You sir, are an idiot.

The "big" celebrities are *not* affected by piracy. They still make insane amounts of money, and no, there really isn't a massive difference between making 10M a year or 50M; you live fairly well regardless.

I can't believe that in this day and age, people would still use that argument. Yes, those at the top make money, and those at the bottom don't. Live with it. Having them make money doesn't entitle ANYONE to piracy. Also, piracy doesn't make you more popular, piracy doesn't increase your reputation. Concerts do, publicity does, having a famous DJ spin you record during a big gig makes you famous. Being downloaded by a sweaty teenager in his parent's basement doesn't bring anyone fame.

The industry is hurting, badly. I'd like for people to stop focusing on what exactly they are criticising. The majors? Yeah, they're greedy corporations, like any other one, and they're only after making money. It's their job, get over it. Like any other industry, if they see losses, they cut costs, wherever they can.

15 years ago, you had talent hunters who would go around whole countries, listening to small, low-key bands in crappy underground cafes. If there was potential, they'd poney up and send the singer to get lessons, a hairdo, and the whole band goes to a studio for a couple of days to record 4 or 5 tracks. This then became the demo they would send to the decision makers. If it was approved, the band got a free pass to a couple months in a studio, record a whole album, make the clip for the best track, and done.

Now, because the majors make less money, they've cut costs there where the biggest costs were: finding talents. Where 15 years ago you'd have 20 hunters for a small region like Benelux, you now have 1 guy paid to surf Myspace. The demos that go to the decision makers are the MP3 ripped from their website, and if there seems to be potential but the sound is too crap, they get a macbook on loan for 6 months, and are told to make a good tape.

Another thing people don't realise is that from artist to CD there isn't just one step. Sound engineers need to be paid -- their experience makes a CD's quality. No, most artists don't know what loudness is, most bands don't understand that you need to have a very specific balance, and so you need a very good sound engineer to lower the pitch of mic 6 on the drumkit which removes the highlight on the crash hit, as it completely dampens the lead guitar's solo bridge. You may not notice this, but the work that is done on each song is tedious, incredibly hard, and being good at it requires decades of training and extremely expensive equipment. The difference? Well, an audiophile can immediately tell the difference between a correctly mastered album and a crappy one.

These people, the sound engineers, the masterers, and a million people in between are those who get nailed. The industry (and specifically, the majors) will find ways around it, they'll kill off specific jobs, and tell people to do multiple things at once, but as always, when you condense things, you lose things.

We will lose quality, we will lose information, but people don't care, they don't even know about it. Oh yeah, and then you have the "ethical pirates" who say "I'll pay for it when they give me access to an uncompressed version of the song". Y'all be crying when good music doesn't reach anymore, but at that point everything that has been achieved over the past few decades will be lost.

Get a job, and start paying for the things you enjoy. Nothing in life is free.

Source: I'm a drummer with quite a few gigs on record, and my family has authored over 20 albums, and mastered over 1000 albums.