I'm Illegally Downloading Several Discographies As I Write This

Last night, I was listening to my Saint Vitus LP. This morning, I was enjoying 3 Inches of Blood on the CD player on the drive into work. When I got in my work van, I was blasting Anvil in the tape deck, and as soon as I got out with my tools, I was listening to Iced Earth's first few albums that I had torrented on my ipod.

Lets all be honest here, Pretty much all of our favorite bands are not going to make any money off of CD sales. The only bands nowadays that do, are the ones who got lucky twenty years ago with the record execs. If you drop twenty bucks to "support the artist" on the digipack version that has live recordings from eons ago, you're not supporting the band, it's the money hungry cock mongers that have them in the salt mines that you're supporting. If you're a band that gets signed on to a big ass label that can't wait for royalties to your song, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Even poseur little bitches don't get paid for shit today. Bands that make cash on their music are usually independent bands, or are on a small to medium sized label...even if that label is just their own label. 

I feel that this "supporting the artist" argument I hear from mallcore brats and metalheads that don't know any better is almost an ego trip as opposed to something they feel needs to stand for. Take it from someone who has a fair amount of CDs, Tapes, and Vinyl. There's a really good feeling you get from physically holding that music in your hand. This is a treasure that you found, and you earned, be it through saving up pennies from your undersized paycheck, or stealing it from your neighbour's place under the cover of darkness.

Soon...

But take a step back and think about this. Most bands charge 10, maybe 15 bucks a pop for a CD at a show. Shirts often range from 20-25. Would buying CD's really make all that much of a difference when for every CD they sell, they get 0.00000023% of the profit? And sure, you got local bands who're not on a label and get most if not all the cash for their tunes, but that's an entirely different situation here. You probably know these guys and copied your answers off of them in high school tests, they're not opening for Hammerfall, nor are they Hammerfall.

In many cases, bands outright encourage you to download all of their shit for free. They post youtube videos on facebook, sometimes a video that's just the entire album played straight. They know that their medium is more likely to be pirated than a cruise liner with Tom Hanks at the helm, they just want you to be entertained. Besides, they know the money's going to be coming from merch, not their music. When's the last time a band on stage asked the crowd to go buy their albums off itunes, spotifiy, or rhapsody or whatever the fuck, instead of just going to the merch booth and pick up something if you want to?

You better go buy our latest single, or I will slap you, girlfriend!

So, my views on paying for music? Do what you want. I'm not going to hold it against you if you download Heavy Load's discography, try finding releases by them off Amazon that don't cost you your fucking soul. 3 Inches of Blood certainly isn't losing any sleep worrying if you people will deprive them of their two dollar royalty check, what with them regularly posting links to youtube videos of their entire discography. And we're always going to be media hunters. I'm still buying vinyl records, CD's and even cassette tapes for Dio's sake, and I still find time out of my day to download Heidevolk albums.

And then there are those odd few poverty line warriors, the one or two guys who shame you for wasting your cash on band's albums you could easily get for free. Don't bother trying to rip into those assholes.

That's my job.