The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) says that the new single from the Tragically Hip has been a magnet for music pirates.
CRIA says that, over a five-week stretch from March 30 to May 7, there were more than half-a-million unauthorized attempts to download the Hip's “Vaccination Scar.”
I haven't had a chance to follow up with CRIA to ask the obvious question: How do you know? How do you track something like that?
The song has been available at online music stores and CRIA says 1,000 copies of the title were purchased online.
“Any reasonable person will be staggered by the disparity in those numbers,â€� said Hip bassist Gord Sinclair, in the CRIA press release . “The grim economic reality aside, it shows how widespread the practice of downloading has become. Don't get me wrong. Anything that gets people into music is okay with me, but at some point people have to recognize their role in the creative process. To me it's an ethical question. If you hear something you like, go out and support the artist. Tell your friends, see a show and buy their records. Your support helps the artist continue to create and it funds the discovery and development of new artists and new music. If you do your part, we'll all benefit.”
CRIA, in its press release on this issue, loaded up on outrage from some top Canadian acts. Here's Ed Robertson, singer/songwriter from The Barenaked Ladies: “I'm totally fine with people downloading music, as long as they steal everything that they want. If you want pants, go steal them. If you need gas in your car, you should steal it, because you can. As long as people are consistent I don't have a problem. As long as they see themselves as thieves in general then I don't mind if they steal everything that they like. But it irks me that it's only okay to steal music.�
Solution to this is to make the music cheaper and easy to purchase on the line.
The high charges of 99c US is way to expensive.A flat rate of 99c US for down loading 10 songs with bonus songs with each 20 songs purchased. Getting a little money for each song produced is better than getting absoulutely nothing for a song.
Artists should not expect to get the enormous amounts of money for their music and live a life of luxury and retire by the time they are 30.They should scrip and save like 98% of the population of the world.
The artists can now sell direct to the public on the net and produce their albums from home which cuts the cost of generating music by a huge amount.The scum sucking leaches at the record companies can be by passed,they are dinosaurs of music industry about to be come extinct
Just as an aside —
Songs area available for 99 cents CANADIAN at Canadian download sites like PureTracks.
Pure tracks is not availiable too microsoft users so that cuts out about 95% of the population.
Sorry I was wrong pure tracks is not avaliable to Mac users so it cuts out only 5% of the population.
p.s. THINK BEFORE YOU TYPE!!!!
I tried to buy it but Puretracks is only available to 'Canadians' so I then downloaded it off Kazaa.
Matt Goyer (in Seattle).
Actually every single copy I tried to get off Kazaa was bad. So maybe there have been a million bad downloads and no ones that actually resulted in someone getting the file.
But I did find it on an alternative network.
Not to mention that downloading is LEGAL in Canada.