Kids and downloading music - curious what you all think

jcc64 wrote: I am always curious to know what people's ideas are about downloading music- not the officially sanctioned stuff, but more the peer to peer stuff like Limewire. It's a pretty hot topic among the moms of Alec's friends (who are all 13-14 yr old). Who allows it, who doesn't, what are the limits, if any?

MamaJAM replied: DH downloads music and DD#1 is then allowed to choose what she wants to listen to. We don't allow DD#1 (or any of the kids) to download their own music. DD can ask for something specific - and DH will check it out....but everything she listens to needs to be pre-approved/screened by us.

Hillbilly Housewife replied: our kids aren't old enough to download yet... but we probably won't screen the songs when they do... cuz to be honest, I swear a lot more than most songs out there. You'd need to go further underground to get songs that live up to my nastiness... lol

besides - I like "bad" stuff like Eminen and 50cent...and other generally disliked rappers... It's great to clean to.

I don't think we'd have a limit... well... wait - I'd set a limit of not more than X songs in a set period of time... the kid doesn't need 50 songs in one day, kwim? I guess 5 or 6 songs a week is way more than enough. Personally we have tons of downloaded music, back from when we oonly had one kid and it's all we would do........ but we don't keep it on the comp - takes up too uch space. We burn it onto mp3 cds.

If it gives you an idea of how many songs we have accumulated over the last few years, we have 33 cds full of mp3s... plus our own library of cds.

We have bought and still do buy the artist's album if we have 3 or more songs from them.

luvbug00 replied: we all do in this family. we don't believe in limiting Mya's music choises. she gets the songs she wants and we dowload them for her. he latest dowloads include..
crazy frog song, 3-6 mafia, chipmunks christmas songs, fall out boys & Greenday. As you can see a large range in musical styles.

jcc64 replied: I guess I should clarify that I wasn't referring to restrictions based on content. I'm talking about allowing your kids to download stuff they haven't paid for- y'know- the intellectual property thing?
Or for yourself- if your kids are too young to do this kind of thing. Just wondering where everyone is on this issue.....

Hillbilly Housewife replied:
Oh. Well we don't download "free" stuff anymore, we haven't sine the whole Napster fiasco with Metallica. Now we get an automatic payment on our credit card for the amount we download... don't remember the program we use.. it's mostly dh who downloads. But he downloads tv shows more than music.

it's sad to say that since we use company internet, which we don't pay for... we can't beak the "rules", so no illegal stuff... and no porn!! lol poor dh.......

I like it this way.

My2Beauties replied: I'm guilty as charged. I know the whole music industry in really down and out on downloading free music, say through like Kazaa or somewhere like that, and they just well hate piracy all together, but hey ya know when I only like one song off of a CD, why do I want to pay $17.99 for that CD when I can burn that one song and the one song of many other CD's that I like for free!

luvbug00 replied: oh my bad

still do it. i'm too cheep to buy a whole cd for 13 bucks when i might only like one song and can download it for free.

Insanemomof3 replied:
ITA!!!!!!! I download free music. I feel that the music industry makes too much money anyway. LOL They make millions from t-shirts, photos, concerts etc...I still do buy some cd's. But only if I like more than like 3-4 songs on it. If there is only one song I like, I will not buy the cd. Just a waste of money to buy a full cd for one song. JMO

jcc64 replied: This is a big deal to dh, who happens to be a musician (albeit a recreational one, at this point). All of my info, and related opinions have been filtered through his lens.
He feels that the only big losers in the illegal download deal are the piggish record company execs, whose fabulous wealth came through no talent of their own. Most artists receive a surprisingly low amount for every cd sold. In fact, alot of smaller, lesser known artists (at least the ones we listen to) want their music spread around the net- it's free publicity they wouldn't have otherwise had without the massive marketing machine behind major record labels. Furthermore, cds are very cheap to produce, and when the whole industry switched from vinyl to cds, the industry decided to price gouge and charge MORE for what cost them much less to produce. It's their right to do so, of course, but it definitely makes it harder for me to sympathize with their lost revenue now.
I was ok with all of this because I know that the type of artists we listen to fall into the category of people who support the free trading of their music over the web.
Not so with the type of stuff my son listens to, as far as I know.(which I don't limit according to content- but that's a conversation for another time.) The above rationale then gets murkier, kwim? He and his downloading buddies are sometimes confronted by some of his peers whose parents clearly view downloading as theft, and although I really don't see it that way, it does make me squirm a little. I've had conversations with him, and he's sophisticated enough to understand the nuances, thankfully. Anyway, just wanted to see what everyone else's views on the subject were. Thanks for the input.

