Music piracy is bad, illegal, evil, a crime, yadda yadda yadda. If you listened to the RIAA and organisations like it, that rhetoric is all you’d ever hear. But forget them, what do the artists being pirated think about it?

Since the Internet came along and made the sharing of music much easier than ever before, the record companies have been fighting for their future, and got their henchmen at the RIAA (and similar organisations around the world) to fight the pirates in the fiercest ways possible.

According to these dinosaurs, piracy is a crime and there is absolutely no benefit to it for anyone other than the petty thieves doing it. But the artists, the people actually at the front-line of music piracy, often don’t share those sentiments.

The latest artist to come out in support of music piracy are Show Of Hands, a British folk duo from the UK. Steve Knightley, one of the members, explained to TorrentFreak why he feels piracy is a positive thing.

I always make a point of asking people how they first heard about us. The three most common answers are, they’ve been ‘dragged’ along by friends, they heard us on the radio – or someone gave them a copy of one of our CDs. This last one is usually accompanied by a look of collective guilt and embarrassment.

Let’s consider this more closely – a person who values our music has kindly made a copy of a CD and gone out of their way to spread the word about us. That recipient has then bought both a ticket to see us and a CD on the night. So it’s obvious that being a pirate doesn’t exclude people from being a fan, they just aren’t paying at the point of piracy – but they will, when the circumstances are right.

And this is surely a common factor how many people get in to most bands. I have been tempted in to buying legitimate copies of many artist’s CDs by first hearing about them via a copy of their album or an mp3 sent to me by an online friend.

The point the record companies seem to be missing is that while music piracy has increased massively with the popularity of the Web, sales haven’t dropped in anywhere the same sort of numbers. CD sales are down, but not by the degree you might expect. This is because most people who download an album go on to buy a copy of the CD if they like it enough anyway. Music piracy is therefore more like a ‘try before you buy’ system than anything else.

Steve sees the act of copying or sharing his band’s music not as piracy but as “viral marketing”, with fans allowed to record their live performances as well. He signs off the interview by saying Show Of Hands “depend utterly upon [piracy] – don’t fight it – embrace it.” Hear hear.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 10:40 pm under Internet, Music, Opinion, Piracy.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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