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Comment by Simulacra | Hacker News Reader

Some years back, the RIAA floated a proposal that would make you pay every time you listened to a song. You would never actually own music, you would just pay for it every time you listen to it like you were a radio station. It's just greed.

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I actually like the idea. Many things pay-per-use are actually cheaper unless you use it basically constantly, because if it isn't cheap enough, many people would stop using it, thinking: is listening to it right now really worth X amount? People have a strange attachment to the concept of ownership, so that they are willing to pay extra for it. Pay-per-use is actually a more profitable concept only when people are hesitant to buy something fully, because they are not sure if they would use it enough.

Would they send me a bill after a night out at the pub?

I would assume the pub would pay for playing it, same as radio is paying for playing it.

Well we already have this, it's called Spotify and Apple Music. I collect vinyl and I rather like having the whole album to listen to without paying anything more. If I had to pay per song which is IIRC the RIAA proposal, I would be less likely to explore music. I would stick to only music I can be reasonably certain is going to be good.

Wouldn't a pay-per-song scheme destroy independent bands so that only the biggest and most shared get listened to?

I don't get it. If you pay per use, i.e. pay the same if you listen to the same song 5 times vs 5 different songs, why should it inhibit exploration?

You'd listen 3 times instead of 5 to save on the monthly bill.

Same as when dialup Internet access was billed by the minute. Most people would limit their time online to reduce the bill, and didn't feel free to browse for hours every day if they found something interesting. Email and to some extent Usenet were popular because you only needed to go online for a few minutes to download and upload your messages; you could read and write offline for free. When unmetered "always on" connections arrived people's habits changed radically.

All makes sense, and that is why I said pay-per-use is usually less profitable, because back when dail-up was available, my internet bill was really lower than it is now. Granted, I am comparing apples and oranges, because I am also using the internet much more nowadays. But the argument that the greedy music industry wants to milk us by asking us to per-per-use is nonsense. They would make less money and probably people consume music more consciously.

When you ‘own’ music, what is it you think you own?

Intellectual property with respect to recorded media is weird.

When I "own" music, I interpret that as being able to listen to it whenever I want, forever, with no restriction. My digital music library (225GB of mostly FLAC files ripped from CDs and bought from Qobuz/Bandcamp) is close enough to ownership for me, even though I can't use most of it for commercial purposes or redistribute it or anything.

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