I mean, sure, if you manage to find some of iTunes' mythical $.69 tracks you could get... ya know... 6 songs instead of 5.

A buck a song is the industry standard, and these songs are DRM free.

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Record companies don't steal IP. Artists eagerly seek out record deals because labels do things artists can't and don't want to do themselves (although obviously the role of labels is changing as the industry collapses and transforms). Artists essentially hire labels to promote, distribute, support, and produce the artist, and in return pay the label by giving them a percentage of their profits, if they ever get them. It's similar to filmmakers who make deals with studios or authors who make deals with publishers.

It's cool to say labels are evil, and there's a lot of terrible record contracts that turn artists into indentured servants, but why do people think that every profession in the world should be paid except music? If you make computers all day and you happen to love what you do, should you not get paid? Only an idiot wouldn't want to get paid for their work just because they enjoy doing it.

As for the generic thing, it turns out that the richest artists are the ones who rejected the urge to be like everyone else. The public is what makes musicians rich, not record labels. If you are an amazing musician and not like everyone else, the public rewards you by buying your shit. That is, when they're not stealing it.

There will always be musicians complaining about how the music industry sucks and record labels suck and making money doing music sucks and just give it away and play out every now and then at a coffee house. And hey, all the power to them. But those are the things that musicians typically say to lick their wounds because they aren't good enough to get the fans, record deals, and money from making music that they desperately, secretly crave.

The truth is is that if you are an amazing musician and an original and compelling artist, you have every reason in the world to expect to get rich. If you aren't an amazing and original musician, then, when you talk about it with your friends... the record industry sucks, labels suck, the system sucks, etc.

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So they can charge you more.

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Part of it might also be that they didn't really think it through.

I still think that they just rolled out with the same system they used when EMI when DRM free. Obviously that was cheaper so people didn't really have a problem with paying for it all at once. Here (at least for me) you're talking hundreds of dollars. I think they probably listened to the uproar and made it an option.

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