Progress!
Last year, when Radiohead released 'In Rainbows', they baffled people by allowing consumers to put their own price on the product. Few were surprised that the majority of customers seemed to believe art should be free. Research showed that 62 percent of users paid nothing (I might add, that many people just went straight to torrent sites because the mere act of registering for the download was too inconvenient). The next price bracket was between a penny and $4 USD. Although personally I believe $4 is about right for a download of a lossless format, I am willing to bet that the majority of those 17 percent paid closer to a penny.
People will always want something for nothing - something my Grandfather used to say, and I think realists would have a hard time disagreeing. So, where does that leave us? While the labels are clawing desperately to continue in the opulence they are accustomed to, and retailers have been forced to cut their extortionate prices (£16.99 for a back-catalogue CD, anyone?) ultimately it is the artist and true music fans who suffer. Gig ticket prices have rocketed, and tour merch has become even more vital to artists who want to earn a living. Before his untimely demise, Dimebag Darrell lamented that it was getting harder to make money from music, and cited people being able to cherry pick tunes rather than buying a whole album. Personally I think the latter part is a good thing, as it forces artists to raise the bar and create a whole album worth buying, as opposed to a few singles and a bunch of filler.
So now Nine Inch Nails are without a major label deal, they are free to lead the way. With a beautifully-designed site, they offer nine tracks from their new album (replete with a folder full of wallpapers) in a high bit-rate format, and completely DRM-free. If you like what you hear, you can buy all 36 tracks at the highest possible quality bitrate, with artword in .pdf format and extras for £5 USD. If you are operating in Sterling, that's an even better deal.
Record labels: PAY FUCKING ATTENTION! When we buy CDs, they are cheaper than album downloads, we have no DRM technology strangling us, or tying us to a particular listening device - plus they come with printed artwork, and in a format that means when our hard drive fails, we can still listen to our music!
Why would anyone in their right mind pay for a format which is inefficient (one-time only downloads?), more expensive, and of inferior quality? Will we persist?
Click on the image above, and get yourself a proper music download.