Confessions of a free Music downloader

The problem is that I am going to go to the special level of hell reserved for child molesters,people who talk at the theater and those who download free music .
Me, and every single other teenager who has access to an over-priced MP3 player and the internet. It’s like nose-picking. Everybody does it.

I started when I was about fourteen, when my buddy called me up and said,
‘Dude, you heard the new Ashanti single?’ I said, ‘No, I was going to buy it,
but it was either that or a Legolas poster. Guess who won?’ And she said, ‘Okay, listen. I’m gonna tell you something, it’ll change your life. But keep it on the low-down, and if you get any computer viruses,tell you parents you caught your little sister looking at porn.’

‘I am positively quivering with anticipation,’ I said to my buddy. ‘Do tell!’‘Okay,’ my buddy whispered conspiratorially into the phone. ‘It’s called Kazaa.’ Well, that was just the end of me. No more browsing through hip record stores in Bondi. Good bye, future CD collection. Hello, Illegal music downloading! And I haven’t bought a CD since.

I’m going through my iTunes list, and the Top Most Played Song is a song called Orange, by the Dandy Warhols. I don’t even like that song, but someone in the family must because it’s been played like, one thousand, five hundred and three times since I downloaded it from Limewire in 2005. Along with four of their other albums.

As I write this, I’m listening to Gone For Good, by the Shins. Got all of their
albums, too. And Elliot Smith’s. And Radiohead’s. Portishead’s, Bright Eyes (don’t blame me, I was fourteen and he’s a good lyricist.) Buckley’s, Gorillaz’s… And I didn’t pay a cent. For any of it. Why should I? Music should be for free, like love. And air. And the musicians only spend the money of DRUGS, anyway. I don’t want to be supporting their drug habits, I have my own to attend to, God.

But what if, because of our financial boycott, the musicians stop taking drugs and
the quality of their music flounders in the pit of mediocrity that is the music industry? Maybe I do want to support their drug habits? Oh god. I’m starting to see the light. I should have paid my $9.99 AU for Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm three years ago. I have single-handedly destroyed Rock n’ Roll. Damn.

Special Hell, here I come.