It's both. Musicians and music nerds buy CDs and LPs and tapes and Bandcamp files and they "pirate" music both because they care about ownership and quality and rare or substantially different editions of records that aren't available legally, and because they've seen the sausage factory from the inside and know that "stealing" $0.02 from an artist who's starving like them anyway isn't really that far up on the list of heinous crimes. Buy the shirt, download the album. No one cares.
alt Hacker News
It's both. Musicians and music nerds buy CDs and LPs and tapes and Bandcamp files and they "pirate" music both because they care about ownership and quality and rare or substantially different editions of records that aren't available legally, and because they've seen the sausage factory from the inside and know that "stealing" $0.02 from an artist who's starving like them anyway isn't really that far up on the list of heinous crimes. Buy the shirt, download the album. No one cares.