I'd say the net effect of the whole thing ended up being that a lot of people spent a lot of money and did a whole lot of hootin' and hollerin' but it was all for nought!

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I have a ton of hard drive space on these machines, so I record and edit the music CD's as MP3's and WAV files, depending on how I want to use them and what program I want to run them under.

What really irks me is I like some of the older music that is out of print and no longer available. Napster was an excellent source for it.

Unfortunately, much of that stuff is full of pops, scratches, hisses, and hums. I have a program I can use to get rid of scratches and pops, and I can partially EQ out the hisses and hums.

There is no way I would pay anyone to be allowed to download music in such a horrible condition.

If Napster is going to charge for downloads full of glitches and defects obvoius to the listener, then what Randy said about the case of Recto-Cranial Inversion by the Recording Industry applies in the fullest extent.

The Recording Industry can take their music CD's and..(you fill in the blanks)..just because of their greed.

The reason CD sales are down is because there are no "blockbusters" yet this year. Last year there were new albums by Britney Spears and NSync, both of which mega-sold in their first week. This year, there is no comparable product bringing the kids into the stores. (That fact is stated in the LA Times article...most of the other stuff in there is speculation by various people.)

I think it's just as hard to quantify the Napster effect as it is to quantify the number of people who see movies for free by "crossing the hallways." Of course Napsterites buy a lot of CDs...they are MUSIC FANS, which is why they're hooked to Napster in the first place.

In my mind, this "pirating" thing is stealing someone elses work and selling it for a profit, whether it be music, video, or computer software.

You can be assured that if anyone was to charge me for a pirated duplicate of any kind, I would not touch it with a 10 foot pole. To me, that's a moral issue that definately rubs me the wrong way.

Mike, with that crap Hollywood has been giving us to run in the theaters, I wouldn't pay to see in the first place. The word of mouth carries the movies to success or to a total flop.

Not so in Music CD's. People buy the CD's because of what they heard on the radio or maybe heard on the Big Screen, or just by the name of the artist. Some people like to hear the song several times before a committment to buy is made. That's how I do it.

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The only songs I have MP3s of that I don't own CD recordings of are approximately 15 songs that I wanted that have never been put on CD, that I will gladly buy on CD if they ever come out, to get better copies of them. I got the MP3s of those particular songs so I could make a CD that I could conveniently play on my home stereo.

I used to average buying 183 CDs a year for several years but now don't buy nearly as many because there just isn't enough new stuff coming out. I check the box sets section and there has been no change for a while. I have most of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s stuff that I really like, and there aren't any new oldies being recorded. This means that if I don't like the new stuff (which a lot of I detest), then I won't be buying as many CDs.

I have to hear songs on the radio and songs have to "grow on me" before I'll buy a CD by an artist. I'd say the decline of radio stations playing the "Top 40" new music format is to blame for the lack of CD sales. In Huntsville, we have only one station that plays "new music" (we used to have two) and some of the songs out now are just downright annoying to listen to. At least we have a 50s and 60s oldies station, but I have nearly all of the songs played on that station that I like. The same applies to the 70s and 80s station.

The only way to get me to buy more CDs again is to have some good music come out that I like that gets radio airplay (enough to get me to listen to the new music station more often, since I'm currently only listening to it about once every two weeks), or put out more CDs of older music with tracks that have never been released.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

One thing that I and some of the other local DJ's in the Nashville area noticed last year (during the height of the Napster craze) was the proliferation of the new "Radio Shack Warriors" - the $100.00 a night DJ playing for local private parties and events. It cut us deep. It was hard for us to justify charging $800.00 a night, when the "newbies" came in with their "burned" CD's (most likely from Napster) and undercut us by $700.00. Sure thier level of service to their client most likely sucked, and I could almost bet they never paid a cent to the likes of BMI, SESAC, and ASCAP, but it did hit our pocketbooks pretty hard.

I spend an average of $3,500.00 a year on new music, buying many disc's with only one good song. I have a collection of almost 3,000 CD's, and many I've only played once (i.e. "Debbie Boone's Greatest Hits" - there was ONLY one!!).

Like Paul said, it's really an issue of moral's. I could burn copies of my entire collection and start a 3rd system that goes out on the weekends, but doing so would violate every copyright law ever written.

Since I personally listen to mostly talk radio every day at the office, I sometimes find myself "out-of-touch" with popular music. Subscription services that cater to DJ's like myself are a god-send. All of the "good songs" (singles released for airplay) for the month of July show up on a single disc near the middle of June. I never find myself at Tower Record's with the "staple-faced" clerks at midnight desparately seeking to find that one song I'm missing.

If people want to trade music without paying for it, they'll do it, whether Napster is around or not.

Remember... a lock on a door only keeps an honest person out.

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Barry Floyd
Floyd Entertainment Group
Nashville, Tennessee
(Drive-In Theatre - Start-Up)

I guess I didn't make myself clear enough. People who sample music and then buy what they like, that's fine. The ones I get mad at are the ones who now, thanks to Napster, feel like they are "entitled" to music for free because the record companies have been "ripping them off" for years.

There are millions of people around the world who have said "I haven't bought a CD in months, because I download everything." They have no guilt feelings at all about the fact that they have basically stolen the artists' work. Many of these same people would never think of shoplifting a CD from a music store, but the effect is the same.

I also have very little patience for the theory that "music is too high-priced". Back in the early '70s an LP cost about five bucks. Here it is 30 years later and you can buy a CD which is far superior sounding, longer lasting, more compact, more durable, and recorded with far superior technology for 14 bucks or less. (Anyone paying more than that isn't shopping very carefully.) In the '70s we were paying less than 50 cents a gallon for gas which now costs up to $2 a gallon. I bought a new Ford car in '76 for $7200...my latest vehicle, a 2000 Ford, cost $23,500. I went to a Fleetwood Mac concert in '77 for $7.00; in 1997 their tickets were selling for $67.50. EVERYTHING (except computers!) has gone up, so why are people so irritated about music prices?

I'll tell you why. It's because the media has perpetuated a myth that a CD only costs about 50 cents to make. That's true...it costs about that much to PRESS a CD, but what about the costs of recording, shipping, retail expense, advertising and promotion, backing musicians, guitars, drums, booze, etc.

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Mike, you are absolutely correct. I support your comment in the above quote 100%.

Barry, Those "Radio Shack Warriors" you spoke of are the some of the ones who ruin it for us all. They should be stopped dead in their tracks!

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