Illegal Music Downloading

Downloading MP3 and MP4 music content has been a controversial topic for as long as I can remember. As a twenty year old college student I download music because of its convenience. It is easy to hop on the computer, open up a program and download a song. Having to get in the car and drive to the closest Wal-mart or CD outlet store is a tremendous hassle only to buy one song. These days there is a wide variety of programs that allow users to download music, movies and other media all from one program. However, these programs are illegal. Although they give users the opportunity to pay for their product the money that should go to the band usually does not. Programs such as Limewire, BearShare and Frostwire do just this. Like most people, I do not pay for the music I download. I use Limewire and although I am given the option to pay monthy for the program I do not buy any music I download. However I do buy my favorite musicians CD's to show my support for the group or soloist. Although I am breaking the law by not paying for most music I own I still do it anyways. I feel as though these musicians are being paid enough money as it is and if I added up all the music I've ever illegally downloaded I'd have spent easily $9,000. Some programs like iTunes allow users to pay per download instead of a monthly fee. Although 99 cents seems like it is a great deal the average media library will be worth more than expected. This concept is certainly a double edged sword. Although the artists are not loosing a lot of money from songs being leaked, they still loose a piece of their income and more money has to come out of their pocket to pay producers and studios to make their tracks. Only a percentage of each song goes to the artist or artists and the other goes to their labels, recording studios etc. But, if we all paid for every song we owned for the minuscule price of 99 cents our music libraries would quickly become worth more than a car. My proposition is that the monthly or yearly fee's for such programs are a better idea to secure that everybody gets their money and that every song is appropriately paid for. The money should go to the same people it would go to if one would buy a CD from the store. Everyone gets paid and everyone's happy. Although users would still be frustrated that they have to pay a monthly or yearly fee people who download massive amounts of music do not have to worry about spending thousands of dollars and people who download less are paying a fair amount without robbing the musicians.