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Which, if Machinist is right is 3 and a half times what they would have made if I’d bought it on iTunes.
The infuriating thing about iTunes is that it hasn’t really changed the paradigm. Considering record companies don’t have to actually produce anything to create physical media, don’t have to ship or hold physical retail space, the cost (a buck a song) is still too high. And the fact that the artist is still out in the cold is doubly infuriating.
This model makes much more sense and it took a major act to go this route to draw attention to the fact that we don’t really need these middle men in the equation. (Issa doesn’t count as no one has ever heard of her).
Why point out that they made a bunch of money with EMI in the past? So what? Are they supposed to stick with the outdated model because it used to work? Why, then, would we bother to change any technology at all? The icebox used to be a wooden box with a chunk of ice in it and that used to work pretty well, should we still keep a bunch of icecutters on the payroll today?