From: "Per Lindgren" <yello909@telia.com>
Meier: We've had all that before. People thought music cassettes were going to wreck the industri. It wasn't true at all - it was a wonderful method of disseminating music. The music industry will go bust because of its own stupidy, not because of downloads. It's a reactionary industry that's stopped developing emerging artist.
A mostly honest guy like me feels a bit guilty when downloading songs from the Internet. But, on the other hand, I also think that the record companies deserve this. Ever since bands like New Kids on the Block, the industry has only been trying to maximise profits - the artistic side has no significance in the decision making process anymore. The managers of the big companies could just as well be selling shoes. So in a way I feel that the big companies (not the little ones) deserve these problems. Even if they do badly, popular music as an art form might actually do better. That thought helps my conscience quite a bit. If the well-marketed people who can't even sing, like the idols-winners, disappear from the market with the big record companies, the really good and hard-working bands that take their art seriously have more room, not less, in the market. Jussi