gonna be happy... buuuut...

would y'all consider it fair to trade your social media "likes" and "follows" and "retweets" and website "hits" and youtube "views," etc. for feeling ok about illegally downloading?

i know that sounds bad at first, but considering the fact that a lot of the money that artists receive (if not most of the money) comes from other ventures outside of albums sales.. marketing clout is measured in vastly different ways now and 4M twitter followers probably means more to most advertising agencies than a platinum record... that drives up asking prices for appearances, commercials, record deals, performance fees, etc. etc.... we give tokens of our fandom away for free and artists can and DO use that to make money... w/o giving us anything other than the chance to see them selling another (unrelated) product to us... now, that doesn't work for all artists... but all of that stuff could be just as helpful to struggling artists who need more exposure - maybe to get signed, maybe to book a gig across the country or overseas... and there was a time when marketing yourself used to cost money... our appreciation and tangible support actually makes money.. it's actually *heavily* involved in commerce...

i'm not even agreeing or disagreeing w/ what i just said - i don't even know if i've made up my mind on that... but it was just something i was thinking about and wanted to throw out for discussion..