To download instead of buying?

[muggglewump]

OK so I'm not really looking for an answer, I just thought it would get more replies in here than in chat.
I'm genuinely interested in why people buy Games/DVD's/CD's/pay for Sky when they have them all online for free?

Is it a moral thing or do you like to have whatever it is boxed and new?

Yep, but Radiohead did that of their own free will, and are in a position to be able to afford it. Taking a quid from a multi-millionaire doesn't have such a drastic effect as aking a quid from someone who needs to know where every quid is coming from. The following things apply to Radiohead but not to almost every other band:
a) they're such a big name that the event itself became the marketing plan: no need to spend fortunes on ads when every media outlet treats it as a story.
b) the likely download numbers were always going to be so huge that even if only a fraction of people paid, they would still make a fortune.
c) they have a huge management team that can take care of all the peripheral hassles.

Only a handful of bands can make that model work. The Crimea, for example, tried something similar a couple of years ago: they put their second album out for free on the internet. It's not an experiment they would repeat because it cost them so much time and effort.

The point was that Radiohead's example shows that bands can make even more money selling their music for MUCH cheaper online, by cutting out the useless middlemen of the obsolete cost model of burning CD, transporting it for hundreds of miles on trucks, storage, etc.

CoteDAzur there's no doubt that the established entertainment companies have fucked up royally when it comes to managing digital.

There are a few bands in Australia who are releasing their next album on a memory stick rather than on cd. Once you've bought and paid for it, you can access extra material and you can download a new copy if something happens to the first (always a huge issue with cds).

Of course some people will buy one and share it, it's always happened with records, tapes and cds. The point is that someone buys it first. With free illegal downloads, if nobody buys a copy then nobody gets paid. The artist is always the last to get paid and unless they're huge, there's not much money out there, especially at the moment.

The sooner we're all able to buy whatever we want, in and from any geographical area, the better. The film and tv industry have screwed us with their stupid rules, but they've also screwed themselves and will eventually respond.

Cote ... and my point is that Radiohead's model is simply not applicable to most bands. It can only work for bands who are already rich, and who already have a large fanbase. How can a band with no money pay for the recording? And how can a band with no fanbase attract the publicity that lets people know this is happening?