Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai - View Single Post - Ayumi's discography added to Youtube
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Old 2nd January 2020, 12:01 AM
MKAyu MKAyu is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by _dandy_ View Post
Agreed. But the other argument is that not everyone who uses the "alternatives" would have made a purchase if those didn't exist.
I would have agreed with that a few years ago. Now they're often already available from the library (including online services like Hoopla, where you can read/listen for free online at any time), low-cost streaming, buying from second-hand sources, and sometimes from the authors/musicians/artists themselves who'll put the music up for free to get ahead of pirates.

Doing it that way artists realize they might get a little advertising money, can connect with fans, and are promoting the real money makers--concerts and goods. If pirating meant more sales for them, it wouldn't have led to so many artists going broke, getting dropped from their labels, and changing their business models. They're changing to KEEP UP with piracy now. There's no longer money in just making the music itself. Or books or art or whatever.

For example, over the last decade a lot of mid-list authors have had contracts cancelled from piracy. Or in music, singer Jean Grae had two albums-in-progress in a row pirated in 2008. She gave up on making money from that and supported herself by charging to make music for others. She says now what you said--that the music spread to new people via piracy. She lost money then because few people bought it after listening, but now that she's learned better how to get around pirates and more people know her from that pirated music, she finally released a new album just last year.

I can't blame anyone who pirated to get things they COULDN'T get until now, or used pirating to sample things. I won't pretend I never did it with manga that wasn't yet available in English. But now that I know how many careers were ruined, or at least derailed, and now that so many artists are making sure their stuff is available before pirates can get it and there's so many sources to access most anything, hopefully fans will do their best to, say, watch an artist's videos on their own channel. <3
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