Never pay for music again, and don’t let anyone you know do that shit either.
They come for archives–nothing should be off limits.
If you never pay for music, artists won’t be able to make new music. Where possible buy as directly as possible from the artist, e.g., through bandcamp.
And concerts
If you send the artist money in the form of a check or a donation more of that money goes to the person who produces the thing.
It’s not possible to reach 100%, but every little bit of your dollar you ensure enters the pocket of a person who worked for a living is one less bit of that dollar that ends up in the hands of a leech or a parasite.
Giving Spotify or Google or Apple or whoever has inserted themselves into the system to absorb money for something that they don’t pay for is fundamentally not healthy for any part of the ecosystem of art.
In a way, I don’t see the point. Like, for example, what would my money do for someone like Metallica? Who’ve made millions for years doing what they do. I’ve pirated their music long ago and I don’t feel guilty because I know they’re a band who has signed contracts that were worth lots of money. Besides concerts, what would I be doing?
That’s pretty much where I would draw the line with these things. If bands and artists have signed with a label, majority of the time, you don’t need to do anything, they’re already making it, that’s what they wanted to do and they did it.
It is better to support those who hadn’t.
I agree with what you’re saying, and I should have been more clear.
I’m not saying you have to send them money, but if you do let money leave your wallet, we should be trying to make sure it gets to a deserving party. I think in general, we should avoid giving money to extractive industries that don’t add value and I’m encouraging you to error on the side of sending that money directly to the artist/laborers and cutting out literally everybody else.
I agree with you in that no one needs to be sending money to Metallica.
The whole point of this lawsuit was to try and torpedo the Internet Archive. Would’ve been nice to know the explicit results from whatever settlement was reached. Was it for IA to just remove and ban the account that uploaded the works? I’ve no idea.
Either way, just the music labels making up numbers as usual to make the battle look unwinnable. Fucking pricks.



