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Please, oh please oh please don't let there be a William Hung to spring from this.

If a song is not popular, it will be hard to find on a P2P network, and you may well have to wait for it if/when you do find it. Certainly you'd pony up a quarter or two to get it from iTunes.

But once a fair number of people have done that and found the song is greatly underrated, it will get passed around. Pretty soon it's on the very P2P networks that failed it the first time around (even if only 1 in 10 buyers strips the DRM by some means)... and legal download demand goes back down. For truly good product, this isn't going to stop that many people from buying it. For stuff on the fringe it isn't either. It's the mediocre but broad-market corporate pap that's going to eat its own lunch when it shows up on Soulseek. Certainly the record labels won't like this -- they really don't care what you're buying, only that you buy it. But for the artist, it cuts both ways. The great but undiscovered will benefit from such a model. The great and promoted (rare that they are) will lose slightly but not catastrophically -- though they could perhaps compensate by trimming the ad budget. The awful might actually see a few pennies pitched their way where they didn't before, or even become the next William Hung. It's the Average Clone Band (and there are an awful lot of Average Clone Bands) that are going to be pirated. They'll have the critical mass to stay on P2P networks, but not be good enough to be on most buying lists.

For the listener, this is a net win, as it greatly reduces the financial incentive to be just another Average Clone Band. Some still will be, either because that's all they CAN do, or that's all they WANT to do (for reasons other than money). But a bit of the current bored session player crowd will find it worthwhile to try and make something original for a change, which is good for everyone in the long run.

Mal-2

just make sure its not this guy's music...it might make the plane's wings fall off!

If he had just taken it on the chin and laughed about it with his mates, it wouldn't have been such a big deal

Absolutely! Star Wars Kid should learn a lesson from William Hung, the American Idol contestent who sang "She Bangs" so poorly that it got him a cult following and several record deals.

Yes, far more interesting is the fact that the author's name rhymes with that greatest of american entertainers, William Hung

Chairboy should be on American Idol. He might be the next William Hung! ;)

That's as fast as I run out of the room whenever William Hung sings.

I guess we won't be seeing any of this then?

Do not sell one of these to this man

yep, i want william hung's tune on my phone!

...not

And sometimes, a brilliant shining star emerges from the crowd and unites the world like never before...

Yeah, but just wait until you sit through an episode of Chinese Idol.

I thought we already did... :)

After after he got kicked off american idol.