Reciprocal recently revealed that MP3s are slowly but surely cutting into music sales. While many people might scream otherwise, this makes perfect sense to me. Why buy a whole album for two songs you like when you can download only the songs you like for nothing?

Granted, it may be more convenient to drive to the record store instead of downloading a tune, decoding it to play in your CD player and then burning it onto a CD but a lot of people are willing to jump through the hoops instead of paying.

This creates a real problem, though: who's buying music CDs? Someone's got to hop in her or his car, drive to the store, hack the crowds and bring a CD home. Only then can it be ripped and shared.

Let's be realistic here. If everybody was hooked up to the Internet and we all had cable, T3 or DSL connections, we'd all be downloading our music.

That is, until no one sees any reason to purchase the CD in the first place. Then where would we be? No one would buy CDs. No one would rip the tracks and no new music would be available on the Web. Kind of sucks don't you think?

Don't get me wrong; I think Napster and MP3 web sites and software products are great. There's nothing better than sharing.

What must be considered, however, is that we can't all be freeloaders. Someone's got to buy the original to make a copy. Someone has to be the fall guy (or girl).

We could, of course, just rely on the die-hards that buy the albums anyway. They like the band enough to buy the album and rip it for others. The problem is that some of these folks may start to think that they're being used. They pay for the CD and someone else gets a free ride.

When MP3s first started making waves, trading and bartering was the normal way to do business. You'd trade two tracks from an album you owned for two tracks from an album you didn't. Everybody was happy because everybody was giving something. The spirit of this lives on in Napster. You can share a folder on your hard drive if you want others to access your collection.

I suspect, though, that there are many folks out there who help themselves to whatever they want at the All-You-Can-Download MP3 smorgasbord and give nothing in return. It's easy to do this. No one knows whether you're sharing files or not. No one knows whether you ripped the songs on your hard drive or just downloaded them.

This is unfortunate. Eventually there will be way more people downloading than sharing. The people who do give a crap about buying, ripping and sharing music will feel cheated and step out of the scene leaving everyone else high and dry.

So, to keep the MP3s flowing, buy a CD once in a while and share what you have. The MP3 community will be much better off in the long run.

Copyright © 2000 Stephen Van Esch All Rights Reserved

Stephen Van Esch is a writer and instructional designer living near Toronto, Canada. He is the owner and CEO of the Text Pound (http://www.textpound.com).

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