Eric, affiliate revenues on all upsales are a weird business model, but then again money is money. For musicians to get paid, they need to be earning on the real value of their work — to give cultural cachet to neutral products like toilet paper and spark plugs. People don’t care about detergent and they don’t need CDs, they care about CDs and need detergent. Put them together and you have a real winner.

“New and improved Tide: now with Aerosmith!”

gurdonark, this is really well said: “The reality of the new technology is that, as advertised, it can make things less expensive and more efficient, which can remove some of the excess profits in the system.”