Quote:
Originally Posted by kjk
You value one song by an artist as equal to an entire book by a writer, just based on megabytes?
How long do you think an author spends writing an entire novel?
If you think iTunes is "fair", then comparing a novel to a whole CD ($9.99) is more apt.
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Perhaps the OP was suggesting one method for placing a value on an item that is essentially infinitely abundant.
It is also possible that it could take a song writer/performer the same amount of time to create a song as it takes an author to write a novel.
I don't agree with you last premise. Without going too far back, the music recording industry at one time was based on selling 45rpm vinyl singles. Since they were double-sided, a second song was also offered to provide the appearance of extra value. iTunes is a return to this model minus the B-Side.
As the recording industry increasingly promoted LPs and the album format, they charged consumers more for the product because of all the songs that were now included in the album and thus represented a greater value to the consumer (despite there being little to no increase in production costs but a significant increase in profit.)
I suggest that for your analogy to work along the lines of the CD, readers would have to purchase the book they want along with several others they don't want at an increased cost (after all, they're getting more pages, hence greater value) even though they only wanted one particular book.