Don't be so quick to judge the BPI

With a vague taste of sick in the back of my mouth, I've been reading the press coverage of the recent BPI announcement.

In case you missed it, the British Phonographic Industry has rounded up the six biggest UK ISP's and collectively they're sending out letters to thousands of us, telling us not to steal music on the internet - or else.

Unfortunately, the reaction across the board seems to be a whitewashed, 'oh my golly gosh, how dare they do such a thing'.

The music press has reacted angrily. Forums are buzzing with comments made no-doubt by outraged teenagers.

Not so simple

Most people would agree that the music biz is in this mess because of its own failings - it entirely failed to embrace the web in the early years. And then Napster arrived in 1999 and the music world changed forever.

However, just because the music business failed to notice the internet until too late, it doesn't mean we all have a right to go out there and illegally download as much music as we please.

It's an extremely complicated situation, and it was quite refreshing to read comments by Mark Mulligan, an analyst at JupiterResearch.

Making sense of it

It would appear that so many of us are now so used to downloading whatever music we like, illegally, free and in record time, that anything that threatens this freedom is treated with hostile contempt.

But let's not forget - this is stealing. If your job was to flip burgers in McDonalds every day, it would be a bit annoying to have young people just walking in and taking them for nothing.

And here comes the fork in the road of opinion: the naïve response most people give to this is: "but the record companies have too much money anyway. And musicians are rich, so what I'm doing is not hurting anyone".

And that's simply not true. The vast majority of musicians and band members earn almost no money at all.

They work their butts off trying to pay back their record label for the advance they got to record their album. And when that's all done, rarely do they make much money out of it. For many band members, flipping those burgers in McDonalds would be a more lucrative endeavour.

Only the hugely successful bands make lots of money out of music. And thus, the millions of us who're downloading music without paying for it, are hurting the musicians just as much as we are the record labels.

It's a self destructive cycle that simply must end.

Is there a solution?

But let me clarify one thing. Certainly, I would not for one second fault anyone who is using Bittorrent to download pirated music. If it's that easy, it's hard to say no. I've done it myself - I still do.

But the record business needs to take a firm hold of all this before the music business takes a nosedive. Because at the moment, the more decent music we download, the less decent bands will be out there making it.

And all that will be left will be the tosh that they play on your local ad-supported radio station.

So the point I'm trying to make is: download the music if your conscience allows it. But don't criticise the BPI or the record labels or the musicians, if they try and stop you. Because we're the bad guys here - not them. That's the way I see it, at least.