The Blog of Harald

Janis Ian has written a thoughful article about the whole “free downloading” mess. Her argument in a nutshell: free downloads help sales.

This is apparently true for most people with a large catalog of “mid-list” items (books or music); see the comment about Misty’s books in the article. The industry is so focused on stars, and get-rich-quick items, that the mid-list is pretty much dead, which hurts the artists (but not the publishers, or they’d fix it).

Remember, this is about the Music Industry, not the artists, and always has been (look at the number of people who have been screwed by the Industry with bad contracts…)