Oy, where to begin? Just a few quick points:
1) It is not "at worst" gezel, it is gezel.
2) Complaining about "today's" singers - You realize every cat and their uncle can go into a studio tomorrow and put out an album? Only the very best were able to produce music back in the day, and so obviously the quality was better. Now you have more variety and more choices, so we are better off, even if there is more trash.
3) Ironically, you complain about only single songs being good "today" when single song downloads are possible today.
4) And the guilt, oh the guilt. That's the whole point, isn't it? We know it is wrong to steal, but have all these justifications. It's up to the artist to make me fell guilty about stealing. What's wrong is wrong -your personal feelings on the matter are irrelevant. You wanna steal Chaim Yankel Todrus's brand new album, "Yiddish Meows?" Go ahead. But you still stole it. Even if you only like the third song about his pet squirrel's breakfast being cold, and didn't care for the other songs about lunch and dinner.
1) Very debatable (as per the whole first part of this conversation), but not the point right now.
2) As I said before, since I feel that the artist didn't spend any time to create the album, and I don't like it, it makes feel less guilty to
steal it (NOTE: I'm not saying it's ok, but makes me feel less guilty).
3) Unfortunately, my search in Google Play Music didn't bring up any of the new Jewish albums, so I can't buy single songs (Is every album available to download by track on mostlymusic.com? If so, disregard this).
4) Yeah, the issue at hand is do I have to feel guilty, feeling guilt is a personal matter. Unfortunately, not all the wrong stuff make everybody feel guilty, the discussion here is whether this is from those stuff that should make you feel guilty, besides actually being wrong.
Having said all that, please don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning pirating/copying music. There was a point in my life where I actually did it, and those were part of my justifications. I'm working on actually paying for my whole current library, it'll take time, but I'm working on it none-the-less.