[TriLUG] Music Files (and a small rant)

[Greg Brown]

On 5/25/05, sholton at mindspring.com <sholton at mindspring.com> wrote:
> William Sutton <william at trilug.org> writes:
> > On a related note, if the average CD costs $15 and has 15 tracks, that's
> > $1/song if bought legit.  Do you all really think the artists would
> > appreciate being gypped that $4500 to begin with?
> 
> Why do you immediately presume every downloaded song must have
> a pissed-off artist behind it?

Exactly.  Rik Wakemen said it best when he said that (and this quote
is from memory) "the industry is dealing with a problem they created. 
If they (music nazis (my term)) had only let cusotmers assemble their
own CDs from the label's collection on-line or at a kiosk in a music
store then people would not have to download en masse, they could pick
the songs they wanted, pay the record companies for those songs, then
carry the CD home.  The record comapaines were just too closed minded
to get past the idea that most people just one one or two songs from a
record, they don't want to pay $15.00 for two good songs."

Personally, I'd have to agree.  And I would happily pay a record
company for a collection of songs that are no longer sold.  With
iTunes I think the record compaines are coming closer to where they
need to be, but there is still some work to do.  We'll see if they can
get it right this time.

Just to clarify, I am against outright theft of songs via downloading.
 But I am also against some bozo in LA who thinks that I'm going to
spend $15.00 or more for one good song on a CD.

Greg