Downloading Music with Davo

Recently, British Music Rights, with the help of the University Of Hertfordshire, surveyed 773 fourteen to twenty-four year olds. They wanted to find out more about young people’s music experiences and that’s exactly what they did.

You can see the full survey here:
Music Experience and Behaviour in Young People, Spring 2008

What shocked me (in a pleasant way) is that 96 percent of the respondents admitted to downloading music illegally. On average, they had ‘stolen’ 842 tracks each. That’s about 80 albums per head. Fantastic or what?! Nearly two-thirds of them had downloaded their music using unlicensed peer-to-peer file sharing, on average downloading 53 tracks a month. Some of them claimed to copy up to 5,000 tracks a month. That’s a hell of a lot of music.

Copying hard drives between friends is in. Cool, eh? Half of them say that they’ve done it. I probably had about 200 tapes and 400 illegally copied albums when I fell into that age bracket. I had good friends too. Nothing much has changed. Or has it?

Well, people love music. That hasn’t changed. So, what has downloading music done for us?

Personally, I can’t praise it highly enough. MP3s and file sharing are the products of pure genius.

These amazing advances in technology have allowed us to discover music that hasn’t been played on the radio, advertised on billboards or recorded by a friend. MySpace? Even that didn’t exist until 2003. MP3s and file sharing came first and MySpace probably wouldn’t exist without these inventions. Downloading music has enabled us to become more independent in our tastes. We can browse the MP3 collections of an entire world full of strangers. We can steal every track that they choose to share and we can listen to great music from all over the planet.

People, that don’t have a mass of ‘good taste’ friends to steal music from, can maintain an interest in new music without the fear of buying toss. We ALL get the opportunity to hear more music and buy less ‘straight to the charity shop’ dross. It’s all good, so very, very good. It’s not John Peel good, but it comes close. If the music industry makes a bad decision about what music to release, and then hypes it up to get a good return, we can all flick the v’s and ‘shout up your bum’. Our CD collections can remain untainted, a towering mass of only the best music on offer.

Before you start worrying about ‘record sales’, hear ye this: those involved with the British Music Rights survey, on average, owned 100 CDs each. Not bad, eh? Not bad at all. Whatever the suits say, the youth of today is loaded and stacks of money gets spent on music. The music industry is a moaning bitch. Even if a legal file-sharing service existed, over 60 percent of the blaggers and non-blaggers alike said that they would continue to buy CDs. See? People want music that they can hold after all.

Young people know the value of letting people hear music for free; didn’t they always? Now more than one third of them upload their own music (music that they have created!) to social networking sites. They don’t have to rely on badly recorded cassette tapes, DJs or investment. One day someone might hear their music online, go to see them live, buy a ‘home burnt’ CD and start a trend. It worked for ‘Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’ and ‘The Arctic Monkeys’, so why not for them? Download for free and give for free. It’s a free world, baby.

Fuck the BPI and Virgin Media and their 800 ‘warning’ letters. Yes, the BPI is sending out letters AGAIN. The BPI are greedy bastards, and Virgin Media is setting a bad example to other ISPs. People are voting with their feet. Up and coming bands and consumers alike want music to be available for nada. It allows the individual to decide on which artists to invest in. If the industry wasn’t so short sighted, it would see that when people have access to vast amounts of good free music, they want to see more live acts, buy more merchandise and, ultimately, buy more of their favourite albums in hard form.

I was chuffed to learn that sixty percent of all music expenditure is going towards the live experience. This is fantastic news for bands. When you spend money on live music, the artists get a much bigger cut of the profits. Buy a CD from a store and the artist will see barely a penny.

The live music and festival scene has never been stronger. Now there are so many festivals and gigs to choose from, it’s almost impossible to decide on which ones to attend. People are getting to hear the music that they like, it excites them and they want to see and hear it performed before their very ears and eyes. Bands get to travel the world to amazing places and get paid for it. The music business is healthier than ever. Don’t listen to what the industry moguls say. Get downloading and get out there to see live bands. While you’re there, buy a t-shirt and a CD. I get most of my albums at gigs these days. It’s by far the best way. Always make sure that the bands you like get some of your money and everything will be okay.

Fabpants Recommends: Mumford and Sons - Lovelorn British-made Americana to soak your soul in. Download their EP a computer near you and then buy it. Or don’t; the choice is yours

Alteratively, enter this address: http://www.myspace.com/mumfordandsons into the url box on this site: File2HD.com, tick ‘audio' and 'I have read and agree to the Terms of Service’ and press ‘get files’. You have just learnt how to download any song on a band's MySpace page for free and how to get the high quality versions at that.