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Unlimited Legal Music Downloads for $3.95 a Month?

fishmasta writes "I'm at a major university studying the music industry, so we get to regularly talk to executives in the major labels. In a recent talk with someone working at Warner Bros, she brought up an idea they want to try where all file sharing is legalized by paying $4-5 a month through an ISP, all downloads are permanent, and you can get them from any source, and do what you want with them. It seems like some in the industry are starting to 'get it.' I was just wondering what Slashdot thinks of this idea. Would you be willing to pay a small fee each month if you could get all the music you want and have no legal liability?" El-Man has another take on that subject replacing "unlimited" with a set number of licenses: "I believe that people are basically honest (maybe a failing, but it's how I feel), and are quite happy to pay for something of value. With music downloads, the only solution the recording industry has come up with is wrapping digital files with onerous, incompatible DRM systems, suing those whom they say have illegally distributed music (what is it, 13000 people and counting? Surely the courts have better things to do!), and generally not doing themselves or music lovers any good. How about a system, whereby a user can purchase a license for [n] amount of digital music files? Numbers can be, 10, 50, 100, 200, etc. Doesn't matter what the files are, as long as the number is not exceeded. There'd be a lot of details to thrash out, but is this something that is ultimately workable?"

If you were an executive of a medium-to-large sized record company, how would you handle the potential of the Internet?

2 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Re:From a future executive? by scotch · · Score: 2, Funny

    How about this one: buy a CD, have sex with the drummer? Win-win situation.

    --
    XML causes global warming.
  2. Re:Oh Canada... by elrous0 · · Score: 2, Funny
    Hey, I find it repugnant to pay for courts and prisons even though I've never committed a crime (and schools to teach everyone else's damn kids, even though I don't have any). But that's just the way it goes.

    -Eric

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.