It’s not piracy and if it is then it’s justified

I once had a music collection of over 10,000 songs, possibly around 20,000 or more. Over the years while changing devices and moving services I started losing things. I fell on hard times and couldn’t pay my iTunes Match subscription anymore and lost all my backed up music. That’s music I owned and should have been able to download and do as I pleased with. Now, I’m getting choked out by streaming.

Building my library up from scratch

So now I’m building up my library from scratch. I started with my existing CDs, the. I’m going to try to acquire any tapes and vinyls I have in digital format.

The first place I look is on Apple Music. There are ways to keep the actual files and break the DRM but that’s my last restore. First I’ll be attempting to download lossless files from torrents. The. I’ll move on to breaking DRM, and as a last ditch plan I’ll buy the record off Apple Music.

It’s not stealing if you own it

All the music I’m talking about I own. I simply want to play them on different players and formats. It isn’t my fault I didn’t have large external backups for all of it back in the day. Back then the major players promised you’d never have to manage your own library again. Turns out that managing your own library is rewarding, brings you closer to the music, and their services are not nearly as reliable as they claim.

If I find a download of a vinyl I own and download it that’s not theft. That’s just me getting a hold of what I bought in a different format.

Anyone who argues that you only bought a license to listen on the format you bought the music is a straight up status quo loving boot licker. As an artist myself I want people to enjoy my music and that means letting them have multiple copies in different formats and only paying once.

When I sell music all my physical releases comes with lossless digital downloads included. I believe you should have the option to play the music on vinyl or have a digital file for easy archive that takes up less space than any record collection hands down.

The push to make you pay for each format is simply a ploy to milk consumers for all they got. In this economy, that’s an easy thing to do and one of the few ways to keep increasing profit

I don’t know about you but I think Beyonce will be just fine with $500M instead of the $1B she had. There’s practically no difference.