Please consider supporting the online music community.

A group of individuals sharing their music files is harmless to the music industry. If anything, it advertises and promotes musicians and their compositions for free. People who share their music on-liner are the ones who love music, and love particular artists. They are also the ones who buy more cd’s, attend more concerts, and are among the real fans who support not only financially by purchasing on average more cd’s. t-shirts, videos, and concert tickets but also by proselytizing, promoting and sharing the music and artists they love.

Sharing with others in this great music loving community mp3 files, advocating the merits of some particular artist or song, what better way to promote an artist. The most important, the essential form of advertising has always and will always be “word of mouth”. We buy our music because we love it. Sharing music with others, strangers and friends is part of why we buy the music we love. Do not let the anachronous pinheads of the music industry overwhelm you with their fear of loss of power re the flow of capital through a new type of music promotion. The music industry gave away the music for free over the radio for decades.

When FM and HI Fi came along we were able to record off the radio surprisingly high quality versions of our favorite music, be it rock & roll, jazz or the Texaco opera broadcasts. We played these tapes over and over, yet still continued to buy tapes and records, and copy them to share with our friends, keep a copy in the car, etc. At the time the music financiers wanted to make recording of broadcast FM radio music illegal. FM radio only opened up the gate for music makers.

Distributing music by payola through top 40 AM radio stations did not long remain the only way new music was promoted. MTV and FM radio may now lose some of their dominance in the promotion of new music. Music sharing communities like Napster are already contenders for the hearts and minds of today's music buying public. They are like cooperatives sharing acquired assets within their community only for the purpose of personal information, use, evaluation. Not for the profit of any of the users, not to make bootlegs out of to sell on the internet or at the local flea market.

How can we deny our children, the young music lovers of today, the freedom we had to record, copy and share music in what is their new medium, the Internet and its music communities. The music industry will not suffer. It may become a little more competitive. Less conscientious artists and their promoters may not be able to get away with putting out a cd that has only one three minute track of note and the rest just fluff. If we have learned anything in the history of music promotion from the days of Tin Pan Alley, when sheet music was the dominant source of income, it is that things will change.

The music industry has continued to flourish through radio variety shows, player pianos, records, reel to reel tapes, hifi, stereo, quadraphonic, eight track tape, cassette tape, then digital tape, cds  and now the internet. The music industry is in no way threatened. Only a few individuals who need to take a cold shower, a peaceful walk in the moonlight, and wake up to the challenges that lie ahead. Every time there is a turn in the road there seems often to appear this small oligarchy that cries foul and with their fattened coffer involves the courts and attempts to involve the government to protect their monopoly. I urge you, therefore, to lend your support to the online music community.

Glen Rogers,  April 2000