[wideawake]

If you were a musician, would you want people copying and distributing your material for free? It would sure piss me off.

Until the 1950s, musicians made their living by performing music, not by selling copies of performances.

The days of going into the studio once every two years to work for a few days and then going out and living the high-life in hotel suites for a few months promoting the record are over.

There is no more free lunch for musicians. They may need to put in 40 hours a week like the rest of us unglamorous slobs.

The record companies, like magazines, provide editing.

And they generally do as good a job of editing music as the editorial staff of the Newsweek does editing news.

I have no problem deciding for myself what news is trustworthy and important and what music is good.

[Aquinasfan]

The days of going into the studio once every two years to work for a few days and then going out and living the high-life in hotel suites for a few months promoting the record are over. There is no more free lunch for musicians. They may need to put in 40 hours a week like the rest of us unglamorous slobs.

Well, what about big-production music, and music that really can't be performed live?

The record companies, like magazines, provide editing.

And they generally do as good a job of editing music as the editorial staff of the Newsweek does editing news.

Or "National Review", "This Rock" and "First Things." I could never find this writing on my own. But then again, without copyright protection, writers would stop writing altogether.

I have no problem deciding for myself what news is trustworthy and important and what music is good.

I don't have the time. Most people don't.