Hillbilly Housewife replied:
I have a few friends who are musicians, and they like the free publiclity it gives them too.

For example: Jean -Michel Ouimet. His first cd was paid for by him winning the chocolate sale at our hgh school.. he won the grandprize - which as a jeep - but he opted for the money instead, and bought recording equipement. He's awesome!
His first cd, btw, was children's lullabies, recorded with his sister. It's really nice.

Another friend of mine, Jay, is also an excellent drummer - I sang at his wedding, and his band played the other misic. Currently, he's in Kingston Fog.. a great band.

Last year, he was in the band Siobhan - last year, they did for the second year in a row, a European tour! Also a great band. Before that, I believe he was in a band called Smoky Murder Sticks...

ETA:

http://siobhan.ca/band.html my friend jay is the one on the right...

http://kingstonfog.com/ev_en.php?ID=1385_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC jay is the second in the bio (same guy as above... lol)

http://www.peatsridgefestival.com.au/ctbody.asp?nid=40 there's a reference to Jay a little ways down in the text in Smokey nmurder sticks

http://www.twelve34.ca/band.html another band Jay was in... as well as another friend, Eric St-Cyr....

http://music.mp3lizard.com/ignition/ Jay was also in Ignition many moons ago... and a band called The Shells!!!

So I do see both sides. I like passing around my friends' music...

PhiMuMommy replied: i download all the time.. i was on napster till it got shut down.. kazaa... then winmx... and now i'm going to check out limewire..lol. i love it. i don't like bands i like specific songs.. but if i notice i'm downloading too many from the same band i'll go buy the cd.. but usually it's not so much..lol. also i like switching the music i play up because i have very eclectic taste... so a cd i burn may havce nsync one second and nirvana the next.... you can't get that in stores.

i wouldn't mind paying for downloads but not a buck a song.. i don't even buy 20 cds... ya know? if it was like 10 bucks a month or something for unlimited downloads i would do it in a heartbeat...

i think we pay entertainers way too much money as is ... (sports , actors, and singers inclu) so i don't care so much about taking their money.. truth is they only make 1% of the money spent on a cd anyways.. the rest goes to everyone else.. publicist, cover creators, managers, etc... (i watch way to much info on this subject.. sorry)

oh well i'll be quiet now..

jcc64 replied: Actually, my favorite band of all time, the Grateful Dead, were in the vanguard of fan generated trading of their music. They actually used to set up special taping sections at their shows for people who wanted to record the concert live. Alot of 2nd generation jam bands followed their lead. It was a lovely symbiotic relationship between the band and their fans, and of course they were repaid a thousand fold with undying fan loyalty. (which explains why their music is still actively traded 15+yrs after the band dissolved).
It's a quaint idea that is of course lost to the hard cold realities of the music industry today.

do I sound like an old hippy or what?!!

MyBlueEyedBabies replied:
Napster has a monthy fee then unlimited downloads.

I use ITunes mostly because it's legal. I had no desire to spend the $15 per CD for the couple songs I like but paying $.99 per song I think is completely worth it.

mysweetpeasWil&Wes replied:
I'm with Lisa. I only use Itunes which is 99 cents per song. I certainly don't know enough about the whole downloading thing to have a strong opinion. It does seem wrong to me, but if some musicians support free trading, I would have to say that's okay.

