Phil Greenspun: Music CDs are dead… why did it take so long?
How does an industry like this survive for so long? Faced with high monopoly prices, why wouldn’t consumers simply turn on the radio or TV, watch DVDs instead of listening to music CDs, or … (gasp) read books? Actually that may be what is happening. The record industry likes to blame the peer-to-peer file sharing services but these are awfully painful to use. Someone with money to spare could presumably find something more entertaining to do than wait for half-broken files to download. More likely Joe Average looked at a nice collection of 500 CDs being offered for sale at the old prices and said “Thanks, but I’d rather have a brand new car instead.. and it comes 20 channels of free music on the radio.”