After moving house recently, it’s become patently obvious how useless CDs really are. Why can’t most bands get off of their high horse and realise how much their major labels are screwing them and realise how much MP3 is doing for them.

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the first exhibit is goth metal band Cradle of Filth. Now albeit this is a very niche market for goth metal, they were for a very short tenure signed to Sony. On a recent JJJ Radio interview, the guitarist from the ‘Filth whined how fans were putting up music pre-released for music journos to review onto the internet.

Well Mr Filth boy, if it wasn’t for MP3 and file sharing, I wouldn’t have even heard of your stinking band! Do you really think that we all have $30 burning a hole in our pocket, to risk on your album because some emo prettyboy walks past with a Cradle of Filth T-Shirt on? You know the truth. Not everyone is going to buy your music, and I don’t think it’s theft or fraud if they don’t. Because unfortunately popular music is a very stilted platform. On one end you’ve got shelf life pop stars that get where they are from pre-pubescent teenagers with their digits on their parents’ mobile phones. In the other corner you’ve got you guys trying to earn an honest quid in a crowded, stagnant metal market.

Something tells me that Mr Sony Spin Doctor man is going to spend money on disposable pop star that will piss right off as soon as the ratings season ends. And hey guess what? Not every shopkeeper wants to put your lurid posters up and have a bunch of Emo cunts hanging around, crowding up the place with doom and gloom.

That leaves you with very few avenues to promote yourself. So a few kids ‘rip’ your CD into MP3 format and load it, and share it with their friends online. Before you realise it, Filth boy, at least one of those kids isn’t just going to download all your music, he might actually (god forbid!) BUY your next album. But if it wasn’t for the file sharing, they never would’ve!

Suffice it to say, stop whining. Because these so called fans weren’t going to buy your album in the first place. If they’re anything like I was in my teens, buying a $30 CD meant no social life for a week. So it still to this day is a pretty big thing for me to buy ANY CD.

Dave Mustaine, in another JJJ radio interview, he had the right attitude. He sees the connect between tape trading in the 80s and file sharing in the noughties. And ultimately, it’s the best way to get turned onto a band is by referral and trade. Also a good point he made was that “in business, you have to prepare for losses”. And well, let’s face it, file sharing is in part a loss. But from a publicity perspective, a bit of a gain.

Now, rock stars aside, CDs are just fucking stupid. Their ‘tangible benefits’ these days are next to none. They have none of the nostalgia of vynil. They get scratched to buggery. They take up heaps of space in your car and shelf space at home. Once you put them on MP3, you never even look at the stupid arsed covers again, unless it’s some fancypants Digi-pack or some shit - which let’s face it aren’t that collectable and loose their charm real quick.

And the distribution sucks. I have never bought a CD from eBay that actually arrived. I really can’t be arsed ordering something from some shitty record store that will take weeks to arrive that I can download anyway. Besides, just like in Tim Roger’s song, ‘Letter to Gene’, [Gene Simmons of Kiss] some fat dude is smoking in a cigar at his desk, while the band freezes outside in the cold on a tour bus.

Your rock band might get a nice fat advance to record their rekurds from the label, but they sure as hell don’t get that much out of CD sales - if infact they sell any. Therefore, i’ve got no beef buying a CD at a gig or from the artist himself. Let the fat man in his office starve.

I now have boxes of CDs at my parents place in musical pergatory. They do absolutely nothing. But one sweet day, I really hope my kids find an old hard drive, dust it off and plug it in, and start rockin’ out to my MP3 collection.