barely legal.

Unless you belong to a lost Amazon tribe, you've probably heard that there's a recession going on. Even the most oblivious Ivy League Trustafarian is thinking twice before sunbathing off the southern coast of St. Barts with spider monkeys. Between paying for their subprime mortgages, the auto bailout and Bernie Madoff's new Bentley, people are, as my econ prof would say, credit-constrained. Meanwhile, the music industry, like the Big Three, needs a makeover; many musicians are choosing to leave major labels, or even to "do a Radiohead" aka pay-as-you-want online scheme. As a result, more of us will undoubtedly turn to a certain series of tubes -- the Internet -- to get our fix. Music blogs, bit torrent sites, online streaming sites, file sharing programs, and artist-sponsored free downloads are changing the way music is sold and/or pirated.

The music industry's general discomfort with the Internet is hardly news, but paying nothing or next-to-nothing for digital music is now common practice for millions of people. According to the New York Times, In Rainbows was downloaded in places as far as North Korea and Afghanistan (Is Kim Jong Il a Radiohead fan??). The album was far more profitable than its predecessor, yet only 2 out of every 5 downloaders actually paid for it: what does this mean? While we often don't publicly admit to it, a significant percentage of audiophiles and people in general are, in the immortal words of Russell Peters, a bunch of filthy downloaders.

Still, so long as Apple and its many imitators continue to innovate, record company CEOs will probably continue wiping themselves with Benjamins. After all, not all downloaders are cheapskates like yours truly, who would probably still be listening to N*SYNC had The Hype Machine never been invented. The major success of iTunes and its ilk seems to show that people do have some intrinsic moral guilt about free music (or so I think anyway). There's also an incentive; iTunes claims to offer better-quality sound, though I'm not sure how much the average listener cares.

I won't even get into intellectual property debates; it's a slippery slope, considering how vague and theoretical the arguments can be. As an expert pinko commie filthy downloader, the idea of free music is dear to my heart, yet I find it hard to justify. Art and money have been interconnected throughout history, and that idea has practical substance. Alex Kapranos, a one-time IT lecturer, once said that he and the rest of Franz Ferdinand "aren't too keen on greasing the wheels of capitalism"; but then again, could he afford to make such brilliant music if he were still stuck in Glasgow U., going on about Java or algorithms or something? Will we eventually have to subsidize musicians a la the Canadian government?

Confusing stuff... but anyway, enjoy some of my favorite songs that were at some point given away legally for free by artists and/or iTunes:

barely legal.

And while we're talking about Russell Peters, he's got a new CD out soon, which I really ought to purchase legally.