1. Music downloaders don’t ask creators to make new work for them.
2. As Natasha Chart points out @36, trying something out does not consume it.
3. Clothing is physical and if Vera Wang makes some, whether customize for you or not, and you then take it from her without paying, then she no longer has it; therefore she has an actual loss. By contrast, digital music files are not physical and when a music downloader obtains a copy, there is no reduction in the retail supply of copies.
4. Not every music download displaces a sale, in practice very very few do.
5. In the case of major labels, almost no commercial recordings make back their royalty advances, most records lose money. All profit comes from a very small percentage of releases succeeding as hits. As a result, the creator does not receive any less money in the unlikely event that an actual sale is displaced by a given download. The label just loses more money than it was already losing, is all.
6. Try-before-you-buy is not unusual in recorded music, in the past this was called “radio” and “mix tapes”.

Hope that helps explain a little.

Unless you’re going to argue that it’s wrong to listen to songs on radio stations you can tune into for free, you’re making a ludicrous argument. Unfortunately, DJs don’t explore all artists and albums equally, and the corporatized stations mainly seem to ensure that those artists in whom much has been invested will pay off. People need to try before they buy, even food vendors introducing new or unusual products know it.

And the artists get paid jack compared to the record company profits off CDs whose manufacturing costs are counted in pennies.

I just gave some broader background :)

The fact it’s also about the megacorp’s using congress to pass nonsense laws legislating the continued existence of failed business models and that it’s also about the megacorps using the existence of those laws to harm demonstrably innocent people… those facts and quite a few others are just additional features of the megacorps’ doomed attempts to control and contain the digital age.

But are you saying that the lack of restraint and the repeated failures of the RIAA et al even under the eyes of the courts gives you no worries at all about the megacorp lawyers directly dictating your ISP access unfettered by any legal oversight?

So people want their Mickey Mouse cartoons. It’s not about downloading the latest songs and movies they like.

And then Napster was taken away, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of major-label CDs I’ve bought since then. All the CDs I’ve bought in the past few years have been indie labels or the artists’ own releases. Way to go, RIAA!

Digital Millennium Eternal Copyright and Instant Death to Purported Infringers Act

Hmmm… have to go to an external editor for comments here…

“I’m not understanding this. Is the idea that it’s a drag that people object to their creative works being stolen?”

Nah, it’s the backlash from the literally cancerous growth of copyright terms for the sole benefit of the megacorps, the RIAA et al going completely nuts over the existence of the internet and bribing Congress to pass such overweening laws such as the damnable Digital Millennium Eternal Copyright and Instant Death to Purorted Infringers Act… and above all else the eternal stupidity of non-techs trying to design laws that govern tech… laws that don’t work, can’t work, that harm innocent people, that waste time and money and still don’t work.

There’s a lot of pushback on those points alone.

Back in ‘96-7, the television series, “Dark Skies” which was similar to X-Files, but without the distraction of other threads. It kept its focus on the UFO conspiracy. Heh.

Like many others, I never taped it at the time. Grrrr. Well, it developed a cult following, and fans clamoured for years about a DVD release. Finally, Sony was ‘gonna’ do it. Creator Bryce Zabel told them the background music rights would be a problem — he knew as it’d cost him a lot for the one-time rights. But big ol’ Sony knew better, and even announced a release date. That never happened. They ran into the ‘jeebus, this will cost us more than we can make!’

So they licensed the DVD project to some other outfit, IIRC, in U.K. Same promises, same outcome redux.

Well, two weeks ago, I did another google and lo! some U.S. site had ‘high-res remastered from original film DVDs.’ Uh huh. I took the gamble, secure site, confirmation of order, confirmation of shipping (10-14 business days to the land of oz.) Parcel arrived yesterday, had to sign for it at the post orfice. Interesting package from China post …

Now, I haven’t loaded up a DVD yet, in the midst of finishing off another series. But the internal packaging was a VHS container, albeit with a cover, and back with series description in proper English. Inside were 5 DVDs, each in a protective soft envelope. It’ll be interesting to see the audio and video quality …

Obviously, this is a pirate product — if they did generate from original film, one wonders where/how that came about?

The bottom line is: Sony got 100% of nothing when they could have listened to Zabel. What he licensed for the series was the top songs of the years covered — and he had an alternate playlist that would have worked nearly as well and cost far less. But the suits knew best. Right.

Zabel bio on imdb