And you what do you think?

I think that crappy record companies kill the music industry...they no longer support as many artists asthey used to so they have 'marginalized' their appeal. They just happened to have marginalized their appeal to the biggest group that's all...a group which will choose the image over art and will grab the marketing hook, line and sinker then do the same thing over again with the next person that they are pushing.

Usher is absolutely pathetic.

Peer to peer actually helps the record companies out. Any artist who cd's leak onto p2p sales do really great. The record companies just fear what they can't controll.

Kill record companies? No.

It certainly does cut into their profits. You know who ends up paying the bill? The band who's music you downloaded. I promise you that the record companies aren't going to let anything cut into the profit margin, so the artist (who due to an unbalance of power is in no situation to negotiate) will end up losing.

To my amazement, the record companies still have their heads buried on this. They have yet to introduce a well thought out strategy to combat downloads. They've put a couple band-aids on it, but nothing concrete.

The labels think that if you put a bonus disc of demos and a big booklet and links etc that people will pay the $20+ for the product. They don't realize the obvious;

People want a CD that costs $13-15. Until the labels provide this, stealing will continue. CDs cost less to produce than cassettes, but have been more expensive since day one. If you look at the manufacturing cost per CD, 13-15 dollars is very reasonable for all. The general public is not stupid...they know when they're getting ripped off.

hopefully it will force the record companies to start finding quality instead of quantity artists. people are sick of britney and usher and dont want to spend money on fucking crap. i wouldnt give a fucking cent to some rich fat white record executive who knows nothing about music and everything about marketing and how to suck money from teenyboppers if i had a gun to my head.

im sure lars ulrich are poor as hell and cant afford rent, so lets all stop downloading metallica songs and get our asses to the record stores and buy metallicas latest sensation ST.ANGER!!! lars, you sure did an amazing job on that record. bonham, make way!

If it wasn't for music downloading I wouldn't have discovered alot of the music that I have discovered, therefore I would be less interested in music in general (since most of the easily accesible mainstream stuff isn't exactly my thing), therefore I would be less inclined to go to the record store - so NO P2P sharing does not hurt the music industry as a whole, it may hurt the current mainstream artists a little, but it will help the lesser know artsits both of today, and of past decades.

I'm with MuZiK~JuNkEE here. We can debate money issues until the cows come home, but there can only be benefit when information - in this case artists and how they sound - can be shared at this magnitude. I have discovered quite a few artists in this manner, and I spend my money in a more purposeful manner when I seek out CD's. The labels don't like that we can easily avoid the hype traps they set for us. Used to be, a few shitty CD's a year was an acceptable level of shrink in my endless hunger for new music. Now I no longer have that problem.

As far as the corporate products go...I don't care if Linkin Park loses money because I keep burning the music on CD for people at work that ask me for it. I've gotten asked so many times I am just keeping the MP3's (downloading LP is easy enough, but then I actually have to listen to it to check for errors). By the way, you can fit both albums on a single blank CD