Let's Agree, Illegal Downloads Suck - Part 2

Ah, Time Fades Away…now I want to go hunt for HDCD downloads!

I gotta say, when there is something like that (or Buckingham Nicks) that doesn't get released, I want it. And frankly, I don't give a damn about the artist's wishes, or the record company's wishes, or anyone's wishes! I just want it. And if it is not made available legally, then I'll grab it otherwise, and @#$% to them for being morons and not taking my money.

Now, I could say I feel "entitled" since I have the titles sitting on vinyl, and I could in theory make a needle drop, but am just bypassing that process out of laziness and getting someone else's file. Really though, it's just about my personal greed, because, did I mention, I JUST WANT IT!!!!

 

Say, what about dead musicians? Can we download all of their stuff since they kind of suck at spending money?

 

Perhaps everyone involved is immoral in some way or another, including the consumers, the downloaders and the record companies?

 

Because you had nothing else to do. That was your only source of entertainment.

 

There was plenty else to do back then. Most people didn't decide to spend most of their money on records, which as I said before, where well over $100 each in today's money. So most people didn't sit and listen to music.

As one of the few that did chose to spend most of my spare money on music it makes sense that I would fully appreciate it. And even today, with the choice of live TV, blu-ray, internet, and game machines, immersing myself in just listening to music can be time well spent. But I've found that if a recording is very compressed then my brain turns off and I can't immerse myself.

 

Best not to debate it. Once you start talking about morals, you start judging. And, somewhere in there, religious beliefs creep in, and before you know it, the padlock gets put on the thread.

 

Say, what??? Maybe not most of their money, but people spent quite a bit on it. We didn't have video games, cell phones, and TVs as huge as the living room wall to watch DVDs on. But, almost everyone has a stereo.

 

I was a teenager in the 1970's so I can remember what I did, what my friends did, and the norms for that time.

Most people did have a stereo. But as an album cost well over $100 in today's money, most people didn't collect many full priced albums.

 

a record in 1975 cost about $7 in the US....a record now generally runs me $25-$30. The value of $7 in 1975 would be $31.43 USD today. Where are you getting this $100-$140 figure for record costs? I see you are in Australia but I find it hard to believe inflation or at any time a single record would be $100.

I am against illegal downloading but I am just pointing out your math based on US inflation is way off.

 

I don't get the "illegal download" thing. In what country is downloading music an illegal act? Maybe "unauthorized download" would be a more proper term.

 

You know what mean.

Great post though.

 

Rather than just looking at inflation, the figure comes from looking at % of earnings, ie how big a hole buying an album would make to all that you have to spend. (Another way of thinking about it is how many hours you would need to work to buy an album then and now.)

So the over $100 comes from $7 times median take home pay in 2014 divided by median take home pay in 1975.

Or you could instead put in the pay for a job in 2014 divided by the pay for the same job in 1975.

 

PS - Before someone beats me too it, it seems that the median real wages in the USA have been pretty much flat since about 1988!

I've found some figures for the UK showing that the median real wage growth between 1988 and 2010 was about 50% (but has declined a bit since). I think the growth in the median real wage in Australia has grown in a similar manner to the UK.

So the figures I gave earlier are about right for Australia and the UK, but because the average person in the USA hasn't benefitted nearly as much from their countries economic growth, the hours worked by an average person to earn the money to buy an album hasn't changed nearly as much.

 

I don't want to get into an economics argument, but the idea of using purchasing power parity (sort of what you're doing) is a good one. Just that the median wage doesn't tell us much, in my opinion, if a lot of people are clustered one side or the other of it - it might be the middle value but it might have a giant gap on one side and not truly represent the wages/earnings of the majority.

Edited to add: also, I know a handful of young people who do listen to music 'properly', as in exclusively while doing nothing else. I think I know about the same number of them as I did when I was younger (a handful, in other words), and don't think things have changed too much in that respect!

