Fitz, that\'s ONE person who bought an album through the site. My point is ther are more people who won\'t buy the album and keep the pirated copy, and those people should not be given handouts.
for me if its worth listening to its worth buying. if it keeps my interest and has replay value i will buy it as soon as i can afford it. i downloaded wilco\'s yankee hotel foxtrot a while back. it took me a while to find it, but in the meantime i bought 3 of their other albums because i downloaded one of them illegally.
bands dont make a whole lot of money on album sales, but i think the people on here who download stuff without intending to buy the discs will still go see the shows when the bands come around. its still promotion and the bands will see some cash from it somehow even if its not directly from album sales. maybe the people who download the discs will never buy them, but they will buy tickets to a show, buy drinks, ect, and the bands will get a % of those profits from the venues.
what if i uploaded real radio onto oink and other BT networks and 500,000 people downloaded it and kept listening to it? it would surely help spread the word for the breakfast. it would be huge. it would be better if that many people bought the disc, but many more people are willing to take something for free than buy it. but since more people were able to hear the music it would probably get more people out to shows and the band would make more money in the end than if those 500,000 people just never heard the album at all. that is more likely to work for a smaller band like the breakfast though. but who really cares if keith richards or madonna dont make enough on album sales to buy one more ivory backscratcher anyway?
its not going to help bands that are already huge, but smaller bands trying to make it may benefit greatly.