Quote Originally Posted by Miriel
Like I said, both sides aren't being accurate at all. No, illegal downloading isn't killing the industry, not at all. But at the same time, people who download music are insistent that they're not hurting the industry even a little bit which just isn't true. Both sides are being stupid.
The extremists are being stupid on both sides, and that's true of almost anything. I can see how downloading music may hurt some parts of the music industry, but I don't think that part of the music industry should even exist. Because, y'know it is "big evil corporations who charge too much for CDs". Would it be such a shame if Warner, Universal, Sony BMG, and EMI went belly up? Artists, even HUGE multiplatinum artists, often only get 2-3 percentage points from each album sold. The rest goes to the label, producers, manager, engineer, etc. You let a label set a tour up for you, they'll take most of the door too, and half of whatever your inital fee is just to play the venue. The place that most artists make most of thier money is the merch table. Most bands negotiate that stuff seperately, on their own, and since hats and t-shirts and other clothing and accessories are so cheap in bulk, artists can often get 75-80% of the gross profits.

I'd also like to point out the fact that neither the article, nor any of the posts in this thread prior to your's have claimed that music downloading is destroying or killing the music industry.
Please don't argue semantics, it's aggravating. Hurting, destroying, and killing are loosely synonymous.