As others have said a lot of file trading is effectively try-before-you-buy - or quite simply a way for an artist to get eartime from people who would NEVER buy their material. It does change opinions and win converts

I've always looked at MP3s as a brilliant promotion tool and suggested that artists actively circulate relatively low quality material with a hook to encourage sales of better quality media even before MP3s were common (anyone remember au files?)

The big problem as RIAA/MPAA/Book publishers see it is that online media cuts out a LOT of the middlemen and that scares the bejezus out of 'em, especially as overarching orgs such as the RIAA/MPAA (and the folks within) will become the first parts of the industry to be made redundant during the inevitable rationalisations over the next 2 decades.

You might like to temper your "financial windfall" ideas with the following thoughts:

1: All monies advanced by the company will be paid with interest from your royalties. This includes your "salary"

2: All costs of recording, producing, manufacturing and distribution are considered monies advanced

3: All promotion costs are also considered monies advanced, where prmotion includes concert tours, etc.

4: Your royalties add up to a small percentage of the sale price into the distribution chain (which then has its own markups), yet your royalties are expected to pay all the costs up to that point.

Most artists end their careers in debt between 5 and 6 figures to their labels, more "sucessful" artists have been known to be between 6 and 7 figures in debt.

Check your contractual fine print, slather on the KY and open wide.

This is the 2nd study I've seen with the exact same conclusion.

But leave it to a bunch of corporations to not know what the situation really is. (like just about all corporations - idiot criers about something that won't amount to a hill of beans to them - but to you, it'll crush you)

Just standard operating procedure for corps. Corps win or you die. It's a zero sum game for these bungholes, and their obvious decrease in morality is even more ludicrous when you consider they act this way for dollars.

At least Judas got his silver pieces for his actions. Today's corporations will do the same thing for fiat dollars about to be worth nothing.

Kind of fitting.

I used to download lots of music and at the same time, I sued to buy lots too. With all the carrying on of RIAA, I stopped downloading and haven't bought any music since.

I really stopped downloading and buying when all the DRM infections came in.

I was getting frustrated that you would pay for an inferior product. You have to pay for a DRM infected file or you buy a CD and have to rip it yourself when DRM free, ripped tracks where available free.

I agree with you 100%
I download gigs of music only to delete 95% of it a week later.
Then the stuff I liked (most recently, all QOTSA's albums) I go out to the store and buy it for the better quality CD's.
I'm the same way with movies, I download everything there is, preview them all then go to the theaters to see the stuff I liked at home.
All of my friends follow the exact same patters.... I have never known anyone not to do things in this manner.
It's like taking a taste before you commit to paying for the meal.

Almost all my music purchases were from previewing the album online.

My blind buying stopped with the last Enigma album. If I can't preview it I WILL NOT BUT IT....PERIOD.

-So ladies (yeah) ladies (yeah) if you wanna ride in my Mercades (baby's got back).
-pink caddalac (spelling?)
-take me out to the ball game, cracker jacks
-My Adidas (Run DMC)
-Tastey Cream from the Jack and Dianne song
-I picked her up in my old chevy... (Alan Jackson)
-Rollin', in my 4.0, with the ragtop down so my hair can blow (Mustang reference, I'm embarrassed to know that one so I won't say who sang it)

How many songs have mentioned caddy Escallades. If I could afford one I might know how to spell it. :P

@Mike: There have been a number songs that have been or could have been product placement songs.
-little red corvette
-apple bottom jeans
-stomp-stompin' in my air force one's
-sippin on gin and juice (just insert brand of gin)
-buy the world a coke

@Tom: When is the last time you bought a CD from a live band? THAT is how you bypass the 'industry'. If you would like artists to get paid more, please donate to the cause. In fact, you can do what a lot of the music companies do for artists: provide a studio and an audio team for editing, publicity, radio airtime, and printing/distribution of the music.

Not every musician or group has the skills or buddies who can do all that. Most artists see getting signed as a financial windfall and a huge career milestone (yes, we finally got signed!)

Product placement? Do you want Black Eyed Peas to sing "yeah, I really do love ya and I'll say that through my Nokia"? Or do you want the album cover to be filled with leaflets?

loved the joke about Miley Cyrus.

I wonder how much the recording industry could save if they stopped producing crappy music?

i'm pretty sure theres a legal russian site where you only pay a peso and the music maffia riaa doesn't recieve a single pence from that.

...as long as the courts continue to prosecute those who pirate or illegally distribute copyright protected materials. Thieves don't usually buy music when they can steal it.

The music industry can counter-act the download of music illegally by adding more product placement in music. Sure its lame, but its one way they can get paid more.

why we still have to pay 79p for a track when the artists only get about 7p. I get the impression its the music 'industry' that doing the thieving here.
Imagine how many more copies that would be sold if we were just paying the musicians?