When it comes to downloading, the industry wants us to think that it is killing music; it is not yet evident that these are lost sales across the board. Look at Radiohead. Their whole album, Kid A, was downloaded by millions months before it came out, yet it still reached number one within its first week. And they later released an album online – pay as you see fit – and people did. As Lawrence Lessig argues, out of his four kinds of file sharing, the only one that is truly harmful to the industry is when it is used as a substitute for an actual purchase, but that does not mean a displaced purchase, as a sale may not have happened in the first place. This kind of downloading along with downloading as a sample before purchasing and accessing otherwise inaccessible copyrighted material may be technically illegal; however, they may be beneficial to artists later on as their newfound fans purchase concert tickets or other merchandise. So while downloading is not exactly legal or profitable for the industry, it isn’t necessarily the end of the world either.
You raise an interesting point here, one wonders what the result would be be if the recording industry were able to factor in profits from live performance that had been generated as a direct result of an illegal download?
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