It's a tough discussion, and I'm still wrestling with my opinions. On one hand, I respect anyone trying to make a living making music. It's a tough road (especially for electronic music), and having your property stolen (downloaded for free) when you need it to pay bills is a bitter pill to deal with. I want professional artists to be able to earn a living making good music.
On the other hand though, It just naturally irks me how much money the "top" artists make, for doing something most of us have a lot of fun doing for free or very little compensation. That's easy for me to say, though, since no one is offering me thousands of dollars to go play records overseas for a few hours at a time (haha), I'm not running a successful label selling lots of music to people, and I'm not trying to earn a living through music. These aren't new issues, and I think these things obviously depend a lot on what vantage point you are viewing them from. On the rare occasions I've been paid for djing, it instantly felt different than when I'm just goofing off at some house party with other local djs. As soon as money was involved it just felt different. Maybe because I have a career that has nothing to do with music (I'm an Architect), I can have the luxury of keeping music in that 'pure' space where it's not about getting paid. -End Rant- Arturo
