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Who is harmed by piracy? Mostly billionaires. Individual artists and authors and whoever mostly do better when people are exposed to their work.

Who is harmed by the spotify/youtube/netflix model? Mostly artists and creators, who used to be able to make a medium sized amount of money from direct sales, and who are now reduced to a very small amount of money (or to negative amounts of money) by streaming services. (There are exceptions! They are exceptional.)

We have a problem right now where it's not a choice between Piracy and Paying artists, it's a choice between Piracy and Paying Spotify/Netflix, et al. Both ways, artists lose!

There was a time in the recent past where widespread piracy resulted in a direct material increase in revenue, either from Ticket Sales, or Merch Sales, or Physical media sales.

This is rarely the case anymore.

Artists get ~half or less of what you spend on their tickets (because ticketmaster turns a $60 ticket in to a $160 ticket after fees. This is hardly an exaggeration, and the reason I'm not going to see bright eyes next year in spite of the fact that I could easily afford the base ticket price) and venues even horn in on merch sales, demanding a commission from the artists for the privilege of selling merch.

It's absurd.

We, as listeners, watchers, and consumers can help!