Legal Music Downloads

[Charter]

Hi. Legal music downloads are now coming of age on the Internet, charging around $0.99 a song. Do you think that's too much?

Thanks to vinyl-junkie for this question.

[bloodjelly]

No, I think that's a reasonable price. That still amounts to around $15 per CD (assuming an average of around that many songs), so they could lower it a little I guess to lure more people away from free music dowloading, but it seems pretty fair to me.

[vinyl-junkie]

Originally posted by bloodjelly
No, I think that's a reasonable price. That still amounts to around $15 per CD

I gotta weigh in with my two cents, since I was the one who suggested the question. I agree that it's a pretty reasonable price when matched against the cost of the average CD. Even if it worked out to be slightly more expensive, it would still be worth it because you could have just the songs you wanted on a CD.

I can only wonder why the industry was resistant to the idea of pay per download for so long. I believe one reason is that they've got a bunch of dinosaurs running the record companies. People who don't understand the power of the internet, much less how to harness it for their own advantage. Then there's the whole idea that illegal downloading was a small problem. When they discovered it wasn't and threatened their very existence, they panicked and started suing children to try and stop it! Bad move, in my opinion.

I think they're on the right track with making downloading legal. I just wish they had done it sooner. There are still far too many people out there who got used to getting something for nothing. It's going to be hard to convince them to pay for it, I think, at any price.

[Josiah]

bloodjelly said
No, I think that's a reasonable price. That still amounts to around $15 per CD

Actually, iTunes charges only about $10 per 15-song CD.