I belong to the generation that the music-industry hates. People my age don’t feel that there is anything wrong with downloading music (or video-content). Some artists understand that, most labels definitly do not. On podcasts like TWIT they often debate why ‘young people’ don’t feel like they have to pay for music, and usually come to a conclusion like ’they never learned the value of music’, ‘they don’t see that it’s stealing’ or ‘they’re just not used to paying for music’.

The last argument is where I believe the answer lies. Every since I was a child I have been bombarded with entertainment, everywhere I look there is some sort of media screaming for my attention. Whether it’s on TV, radio, print, my ipod or the internet, there is an abundance of media to be consumed. It’s a simple question of supply and demand. Our demand for media has increased in the last couple of years, but the supply of media has gone throuhg the roof. When the supply increases more than the demand, the price goes down, way down.

Apparantly the people that work at music labels missed that essential point of economics in their education. Instead of improving the perceived value of their product or lowering their price, they started to sue. Maybe, just maybe, people in the music industry should get used to making a normal living and not having a new house on MTV Cribs every week. The service they provide is just not that valuable anymore.

Just last month I did pay for music, I bought the song codemonkey from Jonathan Coulton. Why? because I love that song and Coulton makes an effort to make a living as an independant artist. I know that I’m giving my money to him, not some corporation.

The music industry should start seeing playing music is a promotional tool to get people to come to a performance, not the other way around. The music industry should applaud people spreading their promotion material via the internet (spending their time) for free instead of suing the living daylights out of everyone who downloads a song.