In Defense of Downloading

I download music all the time, usually for free, using one of those peer-to-peer descendants of Napster. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Is it technically stealing? Yes, but so was making copies of tapes back in the 80's, or making mix tapes for our friends. But we never thought twice about that, did we? The difference now, of course, is that we can distribute whole albums for free to vast numbers of strangers all over the world, something that the record industry thinks is hurting their sales. That may or may not be true, but I know that I, for one, have actually bought way more music because of Napster and its ilk than I would have otherwise.

In the 90's (the first decade I ever bought music), I got most of my musical taste from the radio and from friends who heard music on the radio. Most of the tapes and CDs I bought were bands I heard on WHFS, the same old bands in the same old genre playing in the same rotation again and again. So my tastes were pretty limited, and towards the end of the decade I was so sick of it all that I had pretty much given up on music and wasn't buying much of anything. Then in 2000 a friend of mine introduced me to Napster.

A couple months later I had hundreds of mp3s on my hard drive, and two new favorite musicians: Sleater-Kinney and Ani DiFranco. These are artists that I would never have heard on the radio and never considered listening to if I hadn't downloaded a couple of their songs after seeing them praised on the internet. And as a result, they are still my two favorite musicians, and I now have every single album of each. And Napster, and the P2Ps that followed, introduced me to other musicians that I never would have gotten into otherwise. Now nearly all my music is from bands or singers that I tested out by downloading first, and many of them are indie people that couldn't have possibly had such exposure in the days when radio dominated the music industry.

And are the musicians hurt by this? I don't think so. The pop artists are still making their millions, and less popular artists are getting exposure to the masses. Musicians actually make most of their money from concerts, anyway; they usually get mere cents from each CD sold.

Nearly every single album I've bought in this decade was from a musician that I tested by downloading. Which is not to say that without P2P I wouldn't have bought any albums, but I know that I would have bought far fewer if I was still stuck with the repetative radio play. And even more than that, I've discovered a love of music that I never knew I had. So many artists! So many genres! Without P2P, would I ever have gotten into Ella Fitzgerald? The Clash? Rasputina? Dar Williams? No, I'd be stuck with the Grunge that I loved in the 90's. And Grunge is great, but I need more than that.

Downloading has made me love music. And downloading has made me buy music. And I don't think there's anything about it that's a crime.

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