I happen to be an avid Napster supporter. Even more avid after I get my high speed connection tomorrow. There's a few reasons. One is that record companies should all burn in hell. Another is that it'll give little known artists a better chance of making it. Another is that I think professions such as music and the like should not be fuelled by profit, but rather by more...softer reasons. Passion, love, that sort of crap.
Artists actually don't get a lot of the money from CD sales. There's so many other people who get a chunk. The record store, the studio, the songwriter, and worst of all, the record company. Why do you think that the record companies are all fighting Napster so hard? They're the ones who get hit the most. I firmly believe that music should be about people who want to create it and people who want to enjoy it. There should be as little in between these two parties as possible. The record company is one big fat ugly blob preventing access from the people to the artists and the artists to the people. They say that Napster hurts the music industry. Not really. Napster hurts the leeches. I don't mind seeing them get taken down a few pegs at all. If you think about it, why do the record companies have so much power in the first place? Shouldn't it be the musicians who have all the power? Shouldn't the distributors just distribute? Instead of playing music god? Which is what they do, pretty much. They decide what they'll publish and what they won't. And the industry is such that if none of the big companies take on a musician, he probably will never gain more than a local following, no matter how good he is. I think this is actually quite wrong. And hey, how much money do popular musicians make? They get only a small portion of the CD sales profits. How much do you think Mr. Sony makes, or Mr. Polygram? Mr. Columbia House? What a gyp. You've always thought that CD's were overpriced. Well, you were right! I mean, what does each one cost to actually make? Production cost is something like a dollar. Where goes the other $19? Strange.....
Going back to the point about record companies being god. This is unacceptable. The industry is all about image. This is also unacceptable. Well...acceptable, because image is what people want. But basically, if you're a musician trying to make it big....and you don't have the ear of a record company, you're going to have one hell of a tough time. Napster is one way to give yourself a wide distribution for a low cost. Leave the people to decide what they like and don't like. Don't put it in the hands of record producers. Right now, the situation is that whoever they say is good, is good. Simple as that. They have all the control. Radio stations play what the companies tell them to play. Record stores sell what they tell them to sell. They have no choice! How can you sell or play something that you don't have?
And another reason is that some people do music for money. I cite manufactured groups such as O-Town and Spice Girls. I mean, it's fine if they want to do it, and people actually want to pay to listen to it. But I think the real music is done by people who don't do it for money. They do it because they have a gift and they want to share it with people. They do it because they feel passionately about something and want to share it. They'd do it no matter how little money they got. I question whether some of the musicians out there would be musicians if they were just barely making a living. I suspect a lot would not. A lot would. But a lot would not. And the money, well, it's not as if musicians would have no source of revenue if not for cd's. There are still live concerts, which people would definitely pay to see. In fact, probably more people would go out to the concerts if they didn't have to pay for the damn cd!
On the whole, I think the main group of people who have trouble with Napster is the recording companies, and well, I don't really care. Napster all the way!