Good post, raising very legitimate issues.

good lord, everyone has different opinions. it took me like an hour to read this thread of like, 14 replies?...give or take a few. put it to rest, please. (oh and i only take a maximum of 3 songs per artist. then i go out and buy their album if i like what i hear. , it's quite funny to hear myself throwing more fuel on the fire when i just told everyone to just chill out and stop arguing. lol.)

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This is a forum...we are here to discuss things...are you trying to say we sholdn't have topics and we shouldn't discuss them? I thought we were getting some good insights here, from a variety of viewpoints...

That's all good then. I'd be interested in looking up your songs anyway. Could you please tell me the names of them? I promise I won't download any of them!!!

The only shows which cost millions of dollars for single bands are for the big, popular ones like you said for example, Metallica. Do you think bands which need money are going to put on a show which costs millions and only returns hundreds? If Metallica's concert costs millions, how much money do you think they'd be pulling in? It's all in proportions. A band starting up that plays in a pub wouldn't cost more than a hundred dollars and it all gets payed by the pub which then makes it up by selling drinks.

For these small time bands (who probably aren't even signed up to record lables), they would get the vast majority of the money from the shows. The other person who gets paid is the manager. Why would a record comapany get a portion of the money from a small time band if they didn't do anything? It's different if they arrange the shows but chances are, if they aren't big, they have to do it themselves.

This is a very interesting thread with many good points. However, everyone has completely missed the point of the whole downloading issue. Here's what's going on, as seen by a college age music fan:

The way that people acquire and listen to music has changed forever. The RIAA can justify their prices and their actions however much they want, but just look at the declining record sales over the past few years. The people have spoken. For several different reasons, people are unwilling and/or unable to pay the prices for music that the industry is asking. The recording industry has forgotten the primary rule of selling anything: THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT. They have two options: 1. Adapt to the new market and continue to do business, 2. Continue their current course of action, and eventually the entire music industry will go under. It's their choice. Every other industry conforms to their market, but all the RIAA wants to do is whine and complain and throw their hands up in the air and run to Uncle Sam and have him solve their problems.

I download music because I'm in college and I simply don't have the money to buy CDs at this point. I believe in buying the CDs (which I have done up to this point) and supporting the artists, but now that I don't have the money, I'm not going to just give up music altogether, and if I've got to steal it across the internet to get it, I will. Feel free to call my ethics and morals into question, but the legality of sharing music is irrelevant.

I'm not saying all this to justify downloading music, I'm saying it as a person at the heart of their target market. I think the RIAA has enough smart people in their organization to come up with a solution to all this. All they're doing now is biting the hands that feed them, making this whole situation much worse for them, and if they bite hard enough, the backlash will be devastating.

So, basically, to sum all this up, the customer is always right, and try not to screw over your customers because they won't do business the way you want to. I'm no MBA, but those seem like pretty simple concepts to me.

BTW, does anyone have an email address where I can reach the RIAA? I've searched all over their website but I can't find one.

You might get some of that information at www.boycott-riaa.com .

Thanks. I really want to let them know what I think. I mean, it seems only logical to listen to the people you're trying to sell stuff to.

It might surprise you to know that I (the token advocate of music creators around here) very much agree with you. You're absolutely right that the music industry has made some big mistakes in dealing with this. The very first thing that should have happened is some serious across-the-board price slashing. Everybody knows that CDs are way, WAY overpriced. And more and more people are getting wise to the fact that artists and songwriters benefit very little from the mark-up.

I'm not surprised that the RIAA is unreachable. My guess is they (like the rest of the music industry) are very intentionally playing "hard-to-get" with the public.

Sweet, I've got a real live musician agreeing with me here. Anyway, mega price slashing is one way they could save themselves, but they could also distribute music much like TV. That is, the artists let you download their music for free off an official band website, and then get people to advertise on the site and sponsor the band. This would also eliminate the record labels themselves, thus reducing the cost even further.