Young people these days don’t buy music at the store in the same way that people did in the 1970s or 1980s. They don’t have to. I think it is unfortunate for the artists a lot of times because it makes the whole business of selling music for a living less lucrative for the person who created it. I try to pay for my favorite musicians’ albums as they come out because I know that it’s important. These days it’s hard to make sense out of the process sometimes because I do believe in free information and freedom of speech at the same time. It could be argued that it’s unfair to the bands to burn a huge collection of CDs to your computer for free. I’ve had plenty of burned CDs in my collection as well, and it’s very convenient to be able to do this.
I’ve also never had much money to spend on extras so it’s kind of a hard decision to make. By this I mean deciding whether you will support the artist no matter what, or if you’ll use convenient ways available these days to get past having to pay cash money for a musical project. Then there is free radio online. I don’t know how the financial end of this works for the artist at all, but I do know that times I personally have engaged in online radio listening it does introduce me to artists that I would not have heard otherwise.
When I spent time logged into a free radio station while at work I found at least ten bands that I hadn’t heard much before because of the way that radio station creates mixes for you based on what they know you like. They pick bands from the same genres and mix them in. I was very pleased with this process. I don’t know how an artist gets paid due to these online stations, but it definitely seems to have a positive effect anyway because of the exposure it creates for bands.
