Thou shall not steal.

I don’t think downloading music is theft. I expose myself to more music than ever before and because of this, I have an ability to spend more on artists that I might not have ever heard about.

Downloading music also takes out the risk of buying a bad album. So many times in the past I have taken a chance on an artist and was highly disappointed.

I guess if you consider downloading as theft, then I am stealing from the record labels because they make almost all the money off the album sales. Record labels have monopolized and used bands for their own corporate gain.

There are some artists who I have heard from downloads and I went on to spend $250-300 on an artist from Iceland that I never would have known about otherwise.

I see downloading differently than going into Wal-Mart and grabbing a handful of albums and walking out the front door without paying. There is nothing really tangible. It is a digital format. The only way to make money would be to reproduce into an album form and sell the tangible version.

This is a viewpoint that differs from person to person and cannot be argued or solved. I don’t feel bad about downloading and sampling music to find good and bad artists. I support those who I enjoy and discover, and I delete the awful music after listening…plus, I couldn’t profit off of bad music anyways.