Saw this story the other day

Christian teens are stealing Jesus music.

They’re doing it through Internet downloads and CD burnings at nearly the same rate as secular music is being pirated, according to a new study done for the Gospel Music Association.

The findings were a jolt to many in the evangelical music industry, who expected churchgoing teens to be mindful of the commandment that states, “Thou shalt not steal.”

“I’m surprised and disappointed that the behavior isn’t that ardently different between Christians and non-Christians,” said John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association, the leading trade group for evangelical music.

But not everybody thinks the pirating is a bad thing. After all, some church leaders say, isn’t getting the Gospel out more important than getting paid? How can it be wrong if it saves souls?

“That’s convoluted logic,” said Barry Landis, president of Word Records, a major Christian label. “You would never steal Bibles to give them away. You shouldn’t steal Christian music to give away either.”

I’ve been downloading a lot of music lately (eek) but I don’t have much of a problem with it. If I like it, I buy it, if I don’t, I don’t listen to it. I still buy a reasonable amount of CD’s, if anything more than I otherwise would, and my tastes are more diverse. My opinion of the RIA and RIAA are at an all time low, and I’m not sympathetic to their “Your killing our industry” arguements (CD sales are going UP you idiots!) but nor am I sympathetic to the “Arists only get $1 so why buy it?” arguement (uhh, to support the retailers, promoters, marketers & the band), so I still buy music.

However I imagine this would be a big issue in youth ministry, I was always a bit of a pirate back in the day (arr!) but the joys of $$ and growing up have changed a lot of that. But have others had to think through the issue for themselves, or for the teens/others they’re ministering too?

I don’t download music. Were Apple to make their online store available, I’d be tempted to purchase a few songs, but otherwise I just get CDs (and I get very few, I don’t have time to listen to much music, and my musical tastes of late tend to be dominated by The Wiggles and Hi-5 ;-) ).

I tend to think the RIA and RIAA are their own worst enemy. I am not alone in thinking that CDs are not good value for money. For example, I could buy a DVD containing 29 of Kylie Minogue’s “greatest hits” for about $30.00, and it includes all the film clips. Or, I could spend $36.00 and buy the double CD of her “greatest hits” (34 of them this time, although a number are “remixes"). The sound quality on music DVD is meant to be superior, and you get the video and sound. Which should I choose? That’s a tricky choince. Let’s face it, the costs involved in producing CDs have gone down considerably since they were invented. In the case of CDs, most of the time I feel like I’m being ripped off.

As for Christian music, I think the responsibility falls on both sides. It is wrong for Christians to steal music. It is also wrong, I think, for supposedly Christian labels and artists to ask the same inflated prices as the secular. IIRC, Keith Green had a policy of selling his records for whatever the buyer could afford! (Now I’m really showing my age...)

...

Or, heaven forbid, journalists.

No seriously, don’t pirate music because it stops artists receiving the payment they rightly deserve for their work, and if we all just pirated music, musicians wouldn’t sell any CD’s

No it doesn’t - they get (more) of my money. What say you then, o font of knowledge, o knocker-upper of notches?

[quote author="Enkidu"]I tend to think the RIA and RIAA are their own worst enemy.

Yes, its no justification, but its a bit hard to take when companies like Sony sell music, sell blank CD’s, sell CD burners, sell mini-disc players, sell MP3 players AND support the RIAA’s attempts to sue its customers.

Just on Enkidu’s post, DVD audio is a mixed bag.  A standard DVD doesn’t have as good quality as a CD.  it might be surround mixed (which sounds cool) but the actual music isn’t recorded onto the disc with as much sound information (owing to the lower bitrate of Dolby Digital).

DVD Audio discs are a defferent kettle of fish.. They use all of the disc for sound info, and therefore have a higher bitrate and wider range than CD.  the catch is that there’s competing formats and you home player probably won’t play them.

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.6

If you download music as MP3 and then burn it, the sound quality is poorer.  This is most noticable at high volumes, or on good systems (high volume on your car CD is where you’ll hear the difference).  If you buy DVDs for the music, you’ll notice the same loss in quality, assuming your home theatre is good enough.  For the moment, if you want best music performance, buy a CD.

Rowen, I also found this:

The range of hearing for a healthy young person is 20 to 20,000 hertz. The hearing range of humans gets worse with age. People lose the ability to hear sounds of high frequency as they get older. The highest frequency that a normal middle-aged adult can hear is only 12-14 kilohertz. Also, the hearing range for men worsens more quickly than the hearing range for women. This means that women will have the ability to hear notes of higher pitch than men of the same age do.

So once you get to my age the fact that it began as an mp3 doesn’t matter any more. It also means I can save money and just buy cheap audio equipment!

[quote author="Enkidu Jones"]
So once you get to my age the fact that it began as an mp3 doesn’t matter any more. It also means I can save money and just buy cheap audio equipment!

Lol.  the advantages of SACD is that it goes much higher than 20kHz, which begs the question: why bother if only dogs can enjoy the difference :)

Apparently for the purist, the higher notes are still there in the music when heard live, for instance, and the interaction of the high notes with the audible ones affects the feel and sound of the music.  I tend to accept this, but I also understand that there’s no way my HT setup is ever going to get to 60kHz :)

But MP3 is different.  burn a low bitrate MP3 (96kbps) to CD and crank it in your car.  You’ll hear the difference.  It’s hard to describe, but even to my plebian ears I can pick the difference twixt a PCM CD and an MP3 cd.  It’s like the difference between TIFF and JPG .  Except in MP3 you can hear the artifacts rather than see them :)