Just a thought I had while rendering.

I think a lot of artists started using pirated software. Would EDM be the same? Would the Trap genre ever take off? How many artists would had been pushed out by the prices of software? How many genres would not even exist?

 

Half the devs would be like MAAT.
About a quarter would be like Fabfilter.
And about a quarter like AudioDamage.

 

Musicians would use more free and cheap software like Reaper, Valhalla, TAL etc. and there is a lot of it that is just as great as expensive software. Nothing would be so different, I think. There would be less "collectors" and maybe they would make more music.

Oh, and far more people would give Linux a try and more software would be made for it, which opens the door to whole another world of software. That would be a good change for Open Source Software.

 

Last edited: Sep 21, 2021

everyone would be force fed to listen to the Kpop and the like (vevo-led youtube recommendations etc)

 

Hard drive manufacturers would not reap nearly as much profit.

 

A lot. Take "Pirates of the Caribbean" for instance. No pirates, no movie, no OST.
Quite the bummer

 

It depends how far you want to take the word "Pirates" - If it includes extortion and giving other people's work away or passing on zero profits, then Spotify, Pandora and all the sites who do this would not exist either. Considering they take other people's music and either sell it taking most of the profits or give it away for free, they are the biggest Pirates of the lot.
There is a difference between a Pirate and Warez. Pirates resell stolen software, music, applications and goods. Warez tends to give it away so it's a can of worms to even attempt to answer it.
As one small example R2R tells you not to make money from Warez and support the developer, whereas Spotify tells to upload your music to make money and gives you next to nothing unless you get millions of streams and it's your property to start with - around 0.01%. So defining a Pirate these days is difficult.

EDIT - I reckon if the musicians of the world made a living like they did last century, they'd buy more and warez less.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Sep 21, 2021

Nil.
I guess more than 90% of people who use cracked software make home-made music, for self entertainment (as a hobby) or some petty jobs.
Some may sell something here and there on the internet, but it is very far from being professional grade or serious enough to make any impact on music industry.
For such impact you need serious composers, serious arrangers, serious performers, serious soloists, a serious studio, serious producers and serious advertising. If you can afford all of this, the money spent on software is just a trifle.

 

How different would be the music industry if piracy was not possible?

They buy a second yacht, have more parties and buy more stocks and more houses and keep paying the musicians badly.

 

It was a shitty OST anyway.

 

But spending money does not always pay off:

 

But i listen to stuff on high end headphones and high end full range monitors.
Who cares about the 1$ ear bud crowd, i am enjoying it so all the hard work producers did paid of, at least for people like me.

 

But this way it's far more profitable :Shure SM58 [$90] > Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 [$190] > $1000 PC > fictional $10000 of pirated DAW and software > mp3 > usually ear buds or $10 speakers, but who cares, really.

 

Last edited: Sep 21, 2021

The irony of piracy to me is that without it I would never have bought that many plugins. I would dare say: stop piracy, it's bad for my wallet!

 

We think we could say no, but we carry on as before. You would have to have at least 3 lives to play everything.
Tell me, are we really just "hunters and gatherers?"

 

Depends on what perspective you look from. There's many different canvases to look at human behavior: the evolutionary biologist could say we're hunter-gatherers in a modern setting; the psychologist could say we're compensating our feeling of lack of control; the criminologist could say we're criminals; the sociologist that we want to belong to a group of peers; ...

Pick your favorite flavor I'd say

 

much less music, and much less interesting music from a smaller range of voices

 

I would like to know what musical styles might have developed if computers had not become the dominant instrument of the last forty years.

 

it will be just like the analog days , the barrier of entry would be too high , watered down over produced pop music will just dominate

 

But those analog days too, were full of "piracy" , if I am not misunderstanding the meaning of "piracy" ...

As I understand the phrase.. “Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal”

Does that mean this applies to piracy too? (in terms of borrow)