I thought the point was rather that MTV is a mirror for us, and that while their current programming is questionable, all that money, resources, and time only goes to show that it is we - all of us - who are irrelevant. And yet we still have power. This Is Why The Terrorists Hate Us.

Prior to p2p I owned three albums and I'm pretty sure I borrowed one of them from my mom and didn't give it back. One of them was that Adam Sandler album with the goat song.

Now I have a variety of musical interests and regularly buy music. I pirate a lot of music, but I fucking get rid of most of it because I don't like it. I avoid buying music like the fucking plague, but I still have to buy stuff I couldn't find on file sharing sites. They're making a lot more money off of me.

Fuck, I'm trying to buy Katzenjammer's second album on Vinyl, but it's not even released here. That's the thing about the new world we live in.

Remember that viral video where the guy recorded himself playing single notes and then recut the video to make it so he was playing music? I checked out his other videos. He did a music video for a band in Norway. I watched that video, downloaded their music, and have since become a huge fan of a band in a country I've never been to. I've bought both their albums, and am being foiled in my attempt to buy their second album twice. These dicks aren't making less money, they just don't want to live in a world where you can't manufacture stars and get predictable returns.

People act like music would be gone if we passed a law making the price of all digital music zero. We act like that's sooo unthinkable, but you know what? We did that with radio. Radio stations get to pirate music without giving a dime to the artists. They called it stealing when the VCR came out, too. Doing nothing about piracy is a pretty damn good option we should seriously consider. It's worked for us time and time again in the past.

I used to buy a lot of albums and now I buy none. Stars for the Caminante dig.

It's neither. It's such an everyday thing now that it's like cleaning the kitchen or taking a shower: if anything, you feel bad when you don't do it.

same thing with movies and TV.

Games is a bit different, oddly enough, but that might be because I know what a thin profit margin the actual devs get from them. I'll download when I'm poor and buy later when on a steam sale usually. Or I'll buy upfront if it's cheap or I'm doing ok financially. I also have backed a get kickstarter games, so I figure my Karma is balancing out.

But overall, especially for music, no rebellion, not ickyness, just a thing you do, like breathing.

I work in a company with a lot of mid-20's and younger (half my age). They don't fucking pay for music or movies, ever, and act like I'm insane because I do.

Actually, ASCAP and BMI enforce the payment of royalties (literally nickles and dimes) every time you hear a song on the radio, shopping music, or in a jukebox etc. It costs a fortune in payola to get on radio nowadays (even more than in the past) but artists do make a tiny measly bit of money from it. Maybe the solution is to offer music up at 25 cents a song? would it be low enough to increase sales volume? Not everyone in the music biz can tour non stop like you have to now.

Also, just check out new stuff on things like Pandora. They've gotta pay those ASCAP and BMI distributed royalties.

I think the grandkids will more likely ask what the TV stands for.