Let’s say you can buy a new CD for $15 and sell it used for $5. And let’s say that you can buy that same CD in MP3 format for $10 but you can’t sell it used at all.
If you could sell an MP3 used, wouldn’t you be willing to pay more in the first place? Like, for example, $15?
What I’m thinking about is how much a secondary market for MP3s could do to grow recording industry revenues as a whole. It could be enough to have a substantal impact.
See also: insane-tastic startup with annoying name
See also: CNet story
It is a good idea, imagine buying an album and selling the tracks you don’t like.
I have thought about this before, in fact I just opened up a whitepaper on the idea – tradeusedmusic.com (domain still free).
You have a fundamental right of ownership of a possession, so in theory it should be able to be re-sold, traded, lent, or given away by its owner.
However my idea was predicated on transcoding DRM formats going between different store formats, i.e, Real->WMA or Apple->WMA. This was a problem 3 years ago.
The trend is to go DRM free however, and if you have no DRM then;
a) what value is there in a digital file that can be copied? Is the value of the copy $0?
b) how do you prove you have ownership of the mp3? if a copy is free, can I just sell lots of copies, creating an infinite supply and driving the price near to $0
c) would people think a digital file is ‘used’, there is no wear and tear?
I am sure the majors will stop this, they did it for CD’s before on many occasions – http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/1993/08/08-25-93tdc/08-25-93darts-4.asp
[…] …with a big stack of DRMd files that have become worthless in an instant. You can’t even sell them used to somebody who’s still in the Apple stack, like you can with MP3s. […]