Long live the music industry !

Although western economies are based on the concept of a free market, which entails the law of supply and demand when it comes to the idea of individuals downloading music from the internet it all seems to have gone out of the window. Although one can understand the record companies wanting protect their income as any powerful lobby will always do, why governments are getting involved?
Since the middle ages great music has been produced, there have been great composers, Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss the list is endless. There was also lively folk music tradition worldwide, applicable to its home culture. These great creative movements didn’t depend on a multi million pound industry. It s worth remembering that it was the modern record industry that gave us such classics as Mr Blobby.
In the 20th Century some enterprising businessmen got the idea to sell us our music pressed on plastic discs, this was great , it allowed ordinary people to hear the music of the day in their own homes at the time of their choosing, it gave the business men a great return and many musicians a vast income. They made even more money by changing the format occasionally and making is pay for the music again. (Often at full price). They didn’t care you had already paid them for that piece of work, you paid them again and again, if you wanted a new disc you had to pay.
The record industry would brainwash us in to believing file sharing is stealing? A teenager in his bedroom can download thousands upon thousands of song s from the internet and the record industry will claim they have lost thousands of pounds worth of sales. How could they have lost the sales if the teenager only has £5 a week pocket money, the most they could lose is £5 per week. The teenager couldn’t have spent more than that. Downloading the music gave him thousands of songs but the loss to the record industry was minimal.
I looked on the internet for the legal definition of stealing it said
The wrongful or wilful taking of money or property belonging to someone else with intent to deprive the owner of its use or benefit either temporarily or permanently.
When someone downloads a piece of music they create a new copy, they do not deprive anyone of it. Some may consider downloading wrong, it may be illegal, but it’s not stealing.
This brings me to my point.
In the 20th century record companies provided a service, they put the music onto a plastic discs and charged us a price which suited them to supply it. They kept prices high, claiming it was to invest in new talent (Mr Blobby). Some of the best talent most often comes from the independent music scene, the garage or home studio.
Well, modern technology has made this service redundant, just as the railways killed the canals and video killed the radio star. The Internet has killed the plastic disc. The market place finds its own value, people who value the music will pay, other s will not. The poll tax may have seemed like a good idea to Margaret Thatcher, but it was a bad tax because it was unenforceable. Prosecuting a few file sharers will not stop people downloading, and as technology advances, the chances of getting caught will diminish. Besides, I often now turn to legal forms of free music such as You Tube as its far more convenient that digging out a dusty record sleeve. The games up, accept it, have a decent period of mourning and move making ball point pens or something. I am now arguing that downloading is right or wrong, I’m just saying it is inevitable; the genie is out of the bottle, musicians need to look for new income streams and the record companies are terminally ill.And if the record companies say that downloading will kill music, tell that to Mozart and Beethoven.