I know everybody loves to offer anecdotes when it comes to piracy, but I would never purchase music if I hadn't first downloaded it. One example, I heard of a band called Imaginary Cities from somebody online. Gave 'em a download, absolutely loved them. Sent $10 to the band's Paypal to cover the pirated album.

Six months later, I still really love this band. I go to their website and buy the album digitally. My thinking being "I might as well purchase it the right way".

Six months later, they come to my town. I buy a ticket, and also purchase a physical CD (cause I'm a sucker).

I wouldn't have bought their album 3 times if I hadn't been able to pirate it first. I would have never even heard them play.

Now I don't claim this is the case for all the music I download. A lot of it is terrible (I grab the SXSW compilation every year). But I would spend far less money on music if I had to buy an album before I could listen it. And not just a 30 second sample, but enough time to really learn to love it. I didn't care for the newest Metric album at first, but after enough listens I came to really like it. The new Jonathan Coulton album, pirated, and again donated directly to him to pay for it.

This system may not work for everybody, but it sure works for me. I can filter out the crap, and pay directly to the artists I love (usually bypassing a huge cut taken from the middle men).

So if you have one take-away from this point, it should be to go listen to Imaginary Cities right away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2L7VT0Vg9E

And also that the cost of piracy is really hard to quantify.

Unfortunately this kind of retrospective format shifting isn't legal in a bunch of jurisdictions.

In the UK one commits two separate acts of copyright infringement by purchasing a CD, ripping it to their computer, and then copying the files to a portable music player.