it's here to stay as a distribution medium.......but I imagine that the illegal stuff will die off eventually

I think the idea of ISP's paying royalties off the back of subscription fees is a good one - but god knows how you would work out how to distribute it to the artists fairly......but I suppose they manage it with the prs/mscp stuff....anyway some how the industry needs to work it out...ones thing is for sure - the amount of music / films people are consuming is going up massively and I think they would be prepared to pay for it if it's not too expensive. The days of 15 quid Cd's are gone.....and good riddance too - what a rip off! (especially in the uk)

personally I would be prepared to pay a blanket fee and download what I want....now I'm in Oz I download a lot of TV programs that I can't get here (the rugby over the weekend for example) I also download a lot of music - I do try and buy it if I like it enough.....but then I think about the massive amount of cash I've spent over the years on 12",CD's, concerts, gigs, etc etc...

I hope that people can keep going on dj gigs and concerts....the increasing interest in music will surely have some positive knock on benefits....it's just hard to see it right now...I'm sure in the dj arena the download revenue will increase - I mean a couple of dollars for a top quality wav file is a bargain really, but i think the days of a techno release selling 5000 copies has long gone.....I'm not really sure who used to buy them....bedroom dj's I guess?

The crime thread about giving his album away was a bit depressing though...but I think he's making a brave point - the market for non commercial techno is too small to bother with...I read a post on LD forum where somebody was saying that artists that are pretty well known in the electronic world and can regularly pull in a 1000 people for a gig are struggling to sell 300 copies of a release....but how many copies have been downloaded - maybe 10 or 50 times that amount and by the same people who are at the gig....

The guys at pirate bay are in the news at the moment - the authorities are trying to sue them again....but somebody else will just take their place - the genie is out of the bottle. One of the guys from there make a relevant point tho - 'nobody moaned about the people who used to sell ice losing their jobs when the fridge was invented'....