"Property is theft" Proudhon.

(And that's a slogan that means something a bit more complicated than people sometimes think.)

I've been listening to music on the radio and TV and records all my life. Sometimes I record what I like and keep it, sometimes I buy the record or the tape. More often than not I buy these secondhand in charity shoops or boot fairs or jumble sales.

I honestly can't see why using computers to copy the music is particularly different. I suppose the quality of reproduction is a bit better, but it's been pretty good for the last 70m years or so anyway. My instinct is that, as with previous technological changes, the net effect will be that people making good music will get it more effectively into people's ears, and that this will mean they get more people wanting to hear them live, and sell more actual CDs or whatever.

How we use the technology is what matters. The same technology that gives us school buses gives us getaway catrsd for bank robbers. The same technology that would allow me to share songs I've made with friends on the other side of the world would allow people to deprive musicians of the money they need to have to get along in a society that still revolves round money and scarcity.

If we really wanted to make it better for live music, what would really help is some way of limiting the use of canned music in pubs and clubs and public places generally. It's that which makes it hard for ordinary musicians to make a living, far far more than kids listening to music they've copied off the radio or the net or wherever. And it deprives people of a chance to hear live music as a part of their daily life.