Would You Pay 5 Cents For a Song?

irikar writes "An academic at McGill University has a simple plan to stop the plague of unauthorized music downloads on the Internet. But it entails changing the entire music industry as we know it, and Apple Computers, which may have the power to make the change, is listening."

Comments

Re:Death of the CD

[R.Caley]

If i could download 15 songs for only $0.75, so why should i ever buy a CD again?

Depends on who `i' is. For variosu people there are:

• Downloads, as easily available to the bod in the street now, sound crap, so if you will ever listen to music on something other than a crappy little MP3 player you will have to buy it again.
• Downloads are ephemeral, so you have to burn CDs and life is too short to do grunt work.
• Downloads don't come with artwork, lyrics, credits etc. unless you go download them and print them and life is too short to do grunt work.
• Downloads are harder to buy than picking up a CD at the supermarket, and life is too short to do online grunt work.

Re:they don't get it, do they?

[wk633]

No, maybe YOU want information for free. Some of us recognize that various industry evilness aside, there are artists out there who deserve something in return for their creative work.

Re:The artists make very little money from music s

[EspressoMachine]

They get like maybe 1$ per cd.

If only that were true. Artists generally make $.05-$.12 a CD. If you want more info about the industry and contracts, etc., I highly recommend This Business of Music. It's chock full of interesting details like formulas used to determine artist royalties. For instance, did you know the labels still take money for R&D costs on the "new technology" of the Compact Disc? Or that many still take out $$ to cover "breakage", which is a hold over from distribution of albums on vinyl?

Oy.