Downloaded Music Gets More Expensive

Reverberant writes "Just as the online music market is starting to gain traction, what to music execs want to do? Why, raise prices, of course! Under consideration is raising the price of online singles up to $1.25 to $2.49, or bundling less desirable tracks with hot singles."

Comments

Re:*WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE*

[cyt0plas]

I'm one of those aforementioned programmers working for free and asking little in return (not nothing, there is a catch.) I don't want money so much as a product. That's why I wrote it in the first place. When others use my products, if they improve (and distribute it), I can copy the changes they made back and improve it. A number of people have submitted patches to me.

When two people work together on a project, they both get a great project, and average a little over half the work. Now imagine if hundreds (or thousands) of people were all working on the same project. For a fraction of the work, contributors get a fully functional project, with the changes they were willing to make. Everybody wins, including the person(s) who put in the work for the initial release.

It's kind of like community service. One person working to clean up a neighborhood will take a lot of work, and have limited success. But if lots of people get together and spend a couple hours, the neighborhood looks nicer, and took less work (per person, not necessairily in total).