Is it wrong to download illegaly?

yeah your right. Its amazing how disconnected the authorities are.

What do you think about how a music artist should make a living nowadays?

That's a good question and some bands, big and small aware of the way forward. I have a few albums from well established bands as well as new artists where they released their latest album for free on their website. Yeah the donation thing is really cool. Radiohead being the most prevalent, you could choose how much you wanted to pay it (or not). Live music has definitely increased in the last 10 years. I enjoy going out and paying £3 to see some random bank in town. Some of it is rubbish some of it isn't but it's enjoyable none the less. The live gig is on a massive surge and a lot of bands openly admit they don't care if people download their music as it spreads the word and more people will come to their shows. I saw Elbow live a few years back and said during the show that their new album was out and to buy it if you can afford it if not he didn't mind you downloading it. I don't think there is an excuse not to perform live shows now really, it is kind of expected of you as an artist. Your right about offering something special. Vinyl has also made a massive come back, with albums being released digitally and on vinyl, with no CD release which I think is great. The audio quality of an MP3 or Vinyl is far superior to CD anyway. A friend of mine spends loads of money of Vinyl, paying twice what the digital version costs sometimes. Also things like special box sets with books and photos are coming back. The only people really kicking off about it all is the big labels and bands.

How would you know if you could trust one site over another? I would imagine all filesharing sites would seem unfamiliar to me.

These kind of sites are run by geeks, normal types or school or university students. Not gangs of drug smugglers like some will have you believe. They run these sites and like any website they want it to work well and look nice. All the dodgy sites just look wrong if you know what I mean. No effort has gone it to make it, its just a mess of advertising mostly. For example if I do a search on google for "Soundgarden Superunknown download" The top results are all so called illegal file sharing sites. The results are 1: The pirate bay, the biggest most well know file exchange site. Can't be accessed directly in the UK 2: Is a result for Kickass Torrents. Also another massive site. If you look at that one you see its very well made, looks nice, there is useful information there. You can read comments about what other users think of these files and you can see a thumbs up or thumbs down rating for these files. There is also minimal advertising. 3: Is a link to Filestube. Here you see a mess off words and advertising. You can find what your looking for hear but your more likely to end up on a wild goose chase of advertising just following end less "click here to start your download" links. or "or just install this toolbar to access your download" links. All the rest of the first page results are relating to illegal downloading apart two Itunes links.

yeah your right. Its amazing how disconnected the authorities are.

What do you think about how a music artist should make a living nowadays?

That's a good question and some bands, big and small aware of the way forward. I have a few albums from well established bands as well as new artists where they released their latest album for free on their website. Yeah the donation thing is really cool. Radiohead being the most prevalent, you could choose how much you wanted to pay it (or not). Live music has definitely increased in the last 10 years. I enjoy going out and paying £3 to see some random bank in town. Some of it is rubbish some of it isn't but it's enjoyable none the less. The live gig is on a massive surge and a lot of bands openly admit they don't care if people download their music as it spreads the word and more people will come to their shows. I saw Elbow live a few years back and said during the show that their new album was out and to buy it if you can afford it if not he didn't mind you downloading it. I don't think there is an excuse not to perform live shows now really, it is kind of expected of you as an artist. Your right about offering something special. Vinyl has also made a massive come back, with albums being released digitally and on vinyl, with no CD release which I think is great. The audio quality of an MP3 or Vinyl is far superior to CD anyway. A friend of mine spends loads of money of Vinyl, paying twice what the digital version costs sometimes. Also things like special box sets with books and photos are coming back. The only people really kicking off about it all is the big labels and bands.

How would you know if you could trust one site over another? I would imagine all filesharing sites would seem unfamiliar to me.

These kind of sites are run by geeks, normal types or school or university students. Not gangs of drug smugglers like some will have you believe. They run these sites and like any website they want it to work well and look nice. All the dodgy sites just look wrong if you know what I mean. No effort has gone it to make it, its just a mess of advertising mostly. For example if I do a search on google for "Soundgarden Superunknown download" The top results are all so called illegal file sharing sites. The results are 1: The pirate bay, the biggest most well know file exchange site. Can't be accessed directly in the UK 2: Is a result for Kickass Torrents. Also another massive site. If you look at that one you see its very well made, looks nice, there is useful information there. You can read comments about what other users think of these files and you can see a thumbs up or thumbs down rating for these files. There is also minimal advertising. 3: Is a link to Filestube. Here you see a mess off words and advertising. You can find what your looking for hear but your more likely to end up on a wild goose chase of advertising just following end less "click here to start your download" links. or "or just install this toolbar to access your download" links. All the rest of the first page results are relating to illegal downloading apart two Itunes links.