RE: axle seals
If they made the pay sites like Napster a bit more competitive, I'd buy more from them. 1 dollar a song isn't horrible, but you may as well buy the CD with liner notes and all.
This is an interseting topic.
Like Snitty said, if some of the music he's downloaded wasn't free, he wouldn't have bought it, and consequently they have lost no revenue. Another perspective is, if they had sold the music of said groups at a more competitive price...then perhaps he might have bought them. How often is this the case? For example, from what I've heard I like Evanescence, but I'll never buy the album. If I could get it for 5-6 bucks legally, I would. But 16.99? No way. That price point has lost my business. What's better? 6 bucks or 0? This is the question the music industry needs to ask itself.
Also, less established more underground groups shouldn't charge as much, because they aren't "proven" or haven't the market exposure to warrent the usual 1-2 dollars per track. Popular artists like Metallica, U2, Aguilera, Aerosmith, No Doubt, and Ludicris have the fan base to do so. The Greyboy Allstars, an acid jazz group out of San Diego, doesn't.
Charging less does a couple of things: it causes more exposure, and brings in more revenue. And since it's all internet, there are no physical goods and over head to deal with, just bandwidth and server space.
So, I don't feel sorry for the music industry when it comes to this issue, they should covet it, and use it to their advantage. I don't do any downloading (anymore) but I say make them pay until they figure it out. They just need to get past their own backwards paradigms.
