Bitcoin Forum

This assumes that most of the money from payment goes directly to the artist, as opposed to the current system of record companies getting the biggest chunk of the funds.

Perhaps you should rephrase the question to  "No, I would still not pay artists for RECORDED music." since I frequent the clubs on a weekend basis and spend more on a weekend than I do recorded music.

Live entertainment is where the money is now so I feel that the pool is not fairly weighted.

Here is why I refuse to use services such as itunes:

Some of them embed watermarks in the downloaded mp3 files, forever linking them to your identity. This creates an unreasonable liability for me that is completely disproportional compared to the tiny amount paid for an mp3 file.

If I forget my smartphone on a train and then some jackass uploads my mp3s on bittorrent, then I will have to face a huge amount of legal trouble, prove my innocence, and possibly be sued for gazillions of dollars.

Call me paranoid but it's simply not worth the risk. True, the likelihood of the above happening is small, but the potential damage if it does happen is huge.

Even the services that say they don't use watermarks can't be trusted, because it's impossible to prove that something is not watermarked, and the MAFIAA has a track record of playing dirty.

That's why I would embrace a music download service where I could pay anonymously.  Bitcoin would be perfect for this.

Download music direct from artist. I know a lot of artists that are using torrent!

I already pay for music from smaller artists. I would rather pay with Bitcoin direct to the artist as a donation and bypass the promotion driven record company bullshit.

To me, this unlikely risk is not big enough for me to avoid iTunes.  In the case of iTunes, it is not trivial for the average user to take your music off an iPhone anyway.

The way I look at it is iTunes scored a serious walloping on the record labels.  Have you heard of the not-so-much-paraded feature called "iTunes Match"?  iTunes Match is a pay service which makes it even lower on the radar.  But I pay for it and consider it a steal ($25/year).

If you turn on iTunes Match, iTunes will scan all your music on your hard drive - including MP3's - even if they are ripped or pirated - and then iTunes will permanently pretend that you bought that music from iTunes for as long as you subscribe.  That enables you to redownload Apple's high-bitrate copy and get all the album art and have it fully sync to all your iTunes-compatible devices, just like you bought it.  Although they come as .AAC files, iTunes has a semi-hidden feature that converts it all to MP3 or WAV or other formats, completely in bulk with intact metadata.  I don't see Apple as a RIAA pawn.

iTunes Match also lets you copy music from your "collection" over the air (including cellular) on demand to your iPhone, as well as remove it.  So if you are walking down the street and want to listen to one of your pirated MP3's you have at home if only it were loaded on your phone, you can download it from iTunes and enjoy it right then and there.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, on all these iTunes downloads there's no DRM.  I take that for granted nowadays and didn't even think about it.

Fixed the poll, but paying for live music with BTC is an interesting idea, like buying concert tickets with BTC, scanning the QR code of a band playing at a local club, etc.

The only way I'm ever willing to pay for just the music is through a tip jar.

What if you could download music for a nonzero price in BTC that you set yourself?

I am already working on a service locally for this.

I already paid for a music download. I just need moar income. (I get .05 BTC a day)

Yeah, I'd be fine with that, but I wouldn't pay more than a few cents for most of my downloads, not that I really download a lot of music.

I will not pay for imaginary property.

I will donate an arbitrary amount to a content producer that I like. Esp with Bitcoin.

I pay for music via iTunes and do not have a problem with Apple making 30%.  The problem that I have is most (but not all) artists are not getting the remaining 70%.  Some independent artists as well as larger artists with their own label do get most of the remainder, but the majority get less then 10%.  

I like the fact that Apple releases non DRM'd music and have no problem with my name being tagged on the files that I bought.  I do not intend to copy my library to others and if I did I would run a stripper.  

I have contacted two artists that I know personally and so far neither has accepted the offer for me to get them into bitcoin.  Maybe in the future they will.  

I have no problem with record companies getting paid and artists not getting the whole pie.  It takes much more to bring a record to market than the talent of the lead performer.