@ all the freetards..

Some of the apparent naivety here is amazing..

OK, so, you appear to think that the music labels are all massive corporations who do nothing but leech off artists.

However, who pays for the 10s of thousands of new bands launched in this country each year? Bearing in mind that less than 1% succeed. Someone has to pay for studio time. Someone has to pay for videos, the inevitable promotional website and other promotional stuff. Someone has to pay to have the album(s) duplicated. Someone has to pay for the Cd cover to be designed and printed.

So, bearing in mind that 99% of those bands are generating little income for the company, who pays for it? Well, the money comes from profits made from the 1% of bands who do make a profit. So, less profit from those bands = less money for other bands.

Now, I am not saying that Piracy is the main (or even a major) contributor to lack of sales, there is a lot of evidence it is not. But, it certainly does not help.

The movie industry(at least in Hollywood) works in a similar way. At any given moment, there may be over 100 movies (sometimes up to 150) in production in Hollywood. We only hear of a small percentage of them (at most 5 or 6 a week). That small percentage actually provides finance for the rest of them to be made.