Popular Culture Review 30.2
the most part , back in the golden days of the record industry , neither the bands nor their record companies paid much attention to our underground practice of analog tape sharing . Moreover , some bands like the Grateful Dead�and , ironically , Metallica�to this day openly encourage their fans to create and share bootleg tapes of their live performances . The difference between then and now is that , unlike second-generation , cassette-taped copies that rendered imperfect analog versions of a studio song , MP3 downloads ( or any contemporary version thereof ) deliver an exact digital dub . The digital copy thus serves as a perfect market substitute for bands ’ new records , depriving them of millions of sales that would otherwise serve to remunerate not only the artists and corporate record labels , but also countless other professionals who contribute to the music-making process , such as producers , sound engineers , studio musicians , photographers , graphic artists , and so forth .
Given the ability for bands and fans to create , copy , and coexist in the marketplace in the pre-digital world , most musicians did not seem terribly troubled by Napster ’ s business model at the outset . According to Gene Simmons , however , he “ went on record initially ” when all the file-sharing sites came onto the scene , proclaiming , “ This is robbery . This will kill the music industry . You will all be sorry ” (“ Gene Simmons ”). Because file sharing was not stopped at its onset by the corporate entities that owned the copyrights in the music , the practice span out of control . As such , the music industry is now faced with the phenomenon that fans�young and old�have been steadily enculturated to feel entitled to receive new songs created by their favorite bands for free . For a die-hard metalhead of the old days , it is a tough pill to swallow to think that fans would stab their rock and metal heroes in the backs by complaining about paying some money to en-
10