Why Piracy is Making Plastic Pop

Illegal downloading of music is a massive problem for the people that work within the music industry and because of the reluctance to pay for music more assembly-line artists are being produced. 

When Metallica spoke up about piracy and sued Napster,they experienced huge public backlash because of it making other artists wary of speaking up. Rumors then started that the only reason the band were so upset about piracy was because they wanted the money  and since they were already wealthy it seemed greedy therefor the public began to believe that only greedy rock stars and major labels were the ones upset about piracy. 

After this only a few artists like Lily Allen were brave enough to voice there opinion. She argued that the older artists had already made there money from the music industry before the start of digital piracy but most of the younger artists would never get the chance to make a living from music. After voicing her opinion Lily received thousands of abusive messages and death threats that forced her to shut down her website as well as making artists think again before voicing there own opinions about piracy.

Artists like Massive Attack 3D who came to fame before the digital age have voiced there concern for the future of younger musicians. Saying its frightening to see the total amount of downloads on unlicensed sites. For example per site there can be 25,000 downloads, multiply this by all the unlicensed sites in the world and whole profits can be gone. For the future it can cheapen music and might force the business to take more drastic actions which can compromise the bands and the listeners out there. 

Noel Gallagher talks about this topic a bit more blunt then other artists, telling a journalist - "The consumer says 'Where's my free music on the internet? Is this a free download?'- Gallagher says it cost him a quarter of a million pounds to make it and people wont get it for free, he needs his quarter of a million pounds back. He explains thats why tours are becoming so long, his taking over a year to finish. 

In a discussion at SXSW Billy Corgan said that the fact that technology now allows people to choose to not pay for music has turned music culture into a service culture. Therefor music now becomes more manufactured, picking artists who look more the part- someone with straighter teeth, better attitude, someone who is more palatable to a wider audience. The unwillingness to pay for music is creating a self-perpetuating conveyer belt of cookie cutter pop starts.