Definitely a few people here talking out their asses. If there's one thing the music industry never loses in spite of economic downturn, it's the uneducated, inexperienced idiots who spout bullshit on its behalf.
1) Not all record labels are evil. I've worked with some money hungry, shady bastards of labels and also amazingly legit and all-about-the-music record labels.
2) Just because almost all of us have downloaded albums illegally in the past, doesn't justify it. We learn from our mistakes and try not to repeat them. It's this "everyone does it so it must be okay" mentality that ends up breeding Nazis.
3) Art is never free. Art doesn't spontaneously appear. Good art takes years of perfecting one's craft and many weeks or months putting together a single piece of art. To say an album is free is to say it has no value, and anyone who says this is either naive or just selfishly fucked in the head. If a band chooses to release an album for free, it's their art, their time, their investment, and what needs to be emphasized here is THEIR CHOICE - not one YOU make for them just because it's easy to steal without them knowing. Just because a bank hands out free pens DOES NOT mean that all pens are now free forever. If some band decides to throw a free show, it does not grant you front row seats to The Rolling Stones, get it?
This is an issue of good ole fashioned theft being justified by technology that makes it easy and virtually untraceable. It's kind of like we're in the Wild West of digital music right now - there's no real way to enforce law just yet, so it's a rootin tootin free for all, which for some people, makes it justified to be an asshole outlaw stealing whatever they please.
Here's an example for you: You wouldn't steal a 70" Sony TV from Best Buy, and your argument would be because it's a physical object and you can't replace it, whereas digital music has unlimited copies. But what if you had a replicator like on Star Trek and just made a copy of the TV at your own expense, that would be okay then, right? I suppose the millions of dollars in research, design, and development that Sony invested to make that TV doesn't mean shit, does it? The only way Sony can afford to sell a 70" TV for only $2000 is because they count on selling thousands of them. It really comes down to your ability to understand the true value of something beyond the chimpanzee ability to read a price tag.
If you seriously think music should be free, then how can you justify charging anyone to record their music? You're just a middle man, not even the actual artist. If art is free, then instruments, paint, brushes, venues and equipment should all be free, too, right?
Read this if you think downloading a band's album is justified just because you bought a couple of their shirts:
http://www.metalinjection.net/its-just-business/bands-money-touring
