It’s come to my attention that music is good. But you know what’s better? Free music.

To clarify for my haters: I am not arguing the legality of free downloads. I know that it’s illegal; I’m just not convinced that it’s wrong. Maybe in the eyes of some (i.e., the law) it is, but I disagree.

I’m also not saying artist’s shouldn’t be paid for their work. But maybe profit isn’t really that big of an issue: a paper published in Feb. 2007 to the Journal of Political Economy actually found that file sharing has no negative impact on CD sales.

In today’s world, technology is fast and it’s global and it’s changing everything. You can’t expect to run a company the same way you would ten years ago. So – as hard is it may be – the music industry has got to change. People aren’t going to stop downloading just because they might get sued, and the lawsuits aren’t doing any good. Not for the companies (who look like jerks) or the people being sued (lawsuits generally suck) or – I believe – for the music industry.

There is no quicker way to diminish the artistic integrity of music then by suggesting that it is a product. While that may be true, I’d like to imagine that when Rihanna is singing about her umbrella, money doesn’t play a factor at all. People don’t like music because it’s a product; they like it because it’s a part of culture. Musicians are literally manufacturing culture, and it’s hard to sell something that’s freely flowing, thanks to the magic that is file-sharing.

So maybe we need to start looking at music as a service instead of a product.

What I’m suggesting is not easy and it’s not quick. These are paradigm shifts. I’m talking about a consumer revolution. There is no snappy way to revamp a system that is – quite frankly – astonishingly outdated.

The labels aren’t gonna do it though; not while they can still make money off of it. They’ll continue on, archaic and atrocious, until the last cent has been wrung from the lifeless corpses of the Big Four (Warner; EMI; Sony; Universal). If a system won’t change for you, maybe you should change for it.

Download your songs, and welcome to the future.

(Note: not that I’d do anything of that nature. Please don’t sue me.)