I've recently been thinking about this topic, and I just don't know really how to feel about downloading music. I hate to do it, I HATE downloading music. If I had my way, I'd be buying all my music, whatever the price, but where I live, I just can't, and having no money most of the time is also a problem. I know that's no excuse, but just hear me out. I believe that a band deserves the right to be paid for their musical creations, most of the time, that is, which is why I feel like shit doing it. Bands put in a shit load of work to make this music, and then when I steal it it just puts me to shame. At the same time I'm feeling this, I can use downloading to listen to my favorite thing ever: underground Metal (ALL metal is considered underground where I live). There are two conflicting opinions here in my brain. I feel like shit doing it, but when it's done, I essentially have my favorite thing. It's a really weird feeling, but recently it's really been bothering me. My question is, how do you all feel about downloading and/or purchasing music? Does it bother you or is it just another thing?

Personally, as I metioned before, I feel the same as you have stated regarding downloading music, I only download if it is sanctioned by the band for whatever reason, I was thinking about this the other day also. To me part of my metal life growing up (before downloading etc) was saving money, sometimes making a 50mile journey by bus (a big journey when you were young!) to go to some of the better record stores,a great sense of excitement blindley bying a few albums and could not wait to get home and listen to what you bought, it was an expensive hobby but I would do it all again as opposed to downloading, used to get a great thrill going through the second hand record stores racks to see what was hidden in the endless piles off records,cds cassettes etc. My personal opinion is that anybody can claim to be a metal head and supporter of the scene, but I think it is a false claim if all your collection has been legally downloaded, as stated the bands are getting ripped off to fuck. I suspose I am lucky as I have good record stores near home still, but using the likes of ebay, amazon you can not go wrong in finding nearly any release, it just takes time to find some great bargains.