Well, I have no problem with a record company dictating a price. I still have the discretion as to whether I will pay that price. If I, and lots of Is will not pay their price, said price will come down until it reaches a price I will pay.

I don't download any thing that I have to pay for over the computer. I'm still enough of a Luddite that I have as little personal economic data on my computer as possible. I figure if hackers can break into UCLA's computer with all its safeguards, how much more easy is it to get into Paypal, to say nothing of my own computer.

Finally, a dollar a track (US that seems to be the norm) is, to my way thinking, is fairly expensive. Not to say that professional CDs are any sort of a bargain at lists of $15-$18. The actual materials cost a few cents, and the duplication likewise. I don't have any idea of the actual cost of the recording session, but it seems to me the talents get the short end. Years ago--the heyday of the 45RPM--a house painter friend wrote a hit song (multiple hundreds of thousand record sold) for which he got a royalty of 1 cent per record sold, and probably my brother and I were the only ones to ever listen to that music. Did I say it was actually the B side of the record? But he got paid as if it were the A side hit.