Sanity!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html?

"After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy."

It's about time! Let's get creative and find new ways for musicians to make money. Hoarding of easily distributable music is not one of them.

I personally think all music should be free for download. Then maybe you could specify in your music player how much you think each song is worth.

Here's one idea.
1. Specify how much you want to spend on music each month(say 10$).
2. Use a music player that tracks what you listen to.
3. Pay out fraction of total to each of the artist depending on how you listened that week.

There are lots of other possible new business and market models. We need to be creative and think about the real value of the musician-listener relationship. It's been driven by rather distorted priorities up till now. What new models are bands currently using? And what are some new things to try?