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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Starlight who wrote (13354)	7/27/2000 12:50:28 PM
From: Doren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Both consumers and Artists have nothing to loose in this game. The only people who will loose are the middle men. That's what the net is doing to all business. Artist have been routinely swindled by distributors and I do mean SWINDLED. Fraud is pervasive in the industry. Only the biggest (not necessarily the best) do well. If the price of an MP3 was $.25 most artists would do substantially better selling it themselves. At that rate the Artists would make more money and few would bother to pirate the music. So the only problem to be ironed out here is micropayments. The price of a CDs worth of music would be about $2.50. That's about right considering the distribution costs, manufacturing, and packaging costs are substantially lower. Home recording technology is good enough 99% of people can't hear a difference. Personally speaking, downloading MP3s has stimulated my CD buying. At $15 for a CD I just never take a risk anymore. When you could buy a vinyl recording for $5 that sounded better, I took the risk a lot more. Those people who don't buy more CDs after downloading don't buy much music anyway. Now I can preview an artists work much easier. And then I do buy. But I buy much less crap. The truth is the record companies, because of the culture, have been so underhanded with both the Artists and Consumers, they are going to get what they deserve. Right now the distributors rank just above the Tobacco companies in most consumers minds. You know music isn't like other commodities. Much of the core of the business is based on mutual respect between the artist and the consumer. The Grateful Dead actually provided an area at their concerts for fans with recording equipment. Their public didn't buy a huge amount of records. However the shows always sold out. All the surviving members are filthy rich both monetarily AND experientially. So how did that hurt them?