how the music industry can live forever

[Bojan]

In light of the recent $220.000 fine of an american p2p music sharer I stumbled upon a really interesting article on how the music industry could adapt to problems it faces with file sharing.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/23 ... print.html

Would you pay a 5$/5€ tax a month to have legal access to all music and movies? Would you still buy cds/dvds then?

[TheStig]

Personally I would pay for DVD's cause I prefer to have something that I can hold in my hand then something as pure data on a PC (or what ever system)

Same goes for CD's, I do have alot of MP3's but 99% of them are directly copied from one of my own CD's
With that I simply prefer a real CD cause the quality is simply better and you don't have to work with crappy writeble CD's wich scratch faster and generally have horrible lifetime.

[boganbusman]

Would you pay a 5$/5€ tax a month to have legal access to all music and movies?

No

I can still get it for free, so I will continue to do it that way. When I find something really really good, I usually go and buy it anyway, so I'm not doing anything that's unfair to artists/producers/whoever.
If something isn't good enough to make me want to buy it, then its not good enough to command a price.

Anyone who leeches deserves to pay a fee, but it wouldn't be fair on people like me who still support the industry.

[Jopuma]

Would you pay a 5$/5€ tax a month to have legal access to all music and movies?

No

I can still get it for free, so I will continue to do it that way. When I find something really really good, I usually go and buy it anyway, so I'm not doing anything that's unfair to artists/producers/whoever.
If something isn't good enough to make me want to buy it, then its not good enough to command a price.

Anyone who leeches deserves to pay a fee, but it wouldn't be fair on people like me who still support the industry.

Well said.

[Bojan]

Even though downloading "free" music is actually stealing, you justify that by buying a cd every now and then?

Sure, with the current state it would be more or less pointless to pay a fixed amount of money per month as itunes and the likes only offer low quality music. But what if there was software which allowed immediate download of any song in any bitrate (even lossless)?

[Jopuma]

This is what I do. I see if I can find the music from an album I want to buy online. I download it and listen to it to see if its good. If it is I delete the songs and buy the CD. If its not I just delete the songs and test the next CD.

[S2000_Skyline12]

I'd do it but I would highly try to avoid it though, I like my money.

[TheStig]

Downloading is good for testing, and like said I do also sometimes test a CD by downloading it and buy it if I like it, if I don't like it, it's recycle bin time. period.

Bogan has a point, I also don't see the point in paying artists in general, by monthly paying for EVERY artist even the rubbish ones.

[Carcrazy]

I have to agree.... I too would be willing to pay $5 a month for legal access to all music. The only problem with that idea is, you're missing the target age group. Most people that download music don't have credit cards or anything like that, by charging a set amount evey month, it would appear that you would have fixed the problem... but, how are younger people, (who are the main downloaders,) going to get money to a company that will most likely require a credit card. No one would even want to go through the hassle of sending a money order every single month, where you could get the same high quality music for free. Trust me, if it was as easy to magicly send $5, I'd never use a file transfer again, but for younger people, we don't have a way of paying that.

I do normally only download to see if I like a CD, if I do, i buy it.

[Jopuma]

Not only that, but they could put a lock on the music so to keep listening to the songs you've downloaded you have to pay $5. I would prefer just paying the $10-$17 to buy the CD and have unlimited listening rights.

And you must admit that after a while that small $5 will start to add up. $60 a year just doesn't seem worth it.

[donaldgladden]

i cant help it. i see a nice deal to save a couple of bucks and my evil mind takes over from there. i probally saved about $300 doing it that way and im trying to overhaul my computer. i wont condone anyone else to do it though dont get me wrong