$5 for the CD at Target

or

$11.99 for mp3s on iTunes.

... the retail music economy is messed up.

Why pay for something that you'll just rip anyway? The extra couple bucks is worth the time/conveienice...

profesor is right.  When you buy an album on itunes, not only are you spending more money on something that has significantly lower costs on a retail level, but additionally, a diminished product.

Temporary price cut. Yeah right.

Just write down all these titles and throw them into a playlist on Spotify. It takes 2 seconds. Then they're free and portable and sound great on your iPhone everywhere you go. The artists get paid the same amount as they would if you bought their albums, you don't have to pay a penny yourself, and the record company's investments in Spotify become even more valuable -- so they may not have to go out of business when Spotify gets acquired for a bazillion dollars in less than a year or so. The economics of the music industry have never been better! iTunes and Target and Wal-Mart are the dinosaurs now, they all have the same business model and are racing to the bottom of a swirling toilet. Long live music!!! This is the future!!!

"The economics of the music industry have never been better!"  For who?  Cliff say you were making $20 an hour at your job and over time the value of your product plummeted and your boss could only pay you $3 an hour.

How would you feel about that.  Would you agree with your customers about how great that was?  My guess is you'd be looking for a new job.

I've always loved the stories Bruce Springsteen tells about his father, which pretty much boil down to; "Son, get a real paying job".   Well Cliff, in your "new" economy his dad would be right.

A delusional, self-serving argument. Artists earn mere fractions of pennies from Spotify, making sacrifices to "build" the future of the music business. What the artists do get out of the deal is exposure and a following, to pump up their concert ticket and t-shirt sales.

Soon they'll be in the bargain bin...

Those of use who were fortunate enough to be in the music business 30 years ago-- when you were getting "$20 per hour" and you could hide the blow in the tape budget -- are the ones who can see the diminishment over time of the ability to make a living at music. If you're just coming in now, either you accept $3 an hour or you've read too many memoirs and your expectatioons are totally skewed.

Let the brickbats begin!

Dan helps bolster my point exactly ... the market has finally flushed out all the excess: drug slush funds for rock stars, manufacturing costs, packaging, exorbidant production budgets etc. The industry is finally giving consumers only what they are willing to pay for: on-demand access to all the music in the world anytime, anywhere. The market decides the price just like in every viable business. And there is plenty of money to go around, obviously. You have all the record executives singing the praises of Spotify because they know that over the lifetime of an album or artist's career there will be thousands and thousands of plays by a single user wracking up the royalties for both labels and artists. Not the meager $10 (or in this case $5) they can make off the album hit-and-run in the old model. Plus, now that everyone is getting hooked on Spotify and similar services, that will just increase the number of plays over time and the money will come pouring in. Meanwhile, over on Vevo and YouTube, the same kind of consumption of video playlists is fully ad-supported and delivering more money to labels and artists than an a la carte album sales ever could. Anyone who has truly popular and marketable music is going to make a killing in this brave new world for sure, right?