thirteenth

Do I consider myself as a bad person if I download music from the internet? No I don't, surprise!?
I grew up in finland, in a middle-class suburb, went to average middle-class schools and did (in 70's standards) average middle-class boy stuff with my friends. One of the things was to buy C-cassettes, go to my friend's home, since he had a record player (and Stereo/HiFi-VCR & Videogame & C64 - I did not :D). I used to get the albums recorded to my cassettes (TDK is still up and running). The albums my friend or his family had or the ones I borrowed from the local public library. The libraries, btw, are one of the most important things available. Hopefully they stay free of charge everywhere! Back then I used to have quite broad taste of music, at least thinking about t now, from Dire Straits to Hanoi Rocks plus everything else in the middle and both sides ;). Since nobody told me what was cool to listen and what was not. And, thanks to my friends, it was a serious fun to sit in a darkened living room and fall in to the musical world of Love Over Gold. Or to the finnish broadcast company (YLE) version of Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy. Doesn't happen too often nowadays. The actual musical experience is lost between zillions of distractions. And the music is the background noice everywhere. For me it's kind of sad to loose the actual meaning of the music that way. Does it make Live-music more valuable, I think it does. And me, myself, I fill my working days background with music, definitely.
But the whole point in here was the thing that I haven't been paying for my music before, mainly. Other than that, the fact that if you can get something for free from the web, why shouldn't you take it? So it is ok.
Or at least partly. Of course I would be more attached to the music, if I would have to do at least something for it, like walk to the library, borrow a CD and then rip it at home after I've been listening weither it's ok or not. Nowadays the music is so easy to get that you just do it, constantly, without paying too much attentition to it at all. So getting the music has fallen in to the same slot of background noice than the music itself. Sort of greedy mix between laziness and hoarding...
And no, I'm not concidering myself being a better man while doing this. Not at all. The whole society is so easy nowadays, that you can just slip downstream with everybody else without paying attention to anything. And there's the value for myself being tested. Do I have enough will power to create some countermovement actions to my personal life to fight against the boring life inside this world? (London's Burning with boredom now). To activate myself to actally DO something for the things I'm keen to and not just wait for them to swim in my Net-For-The-Torrents :D.

And after all, I'm still not the right guy to judge am I good or bad...

fourth

I've seen some sort of shimmering light (Thank you, Eagles - Not from the light but the expression) now. At least some destinations for the future of Jens is now defined. There shall be free music and challenging music, nothing more. And nothing less.
Nowadays it seems that everything is just a merchandised, easy swallowed crap and the connection between the sold music and the creator of the music is really thin, if it even exists. And I'm not talking about the band here yet.
I find myself being sick and tired to the fact that everything, not only music, is tightly tied against the marketing and money. The whole system in here is leading everybody to the direction to buy more more and once more. Even the counteraction -movements are merchandised. The capitalist will is to get money out of everything and, as it seems, it gets what it wants. Not enough, though.
Everything in the web is free to read, but the marketing is still there. In fact, if I wanted, I could try to start to earn the money out of this Blog. Which does not actually scare me but it is BORING. And wrong from my point of view.
Be like everybody else so that we can easily focus the marketing targets to you.

And what about the 3rd world countries, then. This whole big money making machine seems to see them as producers, cheap producers, of the stuff that can be sold in the 'modern' and 'civilized' world and paying less to make more. Even the fair trade (which is great and valuable way of thinking) brings more money to the shop owners than to the actual producers.

Sold Out. Suckers :D