Quote:
Originally Posted by Shake
And if you look at the number of people who are in college/young kids etc who simply don't have the money, then the record companies can't possibly count that as "lost income" because these people don't have the money to buy albums in the first place.
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Just to play devil's advocate, we broke college kids back in the day did find ways to buy music back in the day. We just didn't consume it to the extent that kids today do. Sure, some would steal CDs from the shops, many would borrow or get copies from friends, but I think it's fair to say that everyone spent
some amount of money on CDs/vinyl/tapes back in the day. Today, there are kids that spend absolutely zero dollars on music because they were brought up on MP3s. Sad but true.
In general though, I do believe that being able to preview music does help some bands get the exposure they deserve, and helps weed out some of the garbage (hopefully contributing to the death of some top-40 garbage artists that big labels love to push), and that real music fans will still spend money on music despite their ability to get it for free.