Have We Become a Culture of Free?

It is easy to say that saving money has become very popular and almost a way of life since the recession went main stream a few years ago  and even before then. There are even shows on TV about couponing and they make contests out of it. If people can not save money on something or get it free they have little interest in it if it does not seem to be a necessity. It is no secret this has been effecting the music industry and record long before the recession came full circle a yew years ago.

It first started with sites like Napster offering free music shares and downloads. Once Napster was shut down it was eventually followed with contemporaries such as WinMX, LimeWire, Bearshare, and countless others. These sites had paid options but users could download anything findable for free. People still bought albums of course but as iPods and other MP3 players became more popular mp3’s downloaded for free became more popular, especially off free sites. iTunes helped this process somewhat, offering listeners the opportunity to pay per song or per album but most people figured if it is available for free why should I have to pay. Thus creating the Culture of Free.

I was not immune from the culture of free. For my teen years I was a dirty pirate of music and got probably almost all of my music off of Lime Wire. Ever since it shut down I have been paying for albums unless a friend had the cd or album on the computer then I just put it on my computer with a flash drive. But most of my music now comes from Amazon,sometimes iTunes or on a rare occasion bought in a store. I feel it makes me appreciate the music so much, more and get much more excited when I get the album.  In my binge downloading days I would just download everything from an artist and at some point delete songs I did not like very much, if I got around to it. I now have the hype back I got when I was younger when I would be excited to buy new CDs. Remember those days people, weren’t they magical?

While I have not researched this I think more people have been buying music in recent years or have been paying for programs like rhapsody or groove shark. This is good for us. How can we justify taking the work someone did for free.If we had to produce work and not get paid for it we would be pissed as regular people.

Yes many celebrity musicians have boat loads of cash and make a lot money from concerts and other things, but that money goes into paying the bills for the concerts and they have to profit greatly as well causing them to raise ticket prices since they don’t make much off of album sales as they used to.

I am not saying that we need to go back to spending boat loads of money on CDs in stores, but I think we should continue developing pay for music sites, and buying digital albums which are much cheaper than buying the physical album. That way we are still getting to save money, but are still being smart and paying someone for their work. Also, we are even being green by not having all that plastic and paper used on the packaging.

I am proud to admit I am a pirate of the musical high seas no longer