Canada’s Tragically Hip have decided file sharing is bad for their wallets.

The group (with absolutely NO help from their label, Universal Music, or the CRIA) point out that during March 30 to May 7 there were more than half a million ‘unauthorized’ attempts to download their new single, Vaccination Scar.

Tragically Hip is one of the biggest selling Canadian bands ever, with all that implies

“The grim economic reality aside, it shows how widespread the practice of downloading has become,” says the band’s Gord Sinclair.

But Hey! “Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “Anything that gets people into music is okay with me, but at some point people have to recognize their role in the creative process. To me it’s an ethical question.”

In the same puff piece, Jann Arden (?) “reacted to the news”, saying,

“Downloading music from the Internet is ironically the hope, and alarmingly the impending decay and destruction, of the music industry. Unless these downloads are monitored and artists are compensated for their work, there will be NO work to download. None of us, as writers and performers, can afford to keep making the music that has always, and will always, make the world a little easier to swallow in troubled times.

“We cannot play if we are not paid.”

There you go.

No pay, no play.

In other words, the musical arts depend absolutely on the dollar. Or franc. Or pfennig. Or whatever.

No way.

The Barenaked Ladies’ Ed Robertson also wades in with, “I’m totally fine with people downloading music, as long as they steal everything that they want. If you want pants, go steal them. If you need gas in your car, you should steal it, because you can. As long as people are consistent I don’t have a problem. As long as they see themselves as thieves in general then I don’t mind if they steal everything that they like. But it irks me that it’s only okay to steal music.”

And to cap it off Brian Robertson, the president of the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America), says grimly:

“It underlines, again, the vulnerability of our artists, creators and producers to the lawlessness of the Internet in Canada and the need for federal politicians and bureaucrats to move far more expeditiously than they have in the past to update Canada’s woefully inadequate Copyright Act.”

But while Robertson & Co are singing the blues, in terms of their careers, “more artists say free music downloading online has helped them than hurt them,” says a Pew report here.

“Fully 83% of those in the survey say they provide free samples or previews of their music online. And strong pluralities say free downloading has a payoff for them. For instance, 35% of them say free downloading has helped their careers and only 5% say it has hurt. Some 30% say free downloading has helped increase attendance at their concerts, 21% say it has helped them sell CDs or other merchandise; and 19% say it has helped them gain radio playing time for their music. Only fractions of them cite any negative impact of downloading on those aspects of their work.

“Some 60% of people surveyed say they don’t think the RIAA’s (Recording Industry Association of America) suits against online music swappers will benefit musicians and songwriters. Those who earn the majority of their income from music are more inclined than ‘starving musicians’ to back the RIAA, but even those very committed musicians don’t believe the RIAA campaign will help them. Some 42% of those who earn most of their income from their music do not think the RIAA legal efforts will help them, while 35% think those legal challenges will ultimately benefit them.”

And Oh Yeh – wasn’t Universal Music one of the labels that, following a two-year investigation by New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office, was ordered to return $50 million to musicians they’ve had under contract.

Spitzer’s office found many artists and writers weren’t being paid royalties because record companies “had failed to maintain contact with the performers and had stopped making required payments”.

Finally, the CRIA (and, hence, its owners, the Big Five record labels) recently suffered an embarrassing defeat when it failed to convince a Canadian federal court that online file sharing is illegal and is “devastating” the multi-billion dollar music industry.

from P2Pnet: Tragically Hip’s money troubles