To the extent that Napster charges its customers to access other people's work, yes. But as a musician, myself, I think the development of digital music has invalidated the whole model of charging money for a recording, at least in its bare, digital form. An MP3 song is best seen as a free commercial for a band's live performance, or for a more elaborately packaged CD version of the recorded work that includes additional products and benefits for the customer. Customers who don't want the extras, or who don't like the band enough to pay to see them live, can just listen to the song...and maybe they will like it enough to virally market it to a friend who will pay for the content. Either way, considering the casual listener a thief is unnecessary - they aren't stealing anything significant from the artist.
Of course, the music industry - which relies heavily on artificial acts with little talent who can't deliver quality live performances without expensive lighting, lip syncing, and a hundred backup dancers - realizes the game is up, and are collectively lashing out at reality in a blind panic. :)
Of course, the music industry - which relies heavily on artificial acts with little talent who can't deliver quality live performances without expensive lighting, lip syncing, and a hundred backup dancers - realizes the game is up, and are collectively lashing out at reality in a blind panic. :)
Bingo! We have a winner.
What is happening is music is going back closer to its roots, where the true musicianship is in the writing, and then the performing. In the old days the money was made off of the rights to the song and sheet music. Anyone could perform your music, but you got paid for it. Second, if you were a good performer, people would pay to come and see music you performed. Very few did both the writing and performing. That all changed big time by the 1960s with mass media. But things eventually became corrupt, and corporations found they could make millions with "manufactured" artists.
Flash forward to today, and we are closer to the old model than the newer one. Many artist/bands do pretty darn well touring/selling T shirts, etc. but they know that their digitally recorded music is really not much more than an advertisement to get you interested in them, and hopefully you will come and see a show. That is also what the radio is for, as well as music videos. Music video's are just fancy commercials also, that is why artists will spend a fair amount of money to make one, with no intention of "selling" it to make a huge profit. It is just a effective way to get their music more widely heard, and for the public to be able to see the faces behind the music, and hopefully again, spend money to come and see them.
They still will sell you a CD if you want, but if they tried to make it just on that, they would be back to painting houses full time......