[TheSlayer]

(01-03-2015 04:12 AM)placer Wrote:  

Before Napster came around, they were everywhere. Within a few short years, they have mostly all gone bankrupt.

While the rest of your post is interesting and the morality of downloading torrents can definitely be debated, the part I am quoting is absolutely wrong. Napster/torrents/file-sharing has nothing to do with the demise of record stores. Record stores would have died a painful death with OR without Napster. iTunes was the real game-changer in that regard. The ability to buy a single and not the entire album changed the industry. More importantly, it's not iTunes or internet piracy that killed record stores, it's the move away from physical media and the move towards digital content. Even without torrents people would not be buying records/CDs and would be at home downloading music from legal platforms such as iTunes or Google Play.

Saying that Napster killed record stores is like saying torrents killed Blockbuster. No, Blockbuster died because Netflix could provide the same service for a much cheaper price AND they got into the streaming business which is how people consume most of their media now.

Blaming file-sharing or torrents for killing record stores/rental is a little funny. Paracelsus explained it perfectly, it's the internet to blame. Most people prefer to get content straight to their smartphones/laptops and don't want to go to a store to buy physical media. Even the last few Blu-Rays I have bought were ordered from Amazon not from Best Buy or some video store.