Taping deleted albums is fair game. Otherwise, you can't get them. I can think of loads of deletes I've taped, and I would be the first to buy them in the highly unlikely event any came out on CD. I did learn that one of the artists in question had a new tape out, and immediately ordered several copies from him personally in the UK, at great expense. In fact, I gave one to a friend who does artist bookings and he was so impressed that he is getting the guy some gigs over here.

You might as well say that buying second-hand LP's or CD's is immoral. The artist doesn't see a dime.

And if your LP is deleted and you can't have it re-issued, do what Diamond Joe White did and record the sucker all over again to be released on CD.

I never tape off the radio any more. The sound is crap anyway. However, I used to work at a student radio station years ago and there were some LP's and tapes solely for radio release that I wish I had taped. (The BBC kindly sent us colonials free LP's of concerts at the expense of the British taxpayers. These were not commercially available and we had to send back to the UK when we were done with them. I obeyed all the rules even though I had exceptional taping facilities available to me at the station.)

A money-back guarantee on CD's is certainly a business-like thought. Lots of other industries offer it. So is the idea of offering loss leaders in the hope that people will buy your product in the future. Presumably that's what taping off the radio entails, a kind of loss leader. Even stingy businesses like law and accounting offer loss leaders by giving free seminars and talks and handing out free literature full of free advice.

In Canada, there was talk of putting a special tax on tapes to assist in solving this problem, but it doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. It wasn't very much per tape and wouldn't have stopped me from buying them. I don't know how they planned to divy up the cash amongst the artists -- presumably guys like Michael Jackson get taped more than guys like Nic Jones -- but knowing Canada I suspect the government would have found a way to pocket the money.