towerofsleep:

tomewing:

Yesterday I asked the question, “what are people buying instead of music?”. If the free availability of music - legal or otherwise - has led to a relative decline in money spent on non-free music, where has that money gone? I got a bunch of really interesting…

Speaking as a non-computer baby, I’m not sure that most people used to spend that much money on records in the past either, unless they were already record nerds, DJs or otherwise already predisposed to buy lots of records. I was part of the “home-taping is killing music” generation, so file-sharing is an extension of that to me.

I also believe many people would never buy a lot of the stuff they download for free now anyway, even if it wasn’t available for free on the internet. On the other hand, people can get exposed to music on the internet now that they’re not going to be by friends and mixtapes anymore, and they may want to buy some vinyl versions.

But maybe SOPA and ACTA really will destroy file-sharing. Already the shut down of Megaupload has led to Filesonic and others voluntarily shutting their own file-sharing services down.