This is the funniest thing I've read all day ;-)

Only the best of the best selling artists see money from their record (CD) sales. Music industry contracts first pay the label (and those $multimillion executive salaries) before the artist sees a single penny. Most artists must tour to get money because their contracts with the music labels are so one sided. Other alternative is create your own music label.

How to fix the system? Eliminate the useless fat - all those overpaid music industry executives. Best hope for this to happen? Music purchased on the internet at ten cents per song; with money going first and foremost to the artist. This is a greatest fear of the RIAA.

What was the original function of the internet? Exchanging Grateful Dead tapes. Back then, the GD permitted audience to record the live concert.

the Dead has always ENCOURAGED "tapers". There was always a section in the center of the general admission floor seats dedicated to tapers. They came equipped with booms and all.

Male, 33. Selected "why I have broadband."

If I'm downloading music, 95% of what I'm obtaining are things that I either can't find in local stores (Zappa bootlegs, obscure foreign bands, comedy, out-of-print stuff) or songs/artists that I'm not familiar enough with to justify a blind purchase. It's not that I have an extreme moral problem with downloading RIAA stuff -- I don't -- but that my tastes generally run away from the RIAA's flavors-of-the-month.

To wit, I have 12 FM radio presets and use two, MAYBE three more than once or twice a month. One is a college station that I'm rarely in range of. One is WYSP, mostly for Stern in the morning. One is WXPN, mostly for the Saturday night blues show.

(On the AM band, there's WIP for general inanity, KYW for news, and I'll flip around now and then through nutballs like Hannity and O'Reilly and Bob Grant just for the laughs. They're like Jerry Springer for the hard-right crowd.)

I am a firm supporter of Shoutcast and other Internet streaming radio, and am considering a Sirius satellite-radio subscription once I see if Opie & Anthony make the jump this summer. If I could get a car stereo that could find Shoutcast stations or others of that quality, I'd only get out of my Saturn long enough to fill it up with gas.

Most of my Internet downloading revolves around game ROMs and CDs -- Saturn, PSX, TurboGrafx, MAME. Where originals can be found at reasonable rates, I buy them. In the meantime, I go through CDRs like they were candy.

Male 36.

I know you already turned the paper in, but I wanted to share.

I don't download MP3s from the internet, because I don't want to go to the trouble of doing it. My original iMac (dinosaur) has a small hard drive, so it's just too much of a hassle.

I do have *ahem* "a friend" who has about 60 CD-Rs or so full of MP3s that he copied from someone else in person, not over the web. This "friend" has also been known to borrow CDs from the public library and copy them too. Especially Christmas music. In all instances, the music copied would not have been otherwise purchased, because this "friend" didn't like the music that much. Or because the music was not sold anywhere. This "friend" has actually purchased a few hundred CDs in stores in his life, and figures that he's done enough to support the RIAA/MPAA. He realizes that what he does is illegal, but doesn't think it is wrong, because he isn't hurting anyone.

Oh, and in case you think that "friend" is just code for myself, you

Heh... you reminded me of something I'd forgotten because it didn't fall under the category of "downloading"...

I, too, have a friend, who methodically checked out a University's complete sound effects library 5 discs at a time (the limit for an undergrad,) burned them each night, then returned the next day for 5 more. Acquired over 200 discs this way... and in case you're curious, sound effects libraries are a SHITLOAD more expensive than regular music CDs.