Stop Stealing Music

This is not really a movie review, but I had to talk about the subject matter.

Today we watched a documentary about Jared Leto's band Thirty Seconds to Mars. What they had set out to create was a lighthearted film about the making of their second album, but it soon became a horror story when the band found out they were being sued by their record label, EMI.

It was a fascinating film. It turned out that the band had been given a bad deal of a contract that had basically earned them no money from their record sales or concerts and left them nearly $2 million in debt to the record label. When the band tried to end their contract, citing a rule about contracts not being binding after 7 years, the record label told them that rule didn't apply in this case and sued them for $30 million.

The main thing I learned is that record companies take everything and then add on hidden fees, which they can lie about, including losses due to illegal downloads, which aren't even the band's fault!

A comment is made in the film about how much time and money gets poured into creating a song, which is then sold on iTunes for less than the cost of a cup of coffee, yet people still steal it, rather than pay the band for their hard work.

At the end of the film Jared Leto asks of his massive concert audience "Who has our new album?" The crowd screams. "Who downloaded it for free off the internet?" The same crowd screams again. It sounded like nobody paid for it. This band has yet to make any money off their music. Very sad.

Always pay for your music. It doesn't cost much and you will help the artist t keep making art.



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I want to add a comment about "mix tapes". I have a completely different view of those. When people share a mix of songs with friends they are actually doing free promotion for the artists. Those people receiving the mix may have never discovered the artists on their own. It creates the possibility for new listeners to go out and buy the artist's back catalog. But that is just my opinion. I have never illegally downloaded a song and I never will, but I have discovered many new favorites thanks to "mix tapes".