Illegally Downloading Music

Recently, Emily White, an intern at National Public Radio (NPR) "All Songs Considered" and a person of some importance at her college radio station published a blog post in which she stated that she had a music library of 11,000 songs, but having only paid for 15 albums in her life. She specifically mentioned that her generation puts a premium on convenience, and that she feels there should be a "free" service in which people could listen to whatever music they liked, whenever they liked, and on whatever device they liked...going so far as saying that she feels that her generation will never pay for music. The post broke our heart. We have an iTunes catalog of over 25,000 songs, and that is not including the vast majority of the 3300 CD's that we have yet to convert, and the 500 LP's (granted, most LP's were bought used so no royalties went to the artist's, but we have the vast majority of our LP's in digital format as well). We have paid for every single song, and doing a rough underestimated calculation that ended up completely demoralizing us, we came up with the figure of $58,000. A large investment to be sure, and mind you, it was made over 27 years of being a voracious music consumer, but it is an investment that has and continues to bring us so much joy. David Lowery agrees with us with regards to the purchasing of music as opposed to illegally downloading, and has prepared probably the most intelligent and well written counterpoint to the "Free Culture" attitude to the consumption of music. We highly recommend having a read, even if you are a casual consumer of music, as there are many points made that we're sure you are not aware of, and being that he is now a professor teaching the economics of the music industry at the University of Georgia as well as being a founding member of the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, his cred is beyond reproach. You can read the article in its entirety here. And being that David Lowery's band Cracker looms large in our youth, we give you the video for "Low" above.