Piracy - A necessary evil?

Well nothing better to discuss on, than Piracy. Its everywhere but yet we would focus ourselves to the music here. There would be supporters to it and there are some of you who might think it to be wrong. Lets focus on a case of the band, Linkin Park. We have all heard about it and as per my tenure with the western bands right from the Pop era to now. I think these are the guys who have turned it on its head with popularity. I remember people talking about Backstreet Boys back in school but if i go by my observational stats then Linkin Park's popularity take alone in India is not far less than a Himesh Reshamiya track. If we delve a little deep to discover how these people made it big on the billboards, there would be lot of facts that you would not want to believe. They started of promoting their songs on the internet far before they were actually signed to Warner Brothers. This was a strategy taken up by them where in they would go to community rooms on the net and would ask people to listen to their songs which were of course free for download. They took out their EP titled Hybrid Theory, re-recording some of the stuffs they had for free download. It worked for them big time. Even before the real hybrid Theory was released, Linkin Park already had a strong enough fan base that would make HT a phenomenon without a single note played on the vinyl. People say that HT would have sold double of what it eventually sold, had their been no piracy of the record. But to see the other side of the coin, its something which really took Linkin Park from being a band from Agoura Hills, California to a household name in remote corners of India and other countries.

Hence we can see the evil side and the divine side of piracy. Like it or not, if you are a band and your songs are pirated, take it as a compliment of your popularity. Your revenues would be hampered but take it as a case where you sell out your CD to 100 people who know about your band and to 1000 people who have copied it, you still stand a win win scenario. Its debatable and i completely agree that if your music is not good, do vote against piracy. No offense intended!