In case y’all didn’t notice, we are moving to a future where all music content is going to be downloaded, not bought at a store [and not stored on your local computer]. One fundamental way this will change how we buy music that there will no longer be used music available at prices much less than the price paid for new music.

There is [currently] no concept of USED digital content.

I first came across this disconnect when wondering why people were buying Kindles at $79 when Kindle books cost $18 while at the same time they can buy the best books of all time for $1 to, say, $8… used. And then later sell them. Same is true for music – I can buy the best music albums in the world for $1 to say, $3 while kids are buying music at $1 a song, about $20/album [yes, I have to search a bit to find cheap LPs and CDs – no immediate gratification here]. AND, I can sell it later.

Getting albums for $1 allows us to explore new music, find things we might like, and equally valid, things we do not.

In the digital world you can sample music cuts at Amazon and spend $1 for the full cut, or subscribe to Spotify, Pandora etc. and hear music in a hit-and-miss kind of way because of various listening restrictions [the dunderheaded RIAA are as retarded as they are evil – funny how often these two things go hand-in-hand.].

Content will then be moving to a 100% subscription-based service… but will you be able to play music for your friends, or will the RIAA police come to your door and arrest you for illegal sharing of THEIR content? Don’t know.

Spotify wants all your friends to subscribe to their service, and then Facebook wants you to listen to music on Facebook that your friends listen to, but not at the same time. turntable.fm allows you to listen to music at the same time, but with strangers who are picking the music you will hear.

This is all fun and all – and the peer-sensitive teens and 20-somethings are eating it up, but the 1) real solid social aspects of listening to the same music with other people in the same room and 2) the real artistic/aesthetic aspects of actually hearing all of the music the musician is playing, these require 1) a stereo system and 2) a decent source of high-res content aka, currently, a CD or LP.

So eventually the RIAA will figure this out [yeah right, no time soon] and try to outlaw CDs and LPs [I bet they are successful too] or, maybe, try to buy up the entire used CD and LP market [I’ll sell them my part of it for a cool $100M].

At least, that is how I am currently seeing things. Admittedly, things are still in flux out there and Accurate Predictions is an oxymoron 😉