I read this post about how the musician Joss Stone supports file sharing and encourages people to download her music and listen to it. She argues that most musicians are brainwashed by the record labels and discourage their fans from downloading their music, “music is supposed to be shared” she said.

Thinking about it, she could not be more right, music is an emotional experience. It pumps you up,  brings you down, makes your remember or even inspires you. creating music is a talent given to a select few (If you don’t believe me you should listen to me singing in the shower)  and it is an amazing gift to be able to affect people in these ways. What’s interesting is that we are taught to think about monetizing every skill we have. If you can sing you should make money from it, if you can act you should make money too, if you can balance 200 books on your head, you definitely should not be left out. What happened to doing things for the fun of it. Any musician that is angry that people download his/her music for free has already failed my authenticity test. You should be happy you get to touch more souls, the same way Alicia Keys just inspired a woman to get back up on her feet and do something, 50 cent just helped a dude in the club get laid with his bump and grind jam. Your changing peoples lives here, musicians should be more concerned with the reach of their music rather than how much they are making from it.

So how will they eat? Most artists make their money from concerts, adverts and other sponsorship campaigns they have. If they spend money like Britney Spears their royalties from a multi platinum album will barely cover three months expenditure (How many people go multi platinum these days). So in the end free music = more exposure, more exposure = sold out/ more concerts = more money. It all evens out in the end or even does them better. With bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails leading the movement towards free music its a matter of time before the whole music industry is re-evaluated.