In all the heated debate about file sharing, some important things are being pushed aside. One of which is quality. How can music labels expect people to pay (or even want to pay) for low quality music? I believe I speak for many when I say: I WOULD pay to download music if I could get full quality, uncompressed wave files or similar format. And pick only the files I want to make my CD's. That's right, make a CD. Like so many of you, I don't really want to keep all this stuff on my computer. So in order for me to buy music downloads, I must be allowed to make CD's, in any format I may choose. Why should I pay the outragous cost of a CD for just one song? Moreover, why pay for glitchy mp3's using Napster or any other client? Ask yourself how many hours you spend looking for stuff and downloading stuff before you get one file you want to keep! I would gladly pay to get perfect, fast, reliable downloads of high quality music, but no way would I pay per month! That's like saying I'm just downloading whatever is available. Rediculous! I won't pay unless I download, and I won't download unless there's something worth owning.
Which brings me to my next point: Ownership. I want to OWN the files I get. Yes, the artist retains copyrights, but I own a copy. It is no different than buying a CD. Are they going to try to tell me I can't make a copy of my own CD's? Are they going to try to copy protect audio CD's now? Look what happened with audio cassettes. The record labels tried to get a chip into every cassette player, which would detect copywritten material, and disable copying. It did not fly because they could not come up with a scheme that did not compromise the sound quality. Had they done so, we probably would never have seen the audio CD format as it is today. They would have certainly sought to protect it from being copied, and thus it might have prevented CD burners from ever being sold at all! The fact is, the record labels are really a thing of the past. Much like the US mail. Every artist can have a Web site and sell their music directly. That's exactly where it's headed if the labels don't get their act together and give the public what we want. I went to a CD Web site who offers custom CD's, and was ready and eager to buy. The disappointment came when I found that only a few artists where included in the offer. None of which I wanted! So I turned to file sharing and got the music for free! There's a lesson in that for you record labels! The people have spoken. Get with it or perish.

Hehe...

I think you should send a mail to the RIAA!

Morgwen