It’s a classic struggle between the RIAA and file sharing and it’s just not going away. But, the at the root of this issue is a very simple one of market supply vs demand. The supply of music is much greater than the demand. And this is why the RIAA is losing.
Someday the market will have to come to grips with the truth that recorded music is simply overvalued. I'll avoid the philosophical debate about putting a dollar value on the inspiration of our musical muse.
Music is now produced at less cost than ever with digital equipment. The number one retailer of music (even beats piracy) is iTunes, a nearly costless distribution method.
If production and distribution costs are dropping and there is a greater supply (even if some of that supply is piracy). Doesn’t it stand to reason that the cost of recorded music should drop proportionately?
Compound this with the fact that a 15 song CD and 15 downloads at .99 cents a pop through iTunes is roughly the same price. But the iTunes customer was ripped off. The CD contains uncompressed PCM data where the iTunes customer is buying less than half the data in a lossy 128bit package. Why do people stand for buying only half a recording?
