Here's a little insight into how I see music today: The way I see it, screw the record companies. Music is the communication of feeling from one body to the next through waves of sound. It was meant to be heard as a statement to human beings of all cultures and classes. Not just those who can afford to buy CDs and certainly not only for record companies who, at least to some extent, determine who can and cannot listen to certain music. To me downloading music is progression towards surcumventing the pollitically correct insecure industry that has become music as we know it. Furthermore, I believe that, because the music is being spread now through the new electronic medium, new fans and new ears can hear that music. New music reaches a broader audience and creates more new fans than it ever could without the internet. And because of that the fans are going to see the music where it was meant to be heard--live. This, in turn, brings more money in at concerts, which brings more money in to the band, which brings record companies to these bands, who put out the band's CD and finally make more money off of that. Also, bands that have already made it shouldn't be so greedy about money. Bands like Metallica who have the least to worry about a steady cashflow. Metallica is like the Microsoft of the music industry. They made it big in the 1980s and they have continued to keep their greedy little hands on our wallets for as long as possible. But the band, more specifically Lars Ulrich, still claims that they are just looking out for the little bands. Bullshit. The just want to get their hands on a little bit more money because they have quite simply sold out. Don't get me wrong, Metallica used to make good music. I just feel that they are no longer able to continue doing so and its just time for them to give it up. Not to mention the MTV effect. Once a video makes it on TRL once, the cash explodes and billions more downloads occur, and billions more CDs are sold. If anything, downloading songs has strengthened the institution of music. Music now reaches a broader audience than ever and more people get to enjoy the experience that is music. The money made off of the spread of new music makes up for the money lost by bands who have already made it. Of course thats assuming MTV still plays music. Now all we get to see is a bunch of fucking morons in a retarded contest over which one of them sucks the most. The answer is, all of them. Or we get to see two of the biggest retards in exsistence today waste all of the money we paid to buy their shitty cds on as many useless things as they can. I can't believe people actually enjoy watching this bullshit. I might watch it if just once, I could see Jessica Simpson walk out in traffic and die. However, despite my constant wish for it to happen, it has not. Or we get to see Jackass and all of the shows who have branched out of that. CKY had been doing this stuff for years before it ever made it to MTV, but yet most of the original members are not the ones who are acredited to the idea. But what happened to that orginal idea? MTV took it, put in a few of their chosen people into the mix, redid everything that the orginals had already done, mass distributed it, and capitalized on it. They simply took all of the things that a band was doing for fun and found some way to take it and make money off it. But yet we've all bought into this prescribed horse shit that MTV feeds us on a regular basis. We all swallow it down and come back saying "Thank you, sir, may I have some more?" We continue to waste more and more money on more and more corporate-sponsored bubblegum popular shit music. We keep buying the CDs, the DVDs, the posters, the hats, the keychains, and all of the other essentials of a love of popular bullshit and a desire to be part of the herd. Anyhow....to recap, music was meant for everybody, the downloading music actually brings in even more money to the music industry, Metallica has sold out, MTV sucks, and the whole world is fucking retarded. That pretty well sums it up for now. I really went on a rant with this one.