[solaris]

I know this article is just over two years old - but the guy's arguments are still water tight and still as relevant as ever:

Since the early days of the digital music file sharing and copyright wars, I have said that artists and copyright owners should get paid for their efforts, that uploading or downloading music outside the bounds of fair use and without permission is bad karma, but that the music industry is greedy and short-sighted in its pricing and viciously punitive in its enforcement methods.

Since digital music is typically not of CD sound quality, is less convenient to use than CDs in copy-protected formats, does not come with artwork, packaging, liner notes, or credits, it clearly should cost less than music in CD form - way less.

And yet the most popular legitimate digital music service, iTunes, sells most music at the rate of 99 cents per song, which is about exactly the going CD rate with only the one advantage of song-by-song flexibility. And Apple just got through battling the major labels to keep the price that LOW: the labels wanted to raise the iTunes price and shoot themselves in the foot yet again.

Full article here: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/06/05/094341.php