In today’s culture, it is common for people to seek out pirated copies of movies, books, or records and that is not okay. There are a lot of side effects to this habit and most of it applies to aspiring musical artist.

Let’s take a small trip down to whatever store someone would buy music from. Maybe you are looking for a new record from John Doe or Jane Doe, so you find their CD and see that it costs $15 or $20. What do you do then? You hold it in your hands and think about what else you can do with your $20. You can eat out with some friends, go rock climbing for a day, buy a bunch of candy, pay for those concert tickets that you wanted, or you can get a new phone case. But what happens when you use that money to pay for that record in your hands?

The money goes back into their production. They can afford to keep making music that you like and they can afford to make it better. Jane Doe would put that money towards a better microphone, a better keyboard, better production staff, and maybe even more marketing for themselves. Now, to better empathize with Jane Doe, lets put ourselves in similar shoes as them.

Lets say at one time you wanted to be a photographer. You do good work, but your restricted. With your limits you still manage to put out the best work you can and you think that you are ready to start putting yourself out there. But there’s a problem: everyone that would need pictures opted for a fancy Instagram hashtag and their friends’ and family’s phone cameras. Where does that leave you? It leaves you in the same position as the artist that has their music pirated instead of paid for.

It means that Jane Doe will not be able to support herself on the money she is getting from her music alone, so she has to pick up a day job. She then begins to find that she just does not have the time to make music anymore. From there, she drops her music career because she wants to be able to sustain herself and leaves you wondering why your favorite artist stopped making music.

This could happen to anyone in any field (painters, drawers, photographers, craftsmen, designers). When people refuse to financially back the things they love and care about, they disappear or they have cheaper, crappier alternatives replace them.

So, it is up to you, the music listener or art appreciator, to really pay for the things you want and to not find it online. People pay for things that they want and even though it may be a little bit expensive at times, it is because of supply and demand. All artist do everything a little bit different, so please pay the premium, buy the artist’s music, and for goodness’s sake refrain from pirating anything.