Robin Pecknold, of the band Fleet Foxes shares his views on the state of the music scene with the BBC. He believes that the rise of illegal downloading has been good for music, helping to inspire and inform creative new acts.
Pecknold explains:
“As much music as musicians can hear, that will only make music richer as an artform,”
“I think we’re seeing that now with tons of new bands that are amazing, and are doing way better music now than was being made pre-Napster.”
…I’ve downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records – why would I care if somebody downloads ours? That’s such a [...]

Two interesting data points have popped up that are pointing towards a radical change in music acquisition and listening habits.
Crunch Gear has presented the idea that actual music ownership is headed for obsolescence. They argue that with the advent of ubiquitous, always-on fast internet and robust streaming music services, the need for having local copies of songs will become a thing of the past. Why have to pay for and store gigabytes of audio files when for a low monthly fee, you could (theoretically) have streaming access to all the world’s music at your fingertips?
As far-fetched as it sounds, this [...]

Today the largest and most important court case in file-sharing history starts in Stockholm, Sweden. The trial against The Pirate Bay is expected to be followed by countless others around the world. TorrentFreak explains:
Almost three years have passed since The Pirate Bay’s servers were seized by the Swedish police.
In the years since the raid a lot has changed. For one, The Pirate Bay grew to become the largest BitTorrent tracker on the Internet and one of the most prominent sites in the world (as of right now the site is ranked 102nd largest with 25 million unique users). Some estimate [...]