ET wrote:

I would like to see perhaps an "association" of artists get a Napster-
like website going with a reasonable cost-per-song, and cut out the
middle-man.... New artists would, of course, give a few songs away and/or
make them very cheap until they became in higher demand.

What I thought they should have done was to go ahead and give away their
music via MP3 files, but in suitably low sample rates so the quality was
perceptibly lower. Then folks could buy the real deal at max sample rate
if they liked the songs. It would have let people explore the catalog of
music, while allowing them to track what people are interested in
(marketing data) and still making a buck. They were still locked in to
the old ways.