That's stealing more (in terms of dollars) from the labels than it is from the artists/talent.
Personally, I would pay for more music if the artists saw more than 5% of the proceeds. If you really want to support an artist: go to the concerts, donate directly or tell your friends about them.
Indie artists listed on iTunes (for example) make more than 60% on each song/album sale. It's way higher since there are no middle men involved. And it's easy to get listed through services like cdbaby.com. So "stealing" music from indies does hurt more in those terms.
But even with being a musician, I lean on the side of piracy myself because it's a virtual loss not an actual one, and it's natural for people to want to share the music and things they appreciate. Any long-term successful solution will have to account for and will likely encourage that. Copyright is becoming less and less relevant, and artists (including software developers) will continue to forge an existence in a post-copyright world too.
Funny story, I was playing a show the other day and some kids came up after to tell me they liked the show. One of them bought a CD and the others said they'd "totally buy one" but had no cash. So I told the first kid to just rip it for his friends, and the look on their faces was priceless. They were like "wow, awesome!" but you know he was probably going to do it anyway so why not acknowledge it? :)
It could be less than 0, as a pirated CD can be seen as a form of advertising, and could potentially gain customers who would not have discovered you without it. I'm not saying this is always the case, but it's a possibility that makes it even more difficult to calculate the economic harm of piracy.
Well, a commercial soundtrack on a catchy flash animation is also copyright infringement unless royalties were paid, but there have been a couple of times when this has lead me to investigate a particular artist.
You're right, but that's the exception not the rule. Unfortunately, most artists that people want music from (or know about) are still with the big record labels.
That's a great story. How do you feel about sites like favtape.com?
It's great to see people experimenting with new ideas around sharing music, and while I'm not sure which of them will provide the ultimate successor to the current music industry structure, or which combination of them will, the more experiments we put out there the faster we'll find out.
Ultimately, whatever does emerge as the best solution will be one where artists and listeners are much more connected and in control than before, so while there may be short term losses, I think we'll get to a net win in the end :)
Personally, I would pay for more music if the artists saw more than 5% of the proceeds. If you really want to support an artist: go to the concerts, donate directly or tell your friends about them.