Record Labels Waged War on Human Psychology, and Lost (opens in new tab)

I don't want to sound "elitist" but I still enjoy buying CD's from artists websites. Usually they let you download the MP3 album and ship the CD to you. Best of both worlds.

"The same thing happened with FM radio, the cassette tape, and the VCR. I sympathize to a certain degree with the record labels, but they're essentially just middlemen. Door-to-door vacuum salespeople were undoubtedly upset when the market shifted and made their business model irrelevant -- the primary difference is that vacuum salespeople don't have a powerful lobby presence and thousands of attorneys on retainer."

The problem is that many people say this, yet they still pirate music from independent labels and artists.

"Personally, I'll never buy another CD, because I feel like the prices are artificially inflated to sustain a large number of unnecessary middlemen in an outdated supply chain. I do miss the feeling of buying a new album, reading the insert, and so forth -- but it's just not worth it to me knowing I'm funding the record labels' war on their own customers."

I hope you don't download them either. If you are, it makes me think you are just using this as an excuse to not pay for music.

Did you try contacting Apple about redownloading the music? I've heard that they're usually sympathetic to people who lose downloaded music when computers and hard disks die.

At some point in time I've owned Sticky Fingers in LP, 8-track, cassette, and compact disc. At least once in each format. They've all been lost or FUBAR through the years, and even if I still had them I couldn't play them.

Sticky Fingers in my iTunes library gets backed up with rsync every night, and I can't accidentally leave my iTunes library on the dashboard of a 1964 Mustang parked in the sun.

I've been a big fan of emusic over the last few years. The subscription based model can be a bit awkward but it does encourage you to check out music you normally wouldn't listen to.

[edit] and they're all DRM free mp3 files

This is arguable, and relative. The 25% figure is almost certainly inflated, and is much lower than World of Goo's usual piracy rate, estimated at 90%+.

"A related data point is the Humble Indie Bundle, which is a pay-anything (including $.01) software bundle that is experiencing fairly heavy levels of piracy."

This shows further proof that the people bitching about DRM still won't pay for software if they can easily get it for free. This is why you need to have some sort of copy protection in place if you are going to sell software.

Thanks for the down votes. I feel like sites like mog.com (I'm just a happy customer) are really much better than any alternatives. They have all of the songs I want, I don't have to download anything, and I don't have to pay per track. So, if I don't like a song, I don't feel bad about it. Add social features on top of that and the experience is even better.

As a customer, I don't feel cheated with subscription services. I think they are a real way to stop piracy and make people want to pay for music again.