You appear to have a typo in your post. That should read "I stole $6,000 worth of music last year."

Yep, definitely something to be proud of.

Edit: Hey, I just realized that dollar amount would be enough to bump you up to "felony" from "petty larceny." You've hit the big leagues, dude!

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Man up.

EVERYTHING! Cause, you know, Wal Mart is so rich and razors cost so much, I just take them.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

some cd's in this format already exist. I purchased an excellent cd this year (howie Day) and while I was able to copy it onto my laptop so I can listen to it at work without hauling the CD around, I can't format it to go on my mp3, which pisses me off frankly.

Catz

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

convert nearly any file to MP3 format.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

a free download first to see if it's gonna grow on me or if it's crap i'm gonna be sick of in a week.

If I like it, I pay and legally download it. If there are enough good songs on an album, I buy the album.

It's a shame that the record industry hasn't learned from Creed, who put their entire albums online for fans to download...their albums both went multi-platinum with almost no record company promotion budget, mainly due to fan support and word of mouth.

If an artist puts out a good album, I'm gonna want to own the album instead of downloading it. I want to have the entire thing, and I want the lyrics, I want the entire package.

But 90% of the albums out there have 2 good songs and 9 filler songs, and I'm not going to purchase the album as a result. If record companies woudl voluntarily start posting this stuff and letting fans listen to it before they bought it, there would be a lot less downloading going on, I suspect.

Catz

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

Most bands suck. Real bad. If they put the songs out nobody would buy the CD! I listen to those 30 second to 1 minute clips on Amazon and other sites to see how the whole album sounds. I also have XM Radio, which is awesome BTW, and I hear lots of songs on there that I ultimately end up downloading for less than a $1.00.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

Very good way to be introduced to good new songs/bands, and you can select from a variety of genres.

Let's see, I buy alot of CDs though, in the past two weeks I've bought 3 or 4. I like them all alot, too.

Catz

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

has hundreds of channels, all commercial free. Clear Channel it's not! They even have an unsigned bands channel. I'm not sure what you are supposed to do if you really like a song!

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

i still buy CD's - but when your looking at $80 for 6 albums etc...you start to think it's not worth it.

they shouldn't overcharge on music so much. i mean even gettign them of apple.com is a pound a go, thats extortion! esp when the actual artists get like "% or LESS of the sale.

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I am a stone, I do not move. I take my time, I let him come closer. I have only one bullet. I aim at his eye. I do not tremble, I have no fear.

If I were in college today, I'd probably have a hard drive full of downloaded songs, too. My taped collection of other people's albums was second to none, and each of them represented a theft. Yet I didn't feel very guilty about it.

Just realize that it IS theft -- nothing more, nothing less. It's an ethically dubious stopgap for people with limited funds. If you can afford it, buy it. And once you can afford to buy all the music you want, do so.

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Man up.