Some were worried that taking the DRM out of digital music files would ruin the music industry and everyone would trade and share music rather than purchasing it.
At least in my case, this is not true.
I had never bought a music file because I didn't want to be locked in to any one player, format, or have any problems with the DRM stuff. I've always bought the physical CD and then ripped the files myself.
Since Amazon started selling DRM free music, and $10.00 (or less) albums, I have to say I'm loving their service. They have made it so easy. One click and the files download. I can put the files on my phone, play them on my computer, or burn them to a CD. If my computer crashes, I could restore the files from a backup and not have to worry about any liscensing issues.
I was just now counting, and I've purchased 8 albums in the last two months. I never would have bought that many physical cds.
At least for me, DRM free music has encouraged me to buy more than I would have before.
You know, really thinking about it, this will probably dramatically affect my music purchases. Right now, if I want a specific song, I'll buy just the one song. But if the whole album was only $10, heck, I'd pony up and download the whole thing.
I've bought a few singles because I needed a copy of the song to learn how to play it, but most of the time I decide just to get the whole album. If you buy the whole album at once, you basically get how ever many songs there are over 10 for free. I bought an album a couple days ago and it was less than $8.00 for 12 songs.
Plus, you get to preview the whole album with partial songs before you buy it so you get an idea what they are all like.
Oh, and . . . buying singles is nice too in some cases.
The album I bought first from Amazon was a greatest hits. I wanted more of this artist's music but I didn't want to buy more copies of the songs I had on the greatest hits album, so I was able to just go get the 4-5 songs off the other albums that were not on the greatest hit album.
It's about time the labels recognize downloads need to be under $10. I know iTunes had been doing it for awhile, but they have the DRM. When they started offering it without the DRM they raised the price.
How could it take the labels so long to realize that we're not stupid. We're not going to continue to pay $12.99 for an album when practically ALL of their costs are gone! In fact, when they sell through a third party like Amazon ALL of their costs are gone!
No paying distributors, no producing a physical CD, no producing of physical pacakging.
Their profit margin on a CD used to be about $4. With Digital downloading they probably increase that profit despite the lower sale price.
The only person they have to give any cut to is the website that's selling it for them.
I suppose it depends on which skill set you would like to purchase.
