Guardian: Closed systems leave song buyers out in the cold

Music downloading is really an economics questions, and the record companies have yet to come to terms with the new market realties. People have a limited income, and an unlimited number of products on which to spend it. There is a particular issue with teenagers and older students, or recently employed former students. They have a huge desire for new music, as have all previous generations, but they have little money. In the old days we used to share tapes, now it is even easier thanks to the digital market. iTunes is a nice, simple and pleasant environment, but I can usually get the same music from Amazon for less money and have all the advantages of a DRM free, physical purchase. Plenty of other people have realised they can get the same thing free from a torrent with little effort. If I were head of a record company, I would be suggesting that we may need to change our profit per item, sell more items to maintain the same turnover and profit. Digital music has changed forever the perceived value of music, once a person has sampled the opportunities of music sharing with friends or over the internet, they are less likely to value a CD at £8 or more, and less so for an iTunes download. With legal downloads sites, such as emusic.com, now operating as low as 12-25p a track, then this places albums in £1- £2 bracket. This sort of price range completely kills CD purchases unless they are a fantastic products in themselves, and most CDs are dreadful. It is this low price range that make it worth being legal, and a true fan will always want to make sure the artists gets something, but real sharing will never go away. If record companies still want to sell a physical CD, then they had better make sure the product is worthy of purchase without the music!