Jay Bentley (Bad Religion) expresses his view of file sharing

Jay Bentley of Bad Religion recently expressed his views on file sharing in an interview with thepunksite.com.

"How many catalogue records are you going to have to buy before you get fucking fed up? I had vinyl, I had CD, I had mini-disc, I had DATs, I had all this shit. They make me buy all this stuff and I’m paying three hundred and fifty dollars every time a new player comes out because now I can’t my music on anything but this. So that’s to blame as well. Eventually people just got tired of getting the shaft from all of these people and in the end the only one that really suffers is the artist. That’s a shame.

It’s a standoff of do you want to support the label and the band that you like? Even I’m starting to wonder if there’s a way where people will feel like they’re strictly supporting the artist. Even if it was something like having a little button on a MySpace page that says “if you like us, push the button and give us a dollar so that we can get gas to go to the next city because we want to go on tour.” There has to be some sort of incentive for people to A) want the band to come to them but also for the band to want to go out. When gas hit four dollars a gallon down in the States, in the newspaper it was actually a front page article about how indie bands can no longer tour because gas is too expensive. That’s pretty fucked.

So it’s not the bands’ fault, and it’s not even the fans’ fault. The fans are doing what’s expected because they should be doing what they want. The bands should be doing what they want but there should be a way for them to get together and say “we, as fans, like your band. We want to support your work."