Why not go a step further and offer future contracts on artists. For $30 I get the rights to every song or creative work that that artist produces over their career and I can use it unrestricted providing I don't violate their copyright. Let the market set the price and it would be a powerful incentive for commercial artists to directly manage their careers instead of relying on labels.
Link: Jason Ball's TechBytes: Future Boy :: The Empire Strikes Back.
The key here is how MUCH for those perpetual rights? I bet $1 million it isn't $0.99. I've long thought that Apple should offer a "future proof" version of iTunes downloads (Higer bit rates and "loss protection"). They could charge slightly more for these versions... In this sense, Navio's approach is the correct one- however I do not believe reverse engineering Apple's DRM is the way to solve the problem and I don't belive they will be price competitive.
I too think hat the market should drive the price, some more, some less. I also think there should be a digital locker somewhere where people can keep a list of the rights they have bought so a better version can be aquired later, or a backup can be aquired should yours get stolen, or you have an electronics crash.
I wish this had been implemented some years ago, as I know many that have had a book of 100 hard to find cd's jacked out of their car. and I couldn't tell you have many cd and dvd discs have been trashed because they cease to function.
Neverthelass how many times I have paid different companies an extra few dollars for the mpeg licensing in order to rip mp3s, and for video codecs that i have paid for time and again with the various video editing packages I have paid for..
Steve
Posted by: Steve | Nov 16, 2005 at 11:20 PM