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Quote:

Originally Posted by styrafome

Discs will disappear only as the number of people who have the means and desire to buy and maintain a computer and a broadband connection approaches 100%. After the events of this week, it should be pretty obvious that large swaths of America (much less the world) still can't afford the hardware, software, monthly broadband service fee and periodic hardware upgrades necessary to replace a simple $35 CD player with all digital downloads for the rest of one's life.

Styrafome, that is a very cogent argument; point taken!

However, there are changes. Mobile phones, for instance, are becoming incredibly widespread, as are CD players. In some countries TV sets are not common, but their solution is to gather in the one house in the neighbourhood that has one. But when broadband becomes cheaper than such solutions, I definitely believe they will spread further and wider. But I do realize that parts of the world are so mired in poverty that those options are sureally beyond the range of possibility and imagination.

Quote:

Originally Posted by styrafome

People have such a dim awareness of the extent to which technology had added huge "private taxes" to our monthly lives.

Some years ago, Laurie Anderson did a wonderful song/performance piece about what she called “the personal arms race”. Very, very interesting and utterly hilarious. Certainly most of us in this Forum, I suspect, are strapped into that.

The various and sundry “private taxes” are what now consume most of our incomes – along with payments on must-haves. Proof? How much do spend on food, electricity, housing and sufficient clothes (not counting fashions)? How much do you spend on your car, entertainment, fashion, holiday, computing, subscriptions, Christmas, etc.?

Survival and creature comfort is not what is costing me dearly…

– ArcticStones

Yeah, good points on the technology divide. I wonder though if those people at the bottom poverty levels are even buying CDs?? That would seem a luxury itself.

A basic 1GB MP3 player is really cheap, about what that CD player costs. I wonder if there is viability in "fill up stations" where you can plug in your USB-based MP3 player and buy music without owning your own computer? Kinda like the photo printing kiosks.

There was a band that was selling Shuffles with their album on them, for just the regular cost of the Shuffle. I can't remember the name, but they said it was pretty successful.

Absolutely right. Furthermore, I buy only CDs because I don't know how long I'll keep my current mac and linux boxex, and my iPod was a accidental purchase (for my wife who then was not interested). So I am certainly not going to buy music that is tied to to any perticular hardware of mine that can fail any day (like some of my CD players did).

These iPod "partners" will probably all just raise their prices and pass their fees on to the consumer. That's usually how it goes . . . unless they just weren't doing well with their accessories in the first place, in which case this will be the ko punch.

10% of what? The retail price? The cost of the parts?

Didn't Steve say something about the record labels being greedy because they wanted a part of iPod sales which they had nothing to do with? Same thing here.