I just stumbled across this, and I found it really interesting. It seems like it’d be perfectly feasible if paypal became more popular.
What do y’all think?
I think alot of things.
Like why do people always think that because I can unicycle and juggle I will all the sudden want to do both at the same time.
Well, I still would rather just get it for free.
But if it’s only 15 cents I could probably manage to pay that.
It’s to bad this will never work with the music companys out there because they need to be making millions of dollars so they can have there pimped out escalade golfcarts and multi-million dollar homes.
Paypal doesn’t do micropayments.
Yeah, something like this would only work if everyone (every single person who was on the internet, kids, adults, illegal aliens) had a publicly accessible money account.
Also, it would do away with the classic notion of “saving up” for things.
And, you could only surf the web if you had money.
Someday we probably will. My guess is it’s only a matter of time before micropayments become very common, though they will remain optional, at least in the beginning.
However that doesn’t change the way music gets produced. Micropayments would provide one piece of the puzzle, but musicians still have to get from the recording studio to someplace online where their music can be found. It’s not like those greedy record companies aren’t doing anything…
I’m heartened by the recent change at the iTunes Music Store, where some songs are now available without rights management. These songs are $1.30 each instead of .99, but they also come at 256 kbps instead of the previous 128, so along with the decreased hassle in moving your songs around, the higher price seems very reasonable for today’s music market.
So far it only applies to a tiny amount of the music I’ve purchased from them though. Not that I’ve bought a lot; maybe the equivalent of a dozen albums or so. You can do a one-time upgrade of all your purchased music, which I decided to try. It was only $4.05 for all the songs that were upgradeable, which was like one album and a couple of other songs. I hope there will be more in the future!
Meanwhile, most musical artists will still need an array of “middlemen” to get their art from inside their heads to a place where you can find it (or find out about it). They work for a living as well, so give them at least a little credit. I have no problem with spreading the profits around more evenly though.