MIKA the better one wrote
There may have been a product before whereby now you can say it has been cheapened, and value removed (fast on its way) this will trouble many as its a sense of theft of their livelyhood, but its simply evolution of a product.
I am sure there was once a time where GFSA could have charged R100 per year to be a part of, but htat is not a liable idea anymore, its lost its worth in those respects.
If the product is not unique and freely available from many suppliers, then yes, competition drives the price(value) down. However, this is not the case with respect to individual artists. Yes, there are thousands of musicians, but all are trying to be unique. If you happen to find one whose music you like and appreciate, their music automatically has value to you. Since they're offering something that you like (and would like to own) it's probably a good idea to exchange something you have for what they are offering (if they have chosen not to give it away)
Maybe just to run a little with your example, as far as GFSA is concerned, to me(and probably to many others here as well) it's offering something of value if I look at the activity taking place. Now I have a few other interests as well. So, I've searched for (and joined) other forums, and I'm yet to find anything else that offers me what I find here. When it comes to forums, I probably spend about 95% of my available time here. The site, as you point out, is free. However, if it was not, I suspect that there would be quite a number of members willing to pay to hang around here (a quick look for similar sites with the same vibe will show you why) Now, hypothetically, if the continued running of the site needed to be paid for by member fees, and everyone managed to get in for free, the site would obviously disappear due to a loss of sustainable income. But currently the site uses your business strategy, it draws members and visitors with the forum, and some of these click on the advertising banners which generates the income necessary to sustain the site (can't be much I would imagine). What would happen if not enough money was generated to sustain the site? It would close or becomes a pay site. What would happen if I (along with everyone else) accessed the site somehow without paying? The site would close. What would happen to the number of worthwhile forums for me to visit? That number would suffer a critical blow. I would be poorer for it because I thought I could save a couple of bucks by not paying for something that I valued and enjoyed.
Yes, controlling piracy is not possible. Maybe it's evolutionary ( :? ) in principle, only the fittest bands survive ? But there will be a loss (because we would have to depend on the music taste of the masses to decide which bands are popular enough to make a living from gigging) . Maybe great musicians who are poor business strategists (or don't want to hit the road 11 out of 12 months a year) will never offer the great music that the world will never know.
I just feel in the long run, piracy will have a detrimental effect on music as a whole.
