Country music’s (former) sweetheart, Taylor Swift, has already become one of the most recognizable names in music history at only 24 years old. With her recent move from Nashville to New York before the release of her latest album, 1989, Taylor has caught some flack for her genre alteration. Changing from folk style country to an urban pop tone, Taylor’s album was sure to turn heads – just not at the rate it has been.
Being the second album to ever platinum in its first week, other than Taylor’s Red album two years ago, 1989 has sold over 1,287,000 copies – nearly doubling the anticipated projection of 650,000. Not a bad way to end the year for someone who reportedly made a cool $64M in 2014. However, with the massive popularity of music piracy, 1989 could be the last album to ever go platinum. This time last year, there were already five albums to go platinum.
So yeah, you
should feel like shit. An artist’s job is
to make music, and music piracy is stripping them of their deserving
paychecks. I’ll admit it, I
don’t always buy songs off of iTunes. In
fact, I have a YouTube converter saved right on my bookmarks bar - yeah, I'm a monster. But if I really like the artist, I’ll throw
the $12.00 for an album if I know I'll end up listening to as repetitively as a toddler
watching Baby Einstein.
Hearing this news has given me a new outlook on how I now grow my music library. The same guy who would spend $8 on a burrito that he would eat in under six minutes then shit out for fifteen also nearly had a seizure when iTunes bumped their prices from $0.99 to $1.29. Even if I only wanted one song, I thought this price increase justified me illegally downloading hundreds more. My thought process was more or less, "A dollar and TWENTY-NINE CENTS to have UNLIMITED ACCESS to my FAVORITE song?! Now I'm downloading 350 more. Suck it, iTunes!" I don't mean to offend you burrito lovers, but it puts into perspective just how financially stingy we’ve become as a society that we continually spend money on things that are essentially laxative-stuffed tortillas, but find trouble in supporting the soundtracks to our lives.
The fact that music’s top stars are in jeopardy of not having the opportunity to reach these milestones is just sad. So with that, I’ll think twice next time I want to download a song for free. Unless for some odd reason I go on a Beyoncé binge, because then F that - she made $115M this year. Pay my tuition, B.
Hearing this news has given me a new outlook on how I now grow my music library. The same guy who would spend $8 on a burrito that he would eat in under six minutes then shit out for fifteen also nearly had a seizure when iTunes bumped their prices from $0.99 to $1.29. Even if I only wanted one song, I thought this price increase justified me illegally downloading hundreds more. My thought process was more or less, "A dollar and TWENTY-NINE CENTS to have UNLIMITED ACCESS to my FAVORITE song?! Now I'm downloading 350 more. Suck it, iTunes!" I don't mean to offend you burrito lovers, but it puts into perspective just how financially stingy we’ve become as a society that we continually spend money on things that are essentially laxative-stuffed tortillas, but find trouble in supporting the soundtracks to our lives.
The fact that music’s top stars are in jeopardy of not having the opportunity to reach these milestones is just sad. So with that, I’ll think twice next time I want to download a song for free. Unless for some odd reason I go on a Beyoncé binge, because then F that - she made $115M this year. Pay my tuition, B.
Evan Farrar
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