Confession: I work for a company that specializes in fighting music piracy, but I have definitely illegally downloaded my fair share of music from torrents and file-sharing sites over the last decade. I’ve never been busted by the police, nor have I ever had my internet service cancelled, but I will admit to my parents having received one or twelve letters from Comcast threatening to throttle our connection speed if said piracy should persist. Thankfully, things never came to that, but looking back now, they easily could have, and I would have almost certainly been at fault. Something changed, however, and it wasn’t my income or my parents’ willingness to support my addiction to new music. It was my understanding of entertainment not only as an art form, but also as a business, and it was at that moment I understood the true impact piracy has on the industry at large.
The first album I remember downloading illegally is Hit The Lights’ Triple Crown Records debut, This Is A Stick Up, Don’t Make It A Murder. There are probably hundreds of songs or records I’ve downloaded over the years without having much excuse for doing so — aside from lack of money — but this album I specifically remember because it leaked well over a month in advance of the official street date. At that time, I was just reaching the end of my time in high school, and Hit The Lights had been the pop-punk soundtrack that fueled my last few years. The town I lived in had a venue, and it was through interning there I was first exposed to working in the industry. I would book shows and promote them throughout the county, including more than half a dozen performances featuring a then-unsigned Hit The Lights. They were some of the first traveling musicians I felt were like family, and whenever they came through town, they were free to sleep on my parents’ living room floor. When they played thirty or forty miles away, calls and texts would be exchanged so that we could spend time together while they were in the area. We were, for lack of a better description, as close as people could be in this business without being contractually tied to each other.
I can still clearly remember the rush of excitement that swept over me when a friend informed me between classes that they had heard the Hit The Lights album leaked online. I ran home as quickly as possible and began downloading every track, one at a time, through our family’s 56k dial-up connection. I think it took over two hours for every song to complete, but when they were finished, I quickly burned two copies – one for home and one for my car – then sped off to find empty country roads to roam while blasting the record as loud as my speakers would allow. It was an incredible album, and even though several of the songs were updated versions of tracks I already knew, the entire experience felt like a first time encounter. I was head over heels from the first spin, and nearly a decade later I can still recall the way that love initially felt.
