Information is not knowledge
Knowledge is not wisdom
Wisdom is not truth
Truth is not beauty
Beauty is not love
Love is not music
Music is THE BEST...


Zappa - Joe's Garage

Would it really be so bad if there were no money to be made in music? What would happen?

Music would be a calling, not a career. Musicians might have something to sing about besides broken hearts.

Then again... I might be an idealist in most respects, but if you steal my guitar I'm afraid I would have to break all your fingers.

Forget morals and ethics for a moment and just answer the above question -- what would happen?

For great musicians, music is a full-time pursuit. If no one could make a living at it, the only music we would ever hear would be made by part-time amateurs like me...and who wants to listen to that?

Bottom line: you get what you pay for.

Personally, I'm happy to support musicians who, in return, give me back music that moves me and inspires me to be a better musician myself.

I'm with you on the finger-breaking thing, though. This incident wasn't some generaton-gap thing. Nobody of any generation believes they have a "right" to take someone's instrument and not give it back!

This guy was was just yanking the OP's chain, as well as openly disrespecting him in public -- very uncool. I'll lay you odds he wouldn't have acted that way towards someone who looked like they could kick his arse. Either he's a thug, an idiot, a sociopath, or some combination of the three.

To put it plainly, no. Aside from all the sentimental and philosophical things musicians invest in most cases a lot of money in their trade and it is unfair and morally wrong to expect it for free. 
 
Until musical instruments and equipment become free, then music shouldnt be. 
 
You wouldn't ask a bricklayer to build a wall for free because "rocks and stuff are everywhere" so why should musicians expect any less? 
 
Music in its essence is free, when we play people hear it whether we want them to or not if they're in range. However especially in this case music may "be free" but the equipment to produce it is not! 
 
What he says may hold.merit but why he said it is not. He was a douche, and childish. 

I liked Spaceduck's music. Wonder what happened to him.

wow, a zombie thread
 
 
come back to life....
 
8 years later!
 
8 years has passed, 
since this question was asked.
 
if ART in music form,
was going to be FREE, universally speaking,
would it not have happened by now?
foolish question.
 

The guitar thief in the OP sounds like someone who had until that point been shielded from reality - I doubt whether he'd ever had to work for a living. Hopefully by this time he's been mugged by reality and grown up.

Kev must have become truly discouraged, he hasn't been around in over a year. That, or he's graduated to kev2222222222.

bitflipper
Kev must have become truly discouraged, he hasn't been around in over a year. That, or he's graduated to kev2222222222.

Dean Roddey hasn't been seen for 2 years either...these zombie threads are a little depressing.

Spaceduck
You know the logical solution to the whole mp3 piracy problem. We need to up the ante on music quality. If we shift to a super hi quality format like DVD-a, complete with amazing artwork and full color booklets like in the old days, then no self respecting kid will settle for a crappy mp3.

At least that's how it was when I grew up with cassette piracy. Sure, some kids would float some muffled, poor quality cassette copies around school. But if you really liked the music, you went out and bought the album so you could lie on the floor and stare at the album art while listening to glorious hifi. Kids today are missing out on that because mp3 is the industry standard. And album art? Who bothers with that anymore?

Basically I'm outlining the law of capitalism. You put out a product. It is imitated & cloned. So you distinguish yourself by putting out a better product. A few bands tried this with interactive CD-ROM albums, and I think that was a great idea (David Bowie, Yes come to mind). But for some reason that petered out.

 
Man I miss doing that.  I have the SACD of Pink Floyd Dark side of the moon.  Occasionally when no one is home, I crank my surround system (sadly it only goes to 10). and lay in the middle of the floor and listen to the whole thing in the dark.  It is an amazing experience.
 
Sadly with the way mp3s are today, the concept of listening to an "album" is lost.  You just go from one artist to another with no continuity.
 
I also miss those days when the wave form is not a solid black line and music actually had dynamics.  Just purchased a Bonnie Raitt CD from 1991 that was remastered.  I think I will use that as my new reference along with Steely Dan's Aja.
 

...If no one could make a living at it, the only music we would ever hear would be made by part-time amateurs like me...and who wants to listen to that?

Music is much, much older than the concept of music as a profession. Musicians have really only been able to make a decent living at it for about 50 years. Even the likes of Mozart and Beethoven had to bum off rich people and give piano lessons to their kids.
 
So how did music thrive the previous millennia? People did it because they wanted to, not because it was a path to riches. With big money came pretty models pretending to be musicians, and other corporate-sponsored poseurs. Before money: Muddy Waters. After money: Kanye West.
 
Honestly, I could be content filling my MP3 player with the labors of part-time amateurs. There's an amazing amount of it out there, some good, some not so good - but much of it better than Justin Bieber (a noted professional).