i stopped buying cd’s of “unproven” (to me) groups because of the times that i would buy a cd based on one song, and the rest of the album was crap.  so yeah, if i could buy individual songs at less than$5 per song (which is what i am seeing) i would like that.  and i would also like to be able to hear a lot of the stuff before i try it, but i guess i go to the wrong stores that don’t have listening stations.

and the money thing has a lot to do with it, i am working a 2nd job to pay off some bills, i don’t want to waste the money on something i don’t like.

Artistic quality is such a subjective concept, though I have often used “commercial” as an adjective to describe over-produced garbage music. Really, what the RIAA wants is for each listener to buy their own copy, and when it becomes damaged, a fresh copy should be purchased to replace it.

Besides promoting over-hyped junk-bands, they constantly seek to fill their revenue stream with “special” re-releases of the same old stuff and nostalgia packages. But considering the amount of watery filler one finds on many CDs, it is ridiculous to expect the listener to abide by the industry’s aesthetic notions rather than desiring to reconstruct content into a more palatable selection.

In numerous threads we have seen anecdotes that attest to the fact that the industry itself is what is wrong with music, that the revenues go not to the artists as they ought, but to the label or corporation (and who can forget the surreal case of Zantz suing Fogerty for plagerising Fogerty?). It is not pleasing to realize that that CD you are buying is helping pay for some executive’s boat, and not easy to call up tears knowing that trading an MP3 might ultimately force him to give it up.