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The music website lala.com is about to begin a new service which allows a user to listen to about 95% of available recorded music with permission to listen to any track in its entirety once and after that enable someone to add the song to their web-tethered “digital locker” for 10 cents. Has it gotten to the point where your favorite song in the world is valued at a dime?

Of course the irony is that the digital music revolution has made a dime seem, strangely enough, expensive. Given that just about anything you’d want to listen to or watch the video for is merely one click away, even a penny (does anyone remember 8 CDs for 1 cent?) is payment for something you can experience for free. Quality has also completely lost out to cost & convenience, with most people loving the sound of their portable music players rather than sitting in the sweet spot of a room set up specifically for high fidelity.

Do any of you know what HD Radio is? Has anyone heard it? Cricket. A near-perfect music subscription service such as Rhapsody has found difficulty finding consumer traction. iTunes has been a hit due to a dummy-proof hardware/software combo. But iTunes itself is not a big money-maker for Apple. Cheers for high-margin iPod players and the accessories market.

One of my favorite bands has released a new album this week. Of course the album leaked some time ago and given the concept of instant digital gratification, I had to hear it early. I was able to put it on a CD and listen to it in my car. Printout artwork if I wanted. But now that the album has been released to retail, there is no true incentive to pick up the album other than loyalty to the artist and my local non-chain record store. It almost feels as if buying a record is more of a tip jar rather than buying the good. Or validating to a record company that their horse was a good investment and keep allowing them to run around the track.

The silver bullet is something that record labels have locked up in a mountain somewhere. Give the fans what they want… the B-sides on the random Japanese single, the demos, the live tracks, aborted sessions of an album, in an online environment rather than in a box set which just sits ultimately just sits on someone’s shelf. A site such as nugs.net enables a large number of Jam Bands (and, er, Metallica) to sell fans a live version of every show. Other than logistical overhead, it’s almost pure profit for a band whose fans would gladly pay for a live version of the show they just saw instead of the $40 t-shirts which Radiohead were selling at their show (of course, they gave away their last album online).

I think I will head over to the record store during lunch today to pick up the band’s album… if only out of guilt, not because I am getting more than what I already have.

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