Inspirational Technology

Free content: Why not?

Venture capitalist Greg Blonder says there are hard-headed business reasons that support the notion of giving away music. [CNET News.com]

An interesting idea. The current music distribution model is definitely doomed. MP3s are just too convenient. Services like eMusic show that wide availability of large collections of music is an outstanding value.

File sharing networks are a waste of time. If I could spend $20-$30 maybe even $40 per month for unlimited downloads of unrestricted MP3s from ANY label I'd jump on that in 2 seconds. And guess what, that's $20-$30 more then the record companies are getting from me now. I was one of their best consumers, 2500 CDs worth proves that, but I'm not buying anymore. They've priced them self out of the market and their greed just makes me sick. I remember the days when CDs were new and tapes and records cost $5-$8 while CDs were $12-$15. I remember the promises that it was just the cost of new technology. Well, bah, I can produce a CD on my computer for less then a dollar it can't possibly cost them more then 10 cents in bulk. So where's the price reduction? Heh, price increases are all they've been doing. New releases are now $19 for some labels at full retail.

What really sucks is that they're using this artificially inflated pricing to determine value for their online services. Basically trying to make the price of the files purchased online to be equivalent to the price of an inflated CD. Yeah, right. Here's the deal $.99 per track is too expensive. Want to create a killer service? Flat rate all you can eat pricing and unencumbered MP3 files. Get major label music on there and music consumers will line up to buy it. The rest who actually have the time to waste on file sharing networks? Forget about them, they're not buying music anyway. A solid easy to use service is worth paying for.

If CD sales are dropping maybe they should look a little more at their value proposition. They're actually punishing the people who like to buy music. I like to buy my music, I believe the artists should certainly be well compensated. The record companies though, well I certainly won't be heartbroken if they disappear. For the time being I'm sticking with my current CD collection and enjoying greatly what eMusic has to offer. If prices on CDs come back to earth, maybe I might even buy a few again.