Reminds me when Paramount started suing Star Trek fans over their fan websites...look where that franchise ended up.
They did find a unique money stream in a difficult world.
As for the current sorry state of music, I blame the raising of the drinking age to 21. Prior to this, there were road houses everywhere. And all those road houses had bands every night. You could make a decent living just playing these road houses, and pretty good cash if you just played on weekends. When the drinking age was raised, and the 18-20 year old kids no longer could go out, it scuttled 80% of the road house clientele, and all the road houses went out of business.
These road houses were the “minor leagues” of music. It’s where musicians got good at their craft. And we not only developed our skills, we could try new and different forms of music.
Clubs had a stage, and bands had their own PA and light systems. People who attended these shows came away with the feel that they had been to a big-time rock show.
We did all this while maintaining the dream of “Hitting it big”, as some bands did. There’s no place to do that now, no place for young people to become musicians.
Whenever I go out to see a band play now, I come away depressed. The bands are relegated to a corner of a cramped bar, with something that just barely makes them heard over the din. And the band members themselves are my age, playing vanilla music with no spirit.
Bookmark.
Most underrated metal band in history.
This is actually far more dramatic than it appears, for several reasons.
To start with, the vast majority of music out there, and a lot still in copyright, is “old music”. Old music has a huge disconnect with music listeners who have never heard it, unless something, anything, bridges the gap. That is, unless they hear it, they don’t know anything about it.
And they won’t buy music “sound unheard”. There is just too much of it for any appreciable audience to discover on their own.
But music piracy changes that. Someone who doesn’t know anything about jazz or blues, for example, begins with very general search terms. They get results starting with the most popular jazz and blues artists. From there, they pick up names of artists; then perhaps other artists they played with. They might notice a record label, or a sub-genre of what they’re interested in.
All the while, they are downloading old music that is new to them, and listening to it. Their searches become more refined. Their knowledge on that subject grows.
And eventually it leads them to want to buy that music, if they can get it at a reasonable price.
Importantly, many of the music pirates become fans of the music and/or the artist. So they do word of mouth sales to their peers as well.
Iron Maiden was neglected by radio, the US press, awards programs, and their label, yet they continued to build a base through constant touring.
Very smart: “The fans want our music? Great! We’ll go play there, too!”