[SteveR]

Regardless of who the band is and what you may think of them, pirating music, regardless of the legalities of it, will almost assure the death of performing arts in this country. If nobody buys the cd, then all that up front money spent recording the album is the responsibility of the band to pay back to the label who provided the advance. If the trend is big enough, which it is now, then labels wont want to pay the proper amount of money to record the album the right way. Then the big studios go out of business, as they are. Then to try and recoup the loss the labels raise the price on cds. Now you have labels paying little to no money to record an album, thats done in some guys basement, that doesnt sound great, and the engineers are unemployed. Go on ebay alone and see how much high end pro studio gear is being liquidated because of studios going under. You cant call yourself a fan of anything if you're stealing from them.