 

An economic discussion at this stage as I can see your point. Median - the person in the middle - is better than the average because, especially in the USA where the top earners have increased wealth incredibly. Include Bill Gates in a group or normal people and the average wealth shows that everyone is rich. But median ignores what is happening at the top end.

But looking at those doing less well than most, I just found a graph showing that the real pay rise for production / nonsupervisory workers in the US between 1975 and 2011 was only about 12%.

I find this rather shocking - but that is taking this off-topic economic discussion into even more off-topic politics. So probably best for me to say no more and return to talking about the morality of downloads.

 

I didn't mean argument as in shouting at one another

Sadly I wouldn't find that sort of thing shocking. Labour costs being endlessly pushed down to maximise profit is the nature of the beast, but you're right that this isn't the place for politics. The amount that the average person earns, rather than the average amount that a person earns, is what needs to be looked at in these kinds of thing.

 

Good point Grant. Perhaps the thread should focus on business ethics, but even then I don't think it would cover all areas. These threads are too vague, because they started from one man's statement in the first place. Perhaps this was all part of a psychology observation to see how we interact and discuss the issues centered around (or not centered around) the original statement?

 

Morality and Legality are two different things. You might think it's morally okay but is it legally. I here ya though. Theirs a lot of CD' s that have gone out of print years ago that I would love to have but to pay $700, really? Good luck getting your hands on The British Invasion: History of British Rock Volumes 1-9. Another thing you could say is these bands already had their heyday, already made the money. Anymore cash will just be benefiting the record companies. Still though it is very much illegal.

 

So many here need an Economics 101 refresher, it ain't even funny

 

The only thing people get prosecuted for is uploading the stuff. Downloading might be morally questionable, but they can't really prove intent to break the law. It is so ingrained into modern culture that it is just a product of the times. I mean there are 15 year olds who were born when Napster started and could have been exposed to downloading from a young enough age that they wouldn't be able to understand why it wasn't legal. In the 90s everyone videotaped stuff off TV, taped stuff off the radio or taped other people's CDs (for example). Nobody was told they'd go to jail for it.

I agree, provided the CD in print is not a brickwalled remaster. Nobody should be encouraging record companies to do that crap. Buying CD that turns out brickwalled is like accidentally buying rotten food.

If the general public don't know what clipping is, they are not going to care how the music is mastered. They might say 'it isn't loud enough on my phone' but even they know that they could plug it into speakers if they really wanted. The only people I've seen come out in favor of brickwalling from an audiophile perspective are old men who are losing their hearing (the Amazon reviews of the Roxy Music box attest to this). You might get some trendy types saying 'brickwalling is the modern sound' but that really only applies to club music, it needn't apply to everything. Most of the time, record companies force it on bands and they just accept it.

 

While I'm not in any way condone illegal downloading, I do wonder how many of those older folks who so easily condemn youngsters for downloading without conscience actually spent a lot of time when they were young buying boxes of TDK SA-90s or Maxell UDXL-IIs and then borrowed albums/shared albums for taping. Yes, I know they weren't perfect copies but they were the equivalent in those days of high bitrate MP3s. So all the righteous indignation rings a bit hollow.

 

Well, remember the slogan in the 1980s ""Home Taping Is Killing Music"? Making tape copies for friends and relatives was also a violation of copyright laws. But I don't like to mention this because I'd rather blame all them young folks for the problems of the world.

 

As I recall a box of HQ TDKs ran some bucks. I clearly remember weighing the costs of buying a ready supply to home-tape my pals records versus just joining the record club. It was a better value to buy the LPs even when I had to buy 3 more at regular club prices, usually double the store prices.

This shows us the real dichotomy between home taping and illegal downloads. There was a much larger investment in home taping -- a nice home stereo tape deck, tape stock, investment in time to make the tapes. For MP3s you don't even need a special player or blank CDs anymore. you just need a basic phone with earbuds and access to the internet. It's not a labor of love, it's a exercise in excess.

 

They did where I lived. But, I liked a variety of music, so I bought mostly 45s in the 70s.

 

Ethics.