A Short Personal Plea and a Warning! Don't Be a Freeloader!
- Dave Harper
- Apr 23, 2021
- 1 min read
A Short Personal Plea and a Warning! Don't be a freeloader! These days it is very easy to listen to your favorite band's music for free or for a very low cost. However, when you enjoy a band's music, please make sure you buy their albums and/or buy some of that band's merchandise. And that goes for all bands that you like. Make sure you do something to help financially support your favorite musicians. Like the rest of us, they have to eat and pay their bills, which they can't do if too many of their fans are freeloaders. So crack open your wallet and buy a CD, a T-Shirt, or whatever. If you can afford it, buy a ticket to a virtual concert that some bands have been doing during the pandemic. For example, the band Nightwish is doing a virtual concert in late May. And buy a concert ticket when your favorite bands come to a town near you, which will hopefully be in the not too distant future! If your favorite bands can't make a living from being musicians, then don't be surprised when they quit performing and making new music, and start finding something else to do to support themselves.
I just read A Short Personal Plea and a Warning! Don’t Be a Freeloader! and liked how you called out the easy access to free music and reminded folks that artists still need support to make great work. It made me think back to a semester when I was juggling heavy readings and really struggled with logic and argument essays in my humanities courses, even in my online Statistics class, so I signed up for extra discussion groups to stay motivated. That balance between giving back and staying committed to learning felt a lot like your plea for valuing creativity and effort.