Digital downloads completely erase the need to buy the music and the download is the artist’s entire catalog.

Most ignorant comparison ever.

No, music is not dead- if all you’re hearing is some jerkwad singing through autotune, then a lot of that is because the only way the major labels can survive these days is to pander to the lowest common denominator, in an attempt to get some income when most of the punters tend to download for free.

For the rest of us musicians and artists attempting to make ‘real’ music, times are very hard indeed. You may be surprised to learn that the ‘new’ industry, where artists release their work on their own labels and use the internet to let people know it exists (and hopefully buy it) hardly works, on a financial level, for any of us. There’s so much music out there on so many ‘channels’ ( a lot of it made on the cheap but folk who really should know better, therefore not very good) that finding good music is almost impossible – and a fair number of those who do find it don’t pay for it anyway.

This means it has now become almost impossible to fund the recording, releasing, and promotion of any music that can’t find a home on the major labels (ie, jerkwads on autotune, mostly) We just don’t have the money to do this anymore, and even if we do, we have to see something on the order of a 3000 to 1 ratio of free downloads to legal sales. Yes, maybe some downloaders do go on to make a purchase, but there simply aren’t enough of them to allow most artists to even break even on their costs, let alone make any kind of profit to allow further recordings to be made. Payments from Spotify and other streaming services are so low as to be negligible.

If the recordings are indeed ‘at full volume all the time’ then that’s because there is a ‘loudness war’ going on, with mastering engineers being forced to increase the perceived loudness of any record to the point where all dynamics are removed, in the attempt to ‘shout’ their way through to the marketplace.

In other words – it’s a desperate situation. Many of us, including me, have just about had enough. We can’t afford to make music if we just have to accept giving it away, with no chance of any investment back, and being forced to make enormous compromises all through the chain, from writing to recording to promotion.

Among my friends and colleagues in the ‘real’ music industry, the fall out rate, including artists who are relatively well known and often made a tiny living out of it for 20 years + … is increasing fast. We are all no longer making music, because we simply can’t afford to.

Home Taping IS killing music. As far as I can work out from the figures of files available on most torrent sites, something like 3,000,000 people have downloaded, or made available for download, just one of my albums.

The same album has sold about 1000 legal sales, so far, and failed to break even.

So I have one question for you – why shouldn’t I get something back for the pleasure given to those 3,000,000 ?

Because if I don’t, they won’t hear any more music, from me at least. I just can’t afford it.