response 1 of 23:

Dec 12 13:19 UTC 2002

Hmmm. All very good questions. I know that I download songs (from legal sites,
although I have friends who've gotten songs from P2P) because I want to hear
them but I don't feel confident buying the album -- or the album isn't
available anymore or yet... For example, I have several songs downloaded from
Pegasus Music's free website of songs from their upcoming albums. Didn't stop
me from buying the albums as soon as they became available (I have one that
just came out yesterday in my hot little hands, in fact). It just gave me a
taste that made me WANT to buy the album even more. In other cases, I might
try to find a song because I want THAT song, but I don't want to buy a whole
album (case in point -- I wanted a copy of "It's Raining Men" but I couldn't
find an 80s anthology that had it nor did any of my friends have a copy). But
I'm middle-aged, so I'm probably not the person to answer this item. I'll see
if I can get my son and/or his best friend to tell me why they frequent the
P2P sites and download far too much music. :-)

response 7 of 23:

Dec 13 09:14 UTC 2002

  You know I hear the "I don't want to pay for a whole album with only two
  good tracks" complaint often enough but I can't figure out whether the
  people complaining are just buying music that's very different from what
  I listen to or whether it's my personal tastes in music but I encounter
  the problem pretty rarely -- probably on fewer than one disc in eight
  among those discs I buy on impulse (and fewer still on discs which aren't
  impulse buys.)   Is the quality-to-filler ratio that much higher in 
  whatever popular musical marketing niche people are favoring these days
  or is there something else which explains why other people find this to
  be a widespread problem when I find it to be an occasional disappointment?

response 9 of 23:

Dec 13 09:53 UTC 2002

resp:7  Believe it or not, I think there has been discussion on this.  
I think part of it might indeed lie with the fact that you're listening 
to vastly different music than the average teenager/young adult is 
(actually, I think that breaks down to teenager and women 18-35).  The 
notion has been put forward that the music business is gasping for new 
talent in this market.  Current pop artists apparently aren't producing 
entire recordings that hold their audience's attention.

Even in the hit factory decade of the 80's, there was one album churned 
out where every song hit #1: Huey Lewis and the News's "Sports."  We 
have nothing like that today.

Maybe rampant consumerism has burnt out the music business-- they 
aren't paying enough attention to production quality.

My fall to piracy is for very different reasons.  I'm poor, and much of 
the music I listen to is reasonably old.  I generally look for hits 
that are a little more difficult to find right away, and I don't always 
have patience in trying to find compilations.  When I do have money, I 
do admit that it's worth buying the remaining material in some artist's 
album, but right now, I'm too lazy and too broke to do it.  On that 
note, current CD prices don't help.  Oh, and by the way, I rarely 
pirate for nostalgia much: many of these old hits are barely on the 
periphery of my memory.

I very much suspect the music piracy problem is firmly in the 
mainstream; therefore, I'm willing to bet that those who buy outside of 
it don't quite understand what the fuss is about, or more specifically, 
don't pirate.

response 11 of 23:

Dec 13 12:56 UTC 2002

It's very true that my particular tastes in music are definitely
non-mainstream and that I'm not in the target range for the music business.
I do buy some mainstream (older) acts at times (Rick Springfield, Blue Oyster
Cult, Moody Blues... all of whom had new albums out in the last  two years)
but mostly what I buy is firmly in the folk or world camp. I will branch out
into other things if I hear them and I like them, but I'd say that I
definitely don't fit any profiles  --- I love to fill in those cards that come
in CDs where they ask you your name, your address, and why you bought the
record, and then what the last three CDs you bought were and what the
magazines/radio stations you listen to are -- it probably drives them crazy.
"Let's see here, a 46 year old woman who reads, um, 'Time, Cosmopolitan, and
Analog'. The last three CDs she bought, not counting this one, were 'Shrek
soundtrack, Fairport Convention, and Ilgi' WTF?!" I love screwing with their
demographics, and the best part is that I never have to lie. 

It's also true that most of the music I'm desperately wanting to get copies
of AND would be willing to pir-ate, if I had to, is all out of print. I have
some tapes of filk music that I'd LOVE to get digital copies of, but it's not
going to happen. I know that there are albums of, say, Archie Fisher out there
that were released in the 1960s in England that aren't coming out on CD and
I don't even know who might have a copy (well, obviously, people in England,
but I don't know any! Grin) of the original, so I'd be more than happy to do
some pirating of that.

response 13 of 23:

Dec 14 05:06 UTC 2002

Well, it sounds like music that's out of print or difficult to access 
certainly is a factor.

I doubt I would have gotten a copy of Jazzy Redd's "I Am A Dope Fiend" 
unless I had pirated it.