"Free Downloads Play Sweet Music" 5.2

I think that allowing users to share and download music is helpful to the industry and agree with the author. Listeners are allowed to see if they like a piece of music or new artist without having to spend $$$ for an entire album that there may only be 1 or 2 songs on it that they like. This is one reason I do not have a huge music collection of modern music. Yes, there are options to listen to tracks in the store but that takes up precious time when you could simply download an Mp3 and put it on a player, listen to the various tracks and delete ones you don't care for, compare your list on your player to the download list and voila! you have a setup of a variety of music by multiple artists.

When I was a teen I was into New Kids on The Block. I had several of their tapes but there were several songs on each one that I didn't care for. I re-recorded ones I liked with a plain old tape recorder and had my favorites on one tape and the originals sat in a dark corner under my bed. The other thing about those tapes is that I had traded or borrowed from friends to get the tracks I like. This same thing happened later on with CD's and burning technology. I have many CD's from friends that I burned a track or two I really liked rather than go out and buy a whole CD that had parts I wouldn't listen to.

Downloadable music is not hurting the industry as the listeners are being given more choices and spending hard earned and saved money on things they really need or want instead of dropping a lump on a CD they may not totally need at the time. This can only help the economy as a whole and is a minor spit in the bucket of revenue for the music industry.

If the music industry was smart they would release music digitally first and then allow users to create their own CD's in the store if they are so worried about large chain store sales. Those who do not want or have the technology to build their own CD's or even collection of Mp3's for a portable device can go into a store, pick the music they want at a per track price and build a custom CD or play list for the store clerks to compile. Hey, even I might go for that kind of service!