Theres a slashdot story about an academic saying the record companies should charge 5 cents a song online instead of the current 99 cents. That the demand is elastic enough that they would be the ones to benefit. Simple supply and demand, and you can argue all day about whether demand is that elastic, but given that there are 25 billion songs downloaded illegally per year, 5 cents a song would net the record industry another billion dollars in revenue, even if the only got 80% of those downloads. Seems pretty braindead simple to me.
The best part of the article though: “Then again, another record-industry type, casually speaking to Pearlman after the talk, had perhaps the most succinct counter suggestion. Why not charge 10 cents, instead of 5, and double the revenue?” Do “record-industry types” not know anything about economics.
Hey, if under this new pricing scheme, 50 cent released a 10-track album, it really would be 50 cent.