Underground Hip Hop

Music Piracy

Music piracy has been around since before the internet. People selling bootlegs on the street were only able to reach a small audience, but the internet has huge distribution and hence greater need for policing. There is a great debate about the legality and morality of pirating music. Many people make the case that they would not buy the music that they download. Others would argue that they use it to sample music before purchase or to find new artists. Another point that downloaders make is that the artists do not really loose that much money from downloads. This is all very difficult to prove. Piracy has much greater potential to do damage to underground artists. Many of these artists rely on their sales numbers to allow them to gain larger distribution and make a better living for themselves. The important thing to remember is that when you download an album from an artist on an independent label that you would otherwise purchase, you are actually taking money from that artist. Sharing music can definitely help spread the artist’s work, and this should be seen by the artists with limited distribution as an important aspect of marketing. If you do enjoy the album, I would recommend buying it or at least attending a show to show support. Support the music that you would like to see more of.