The piracy wars are going to be won or lost based solely on user experience, mark my words.
You're completely missing the point. It's irrelevant that you can get music for free, because it's not produced for free. It costs money to produce music and to arrange it to be available on Amazon or iTunes or where ever.
It's not unreasonable to expect you to pay for music. I don't mean to imply anything about "stealing", but you wouldn't walk into a supermarket expecting to just take stuff either. It's about someone producing something of value that you want.
Look, I'll happily debate intellectual property structures and incentives and all the rest, but the thing--the big elephant in the room--is that everybody just wants to be able to push a button and get music.
At the end of the day, the core relationship is between the artist and the listener--everything else, be it recording or ticketing or distribution or whatever, is secondary fluff.
Grooveshark offers the most compelling experience to the user right now, regardless of how scummy (and I do mean scummy!) their business practices are.
I do realize that people are selfish and just want everything for free, and that computers & the Internet enable them to circumvent having to pay for music.
That doesn't change anything about my point, though.
Do you realize that if music producers can't make a satisfactory profit, then music will just not be produced? Again, it costs money to produce music and to make it available for purchase. I've downloaded music, just like everyone else, but as a genuine music lover, I've also happily paid for some 200 - 300 CDs back in the day, and those comprise roughly 95% of all the music I listen to.
Do you get it? It's alright to pay for music. It's downright expected by anyone producing it. There is no free lunch. There aren't many things of real value that you can expect to get for free. Open-source software is a rare exception, but that doesn't really apply on the desktop, so.. yeah. Think about this stuff. You need to see beyond yourself.
