on both sides of this debate.

The tide is coming in across many areas of society. Our lifestyles and particularly our consumption is unsustainable. We will have to think of new solutions at some point whether we like it or not.

I like to see some hope in that.

[ps my personal "moral code" is to only buy CD's by unsigned bands as they need the cash the most. Also you can't find them on spotify.]

...there was a time, many moons ago, when you could go into a record shop and play the records in a booth. Now you might get access to a couple of dozen discs getting promoted, always assuming you can find a record store. More often than not, my experience is that I'm forced to buy from recommendations, and I have a slew of material that I could care less about. I have also bought stuff based on singles heard off the radio, and again have a slew of stuff I could care less about....my point, and I did have one (thank you Ellen) was I want to try a record before I buy.
Trouble is that any on-line channel making this possible is going to struggle to avoid piracy while allowing legitimate review. Spotify would appear to be pretty close, but it's not available round our way. Attaching low fidelity 30 second samples to on-line info sources (Amazon, Mojo etc) is pointless.
So bottom line, I've been burned enough times and spent enough money (hundreds of vinyls, and approaching 1000 CDs) that I have been getting hyper selective in my purchases. I'll either wait till it appears in the remainder cheapo shops, or borrow something off a friend or library for a listen, and we're back where we started with 'home taping killing music'. The music industry has lost either way, and new artists aren't reaching me directly or otherwise to overcome the reluctance to take a punt. Maybe it's a feature of age/parenthood/priorities.

Everything is relative. Under current Spanish law it's perfectly legal to keep one copy of any digital file on any hardware device you may own, no matter whether it's protected by copyright and no matter how you acquired it - purchased with your own money, borrowed from a mate, p2p, torrent or blog. It's also perfectly legal to make those files available for others to copy, provided you make no profit from doing so.

No, the copyright owners don't like the law as it stands, and they're lobbying hard - waving recent EU guidelines in the air with increasing agitation - to get it changed, but, for the time being at least, the government seems to be in no hurry at all to rock the boat and risk da yoof vote by clamping down on file-sharing.

I've downloaded the odd thing here and there. I'm not going to claim to be some sort of crusader, like many 'freetards' do, or offer a load of justifications. I did it because it was tempting and because there was little to no chance of getting collared for it.

How would the Word staffers feel about me handing my used copies of Word to the local doctors surgery waiting room?

if I've already bought it once before, if it would otherwise mean paying £25.00p for a Japanese import, if I feel that the record company is taking me for a ride (i.e., indivisible Beatles mono box sets at £200.00p a throw and 25-year-old U2 reissues at £20.00p), if I want to sample an artist, or if the artist is dead, then I have virtually no qualms.

If they're new, poor, hungry or one of the Massive Attacks, Portisheads or Elbows of this world that put their time and money into projects that they really care about, then I pay. I gave what I thought was a fair rate for "In Rainbows" without any hesitation, and I would not have been able to enjoy it if I hadn't.

If it's torture-endorsing Metallica or sludge-rockers Oasis that we're talking about, (or if it's an artist whose releases have been copy-protected) then I steal it out of spite even though I'd sooner squirt rubbing alcohol into my freshly shaved ears than listen to them.

these days that I can't understand why anyone would want to take the time and effort to find them for free - e.g emusic works out at roughly 25p a track, and amazon can be as little as 14p a track. That's cheaper than music has ever been (in relative terms).

...well not anymore. I did use Kazaa four or five years ago but even then it was when i was going out clubbing and it was to download tracks that i could'nt get hold of elsewhere or older indie tracks that i'd once owned and had subsequently lost. I would also download some stuff music i was curious to hear , but i've got spotify to do that now.
Kazaa really slowed my pc down and that really put me off the whole thing and since then i've paid for my music.
Cosidering i used to spend £2.99 on a cd single which probably only had 1 track on it i really wanted i don't think 79p on I Tunes is too much , especially when i've already listened to it many times on Spotify ,My Space , You Tube or wherever.
Music is cheaper now than it's ever been and we all know that it costs an absolute fortune to actually produce it.

... in that I do download music illegally. Like, tons of it. I've only actually started doing this recently, though, due to a prolonged bout of worklessness and therefore lack of money (it's not easy being a freelancer in this current climate).

I'd love nothing more than to pop out to HMV or head to ITunes and pay for all the new music I like. Really, I would. If (or, more hopefully when) I start earning decent money again, that's what I'll do.

But in the meantime I'm not going to give up on discovering great new artists. When I have the means to do so, I believe I spend FAR more money on music than the 'average' person does. Infact, studies show that heavy illegal downloaders are infact the biggest buyers of music anyway.

Bluntly, then: I love music. I can't afford it right now. So I'm going to hear it for free. And - given the options I have - isn't it more beneficial for an artist that I hear them for free, than don't hear them at all (the only logical option)? At least this way I know which artists I'll be seeing live/buying albums when I get a little more financially stable.

Aaaaand breathe.

..no excuses, no exceptions for disliked mass market category killers or unavailable artists and no attempt at justification.
I have illegally downloaded a lot of material but have not since my favourite Russian download site closed down.
[Histrionic Kenneth Williams voice]..There I've said it now and...I'm glad.

I've never illegally downloaded anything. But that's more due to technical ineptitude and fear of viruses than anything else.

And everybody wants to get paid for what they do and I don't see why I should get for nothing something that has cost someone else money to produce. On the other hand, if musicians at the top (and I realise this is only a small minority) have to get used to not having private jets, country mansions and more cars than they can ever drive this may not be a bad thing.

Having said that, if someone can point me towards a copy of "The Poacher" by Ronnie Lane I'd be grateful. I can't find it on any legal site and I'd really like to hear it again.

People have been copying music, and sharing with friends for decades, it is nothing new- the music firms still seem to do very nicely, and any new talent just has to find better ways to up thir game..

as for lily allen suposedly being against downloads, didnt she become 'famous' by putting early tracks on her personal social network page?

And btw, to my old boss at the bank, c. 20 years ago, I only got paid once for that report.. how about some royalties on that? eh?

I don't know much about this story (so correct me if I'm wrong...) but didn't Metallica come in for a lot of stick by other musicians and media for making a stand against Napster's file sharing?

So are they now considered "cool" for doing so?