Well, I’m not really much for eloquence right now but I felt like I had to get this out. I’m not going to go on and on about how the RIAA is destroying the world and killing off our freedoms. Everyone else has done that already.
Instead, I’ll just give a little example. I like a wide variety of music and it pretty much fits these rules:
1. It can’t share a single-artist CD with any other song I like
2. It can’t share a month’s popularity with any other song I like.
3. The above rules are null and void if the music comes from outside North America.
Now, these aren’t me trying to be difficult. They are simply facts I observed while enjoying my music. Think of them as cousins to the evil overlord list and the magical girl list. Both are definitely worth a laugh but the second one will make more sense to anime fans.
Anyway, as you can guess from the third rule, I get a lot of my favorite music from elsewhere. In fact, my favorite methods of finding new favorites are to download random Japanese/Korean albums off of BitTorrent. With many of these songs, I don’t even know the proper pronounciation. (Well, can you read written japanese?)
But, let’s take one with a full-english name for an example. I don’t think I’d find “Fly Me So High (Trance Remix)” by Move (Remix by D-Z) on the local music store shelves. Heck, except for that line from the chorus, the lyrics are 100% Japanese. Besides, I’m not buying a two-disc collection at highly inflated prices (Japanese music can sometimes sell for as much as $40 for a single-disc album) just for one song. Now if I could pay 25 cents per song for unlocked music, that’s a different story. You’re welcome to buy your music but I’m voting with my money. Even if I could find it on the store shelves, what’s the chance I’d notice it among all of the other junk?
Whatever you do, try downloading some music. If you don’t like it, delete it and all you’ve lost is time. If you do, enjoy it. …whether or not you intend to buy it.
