Fabio ManganielloDo you remember when audio cassettes were seen as tools for piracy? When the industry used to drill in our brains the idea that if we were recording stuff from the radio to a cassette we were killing music as an art?
Guess what? Musicians actually loved the idea, they even released cassettes with a blank B side so you could record anything you liked on it.
And millions of kids who recorded their favourite songs or radio shows in the 1980s and early 1990s didn't kill the music.
On the contrary, the music industry itself ended up killing the music, by forcing artists to "play it safe" and repeat the same formulas again and again, so the cigar smoking capitalists wouldn't take too many risks on their investment into the new boyband.
"Don't do that, or you'll kill X" most likely won't kill X as a form of art, nor the artists. It'll just hurt those who have no interest in X as a form of art, who make profit out of somebody else's talent, and who want to have nobody pushing them to take new risk to modernize the industry.
For us, music is a form of art and communication. For them, it's just another mean of making money.
Piracy was, is and will always be a civic right.
Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the Music Industry Waged War on the Cassette Tape During the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back
The first time I saw the infamous Skullcassette-and-Bones logo was on holiday in the UK and purchased the very un-punky Chariots of Fire soundtrack. It was on the inner sleeve. “Home Taping Is Killing Music” it proclaimed. It was? I asked myself. “And it’s illegal” a subhead added.
Blank Frank