#1 moonchild is right... piracy, hacking, and the likes will be around for a very very long time. For every corporation that comes out with some anti-piracy measure (safe-disc, etc), there are tons of extremely talented hackers that can defeat it within days if not hours. No matter what comes out it will be cracked. Take this new move by sony with the back door trojans... most likely they will have the crap sued out of them but there will also be programs to prevent such trojans devised quickly.

Someone made the analogy of the Direct TV situation when they switched from the HU card to the P4 card. Alot of DTV hackers went belly up. But I have 3 words for you... "Free To Air"... look into it... DTV, Dish and the likes are still being hacked to this day.. again.. they always will be.


#2 Vajrayana.. Grokster is but one of many many p2p services. How about LimeWire, BearShare? Even if the RIAA was able to shut down all p2p including torrents which is damn near impossible (sure they can shut down the hosts of the actual torrent files but a new one pops up quick)... there is still Newsgroups, IRC, and private sharing.

Face it.. piracy is just something that is not going away. I usually do download songs.. but old ones.. from groups that I can no longer find their CDs. I don't even bother listening to the new gargbage that MTV spews out to the masses... i wouldnt even waste my time downloading it, much less spending $20, or .20 cents on their crap.

The only way for the music industry to fix this problem is to ADJUST. Like everyone said, stop pumping out CRAP just to make a fast buck. Come on really.. look at the industry today vs what it was 20 years ago. Every rapper and his best buddies, cousins, uncles and little brothers have record deals now making millions. They all have their own "labels". Can you tell me that its good music they are pumping out? How about the Brittneys or Ashley Simpsons? Products of MTV pure and simple. If they stop pumping out crap maybe more people will be inclined to actually spend money on a CD. If not... go the Ipod or Yahoo music way and sell your crap song by song...

Originally posted by el duderino

What is so greedy about making a living wage? Not all musicians want to be famous! I don’t know you at all but your posts in this thread have a sour grapes vibe to them.

Whos said anything about a working wage being greedy?
If musicians were being paid a fare working wage then there wouldn't be a problem.
The problem I was pointing out was that bands themselves perpetuate the problems in the music industry. The only people who can change it IS the musicians. The companies aren't about to change. They don't care about art or creativity, infact they stiffle it. Their only concern is moving "units" to the gullable public.
And we are seeing the results of that now. Music has been killed by the suits, turned into an easily marketable "safe" product with no substance or meaning but a happy tune to whistle on the drive to work.

And when a band allows itself to be used by the companies then it perpetuates the problem.

I won't buy ANYTHING from these companies. And until the musos wake up to what they are a part of then I have NO sympathy for their loss. People need to realise the power of cooperation and then maybe more people will get to share in the wealth instead of just the company execs and owners.

Sour grapes?...Trust me I don't want it, and never did. But I am a musician and learned very early what the music industry is all about.