When I was younger I never really felt guilty about pirating music because I didn't have the ability to buy anything over the internet, lacking a debit card, and having little income to buy albums from HMV etc. So when I started growing up and had some money hanging around, I started buying a few albums. In my head it's around £11-16 for an album and I could afford a few, but my current music collection is a few hundred artists and their works. When I talk to my friends about music there's a constant "Have you heard X? I stopped listening to Y a while back, now I listen to Z who are kinda like if A and B had a child who grew up with C" - I feel expected to be aware of a great deal of music as if what I listened to and what I enjoyed reflected on me as a person. No offence to artists, but I can't exactly afford that at any point. I'm expected to be aware of several hundred artists and buying one album of each artists means I need to spend several thousand pounds which keeps growing year on year. The fight was always going to be black and white; you pay for everything with minor exceptions or you pay for nothing with minor exceptions and I can't afford the first category. In my room at the moment I have two physical albums which I bought because I love the artist and can't go see them. One of my favourite rappers; Scroobius Pip, I go see every year he comes to my city and I've considered going to his other shows in London. It's becoming difficult however to decide who I support and where. Do I buy the album of the indie band because they have less income and does that mean I don't morally have to buy the album of the megaband because they earn so much already? Music purchase doesn't seem to be a trade that way; it's charity. Google Play/Spotify aren't selling music, they're selling convenience. That's why they don't care how much they pay the artist.
When I was in school, I saved every last dime I had to buy music. One day I was helping clean out my Uncle's garage and found a Metallica Single cassette tape (remember those). I played that tape nonstop for months until I had the $12 for the whole Kill 'Em All album. It wasn't long before I had every one of their albums. Soon later, I began collecting CD's of my other favorite bands. I joined up with Columbia House during one of their 12 cd's for $1 deal. I had two jobs in high school and spent every red cent on one of two things, drumsticks and CD's. These were the days before file sharing, streaming music, and easily obtained media. Without the purchasing power of Columbia House, I could never have afforded the music I was exposed to. The impact that music had on my life in high school cannot be understated. Without it I would be a much different person. There are a lot of us that have this connection with music, so we are passionate about our favorite artsists and support them by going to shows and buying shirts & albums. When mp3's and filesharing became all the rage, we all assumed that the price of digital music would be a fraction of the cost of an actual CD--but it isn't. The cost of entertainment is still inflated by the "distribution" costs created by the record labels. I see the solution as musicians retaining their production and distribution rights, cutting out the middle man. Utilizing these streaming services to promote select songs and offering complete albums or remixes through the artist's page only.