There's a couple of articles making the rounds that question a number of things to do with music downloads. Firstly, there's the price issue.
An article from Always Online contends that basically to stop people downloading illegal music, legal downloads should cost around $1 each. It does seem ludicrously low and risks devaluing music, but the author makes some interesting arguments that are worth reading and debating.
The second article is from Wired. It's all about the Long Tail and is incredibly interesting. Basically put, the Long Tail is the end of the retail chain that still has fans, but isn't cost effective enough for bricks and mortar shops to stock. For instance, a CD needs to sell 100,000 units for Wal-Mart to even think about stocking it. What about a CD that sells 90,000 copies then? The Internet and the Long Tail, argues the article, go together like PB and J.
Like the former article, the Wired article harkened back to the question of music download price and comes up with a slightly more reasonable (in the minds of the labels) amount.
Do yo'delf a favour and have a good read today.