Sorry if this is a stupid question...but how does one know if it's legal to download versus illegal? Are certain free music sites guaranteed legal...if so, how?? Or are these sites produced by illegal people who have downloaded music on their existing website only to allow others to do the same? I'm not sure I get how it all works - meaning how the free downloads work. Do the artists themselves put the free downloads out there? Sorry to be so stupid on this subject.

I still buy CDs too!

A&A'smommy replied: Okay I'm fine with D/ling free music my dh and I do it ALL the time I use to do it at work too but I don't want to get the school in trouble so I don't anymore. As for my children we will teach them how but the wont be alloud too until they are older as to prevent viruses.

My3LilMonkeys replied: DH uses Bearshare. It is a flat fee (I think $20 for 6 months or smtg). I don't have a strong opinion on it one way or the other, but we figured since we are copying & burning DVD's without paying for them we might as well pay for the music.

5littleladies replied: We pay for all our downloads or we buy the CD. We also use Music Matchbox to listen to music-it's like 6 bucks and you can listen to their entire database over the internet.

jcc64 replied:

Don't feel stupid, Rae, I'm actually pretty clueless about the actual mechanics of it myself. I've personally never downloaded anything at all- I listen to public radio all day- but my dh and ds are big music users. What I was speaking about was peer to peer sites- the way they work, and again, I only have a sketchy notion, is that files are uploaded by someone, anyone to a site like Limewire, and they are then available to be downloaded for free. My dh likens it to the old days of copying cassette tapes- your friend bought the album, and then you would make a tape of that album. No one ever looked at it as ripping anyone off. The quality would suffer, which I still believe to be true with downloading, but it's free after all. If you really liked the artist, or the album, you would go out and buy it yourself, which is what we still do today with cd's that are commercially available.

Boys r us replied: Tanner has his own computer and we allow him to download music. We all use Mirc to download music and so forth in our house. It's not exactly on the up and up..but not something a lot of people know how to use either, but rest assured my 9 yr old knows his way backwards and forwards around it.

CantWait replied: DS #1 is 10, and if requests something I don't mind dl it for him, but because of the way files sometimes are on the internet I would prefer to dl it for him in case it's infected or turns out to be a little more then one would expect such as what's happened to me in the past. I've dl music and it's turned out to be porn (can I say that here??). I see nothing wrong with it though, (music that is, ) OK I'm shutting up now.

A&A'smommy replied:
if you use limewire make sure to click on audio and then type in what you want then that wont happen anymore Actually every place you dl from should have that option

TsurugiButterfly replied: MIRC is my friend... I've found more of the stuff I've wanted on MIRC than any peer-to-peer program...

Dee Snider discussed this a couple years ago on his weekly House of Hair show and I like the analogy he put forth:
If you go to the grocery store and you pick one grape off a bunch and eat it, more than likely you will not be expected to pay for it. But if you picked up and ate the entire bunch of grapes... that would be stealing.

In other words, one or two songs off an album is an entirely different animal than downloading whole CDs.

The only reason the RIAA even got into this mess wasn't so much the actual trading of music, but because some folks were downloading and burning whole albums to CD and then selling them on eBay as the original CD.

I always found it rather ironic that Metallica were the ones spearheading the Napster witch-hunt considering they became FAMOUS over fans trading and selling their bootlegs.

CantWait replied:
That's exactly what I use, and what I've done, unfortunetly a couple have still slipped through Oh well I got my kicks for the day I guess

MamaJAM replied:
Well - DH still downloads stuff from 'free' sites. We don't allow DD#1 (or any of the kids) to do it though because downloading anything on a computer opens you up to viruses and nasty-stuff.

holley79 replied: DH has news groups that he is subscribed too. There are so many CDs out there that Brandon wants but only about 1 or 2 songs on the CD he cares for. DH buys plenty of CDs so I think as much as DH spends on music then Brandon can download some songs. Not to mention I buy plenty of CDs myself.

ions_momma replied: DH and I download alot of music off of limewire for free. We do occasionally buy CDs if we like a majority of the songs, but when it is a CD that only has a few songs we like, we just download those. Also, since we both have iPods, a dollar a song gets expensive so its just easier to download them for free.