olivier travers eloquently illustrates a music business model that is closely aligned with my own music listening habits:

“Here’s the product I want: 200GB hard drives full of fully meta-tagged mp3 files that I can transfer to whatever device or media I want. Let me create my selection online and ship me the hard drive. I’d buy such a product for $1,500 (the price of the included hardware is just 10% and falling), and I’d buy one every 18 months. Basically an “All You Can Listen To” package geared to collectors and people who like me hate to know songs by heart and are in discovery mode day in, day out.

Why should anyone pay $50K+ to have a decent collection to enjoy with their friends and family when we’re talking about a product that is mostly already amortized (we’re talking about huge sleeping catalogs here) and that for the most part isn’t generating any revenue anymore (because the backlist is unavailable online or even in most record stores). Put music in the fabric of people’s lives, make it really pervasive, and you’ll increase both the number of buyers and the absolute dollar value you’ll extract from them. “

the $1,500 price point would hurt, but i think there are several ways you could slice and dice the payments . the basic point is a good one; some of the music industry’s best customers are waiting to be served. we are cut from the “the more we listen to the more we want to listen to” camp. we are in constant discovery mode and are drooling at the prospect of working out ways where we can discover hidden jems.