Consumer:
"Free music, dude ... "
"Yea, just go to this site, click links and listen to tunes."

Creator & their busines partners:
"Hey I created this album and make my living from people buying my CD's, but now they are ripping me off."

There's the problem in a nutshell. The creator of content (music in this case)is not able to control the distrubution of their product any more. Imagine if Home Depot left their stores open 24x7 with no cash registers and a few buckets for voluntary payment by thankful customers. How long would they last? Why is digital product any different?

To speak up for the consumer, they do have one legitimate point. They are forced into buying a "package" even though they only want 1-2 songs. Additionally, it seems that the media companies want us to believe we are buying the right to use the content, so why don't they have a free replacement policy for damaged medium?

The Fractional Transaction, pay per use model.

A good compromise in this tug-of-war would require a bit of a shift in expectations and some growth in technology. Using music as an example, under the fractional transaction pay per use model, a consumer always pays, but a very small amount per use (listening in this case). The consumer also never downloads the content for local storage, but instead streams it on demand every time they want to listen and pays the extremely small amount each time.. Although the exact number is not important now, let's say the creator charges $0.01 per song per listen.

Under the fractional transaction, pay per use model:

• Total cost for the consumer to experience content drops.
• The consumer pays a very small (no brainer) amount every time they access the content.
• The artist and their partners get paid by each and every consumer in a constant stream of small payments.
• The motivation for the consumer to "take" the content is largely diffused by low (no brainer)cost.
• The market for piracy of physical goods is gutted.
• The consumer is not stuck with inferior product (bad songs on a CD for example).
• Artists and their partners can make the big killing on popular content.
• Try before you buy changes to "try for almost nothing".
• Content experiences greater exposure as consumers are exposed to more product in all industries as the cost to try is so low.
• Content experiences greater usage as it reaches basicaly all markets and price points.
• Distrubutors can offer packages of content in an infinite number of combinations.
• Consumers are not stuck with older versions of content, but instead get the latest version up to the minute they click on the link.
• This model can be applied to music, videos, database searches, software, and all other digital media. No longer should you pay $300 for a piece of software that you only need for 1 week, but instead you pay $.20 every time you start it. If you want to read a review of a resturant, there is no need to buy the wole book, instead only read the review of your interest for $0.10, and come back next week for the next resturants' review.

It seems that the capitalistic system works well and the consumer is proposing a more socialistic system. If people who create do not get rewarded for their creation, then what happens to a society when creators loose their motivation to create? My bet is that the creators quit and do something else, and then, we have killed some of the geese who lay the golden eggs.