chances are small if you know what your doing and clicking. About punishment, it depends where you live, laws are different everywhere.
If you go with torrents, use utorrent. It's the lightest on system resources. Then you just find a BT site you like, always read comments to be sure if it's real or not and you should be safe.
I used to only download music through p2p clients, but not anymore.
I see it this way; if I don't support the bands I like by spending the $10 to get their cd they might not last long enough to make another. Small bands need revenue from their merch sales, so they can continue to tour and record. If you enjoy someone elses work than you should be paying for it.
Its funny to me how some of the same people who become enraged at rips of skins and wallpapers that are distributed freely, but think nothing of the thousands and thousands of songs they have stolen... yes stolen.
If you enjoy an artists music, then you should pay to buy the cd. Especially with things like itunes, you cannot use the excuse of "I only like a couple of the songs" anymore, because you can buy the songs individually.
My lifetime estimate on music purchases is around approx. 20,000 $USD last time I bothered to think about it.
I firmly believe at least 85% of the time the tape or cd I bought had maybe 2 good tracks.
Back in the day before you could "sample" music you felt ripped off a lot. In high school I'd work my crummy job and on the weekend go buy a couple cassettes. In college a cd a week. As an adult my purchases increased. I have paid for a lot of overpriced filler in my life.
Not to say I haven't bought a lot of solid records. These days those are the only kind I buy because I listen to the thing before I buy it.
The music industry must change becaue people have realized how much money they're blowing on just crap.
a lot of the music i download i also buy (after deciding the download is worth buying). ideally, i'd love to have all of my music on cd/vinyl. but circumstances such as having to pay ~$30-40 for a cd limit this. you can't really get less known artists' music round here without it being shipped in from some other continent (almost always the US), and frankly as a student i just can't afford to pay for everything i download. i don't care if that's being selfish. but it's being realistic.
i might argue with your ripping comment frosted only for the reason that there is a difference between taking something, and taking something and then trying to pass it off as your own.
another problem besides drm, is the low quality at 128 kbps... makes all my itunes music the lowest quality music on my computer.I rip my cds at 320 i think.
have any of you looked at the line up for coachella this year? there is an insane amount of good bands set to play, but they couldn't have picked a worse time in the semester.
However, when you purchase a cd, you really aren't supporting the artist that much. Most of the money you spend on a cd goes to the recording industries... very little actually makes it's way to the artist.
As such, I don't feel as bad about downloading music from some other source.
When I find something I really like, I typically donate.
-torrents -live shows (legal downloads) at archive.org and nugs.net -you can always stream and then download from where you streamed it -stream and record what your streaming (program called Replay Music)
---------------------------------------------- - Rubix aka Sonic -
sirwonkus, I'm not saying that they are the same thing, but they are both theft. To me, its pretty hypocritical to say one kind of theft is ok, while another is completely wrong.
puer, I'm not a expert, but I think that where you purchase the cd has a lot do to with how much of the sale goes to the artist. For example, if you buy the cd from Best Buy, I would assume the artists sees less of the money than if you are buying the cd directly from a band member at a live show.
Even if that isn't true, and you are right that most of the money goes to the recording industries... if those artists don't sell those cds, they don't get label backing to put out more cds.
I also understand complaints about itunes quality and drm. I only use itunes for stuff that is released exclusively through itunes. Otherwise I buy the physical cd.
