...(assuming we're talking about right here in the US, which does seem to be the source of all the controversy) Greed is the single biggest problem we have in this country, and it is so institutionalized in our society that we don't even recognize it as such anymore. Not even this current economic turmoil has taught us anything about how ultimately destructive greed really is...
...The record/music 'industry' has been waging propaganda campaigns and using underhanded tactics against anything it considers 'piracy' for years; some of these have unfortunately been successful. I remember buying records in the 70s that carried some blurb about the threat of 'pirate' recordings, especially 8-track tapes. I even remember seeing a few of the tapes in question. Many corner stores had a rack of them on the counter for some ridiculously cheap price. They just looked crappy. (I never bought any, because a. I simply didn't like the looks of them and b. I despised 8-track tapes in the first place.) And they managed to discourage radio stations from playing 'deep cuts' from albums, or in many cases the entire albums. It used to be common practice back in the better days of FM radio for a station to pick an album at a given time of day and play it in its entirety. Apparently the 'industry' were all paranoid about people taping the album off the air and not buying it...many people did indeed do that, but it didn't seem to hurt the 'industry' all that much...seems that even though people taped the album off the air, they still subsequently went out and bought it anyway...but that tactic worked and ultimately contributed to the demise of quality and originality in radio programming...
...the 'industry' is interested, first and foremost, in protecting its revenue stream. That is perfectly understandable...up to a point. Any legitimate business needs a stable revenue stream or else it cannot continue to operate. But when you try to take something like music, that has been freely disseminated for years via radio, etc., and turn it into just another commodity to buy and sell for the sole purpose of lining your own pockets, and overcharge people for it or try to limit access to it, you ask for what you are getting...you can threaten, you can throw exorbitant lawsuits at people to try and make an example out of them, but all you ultimately will end up doing is making yourself look like a bigger ass than you already do...
...fast forward...some ten years ago, I recall the original 'Who Wants To Be a Millionaire' show doing a set of 'celebrity' episodes. One of them featured Lars Ulrich of Metallica, one of the prime movers behind the Napster brouhaha. When Regis Philbin was introducing Lars, he cited some huge dollar figure in sales that Metallica had racked up to that point (for some reason, a figure like $94 million is stuck in my mind) and I recall thinking along the lines of, 'Doesn't sound like Napster has hurt you all that much...you horse's ass...
'. To me (and perhaps to many others as well?), that exposed him as one of the biggest wieners that has ever graced the music scene...
...and later, in response to one of the show's sound effects, Lars actually had the unmitigated audacity to make some snide remark about Napster...
...as far as vinyl LPs, I of course grew up with them. And I likewise feel that most music sounded better on vinyl than on CD. Especially in the early days of CDs. Something usually got 'lost in translation' when they reissued an album on CD and, although the CD might have been much cleaner than a vinyl LP could ever be, it just didn't sound right. In more recent years, the state of the art of digital recording and remastering has improved greatly, so newer CD reissues of older albums do sound better. But it's still not the same as the original vinyl, and I will still take the vinyl every time. That said, I firmly believe that vinyl LPs and digital media can and should peacefully coexist...and there are ways to make digital audio sound better if it is lacking somewhere...
...apologies for the ramble, especially if I have unintentionally violated any forum rules...I have my own strong feelings about some of this...
