from:
http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/

good system?

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We can do so much better

The internet should eliminate exploitation of musicians, not perpetuate it.

Here's one way to get fans cheaper music and musicians more money:

Bands sign-up with Apple, but put mp3s on their own website.
iTunes displays songs and albums just like it does now.
Songs cost 50 cents, albums cost 3 dollars, previews are free.
Songs download directly from the bands' website.
Like ebay, Apple takes a 3% commission for connecting the buyer and seller.
Musicians keep the rest: 3 times what they now get from iTunes or a CD.
The listener pays half, the band’s take triples.
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Peer-to-peer networks provide even more efficiency by eliminating the cost of server space and bandwidth. Ensuring the integrity of songs would be easy: a standardized encoding format and checksums. Fans would provide a free distribution network for the artists they like.

But either way, more fans would be willing to pay because the music's cheaper, and the band gets three times as much as they do from CDs or iTunes. Musicians might still hire record companies for certain services, like marketing, but they would be the ones on top. And if the record companies are the only thing preventing this, let's get rid of them.

Should Prince do this?

i think this iTunes thing is silly for complete albums.
what if u get an album where tracks weave in2 oneanother.

like segues,etc...

burning .wav files eliminates this when u have your audio cd done.
but mp3 files leave u with slight gaps.

fuck around with paying for it on credit card & getting something sounding sub-par?...
OR
spend extra cash & get the real deal?

i know what i'd choose.

but if u got no segues,then go4 it

how does paying artists for their music exploit them? If Prince signs up with iTunes, he gets 66 cents per song. Apple takes a 33% cut, much like anywhere else you buy music, and passes on the rest to the songs owner.

Apple has sold 10 million songs to date - about half of which are sold as part of albums. So Apple's cut is about $2.5 million. Out of that, they have to pay for servers, network bandwidth to support instant previews, server software development, client software development, marketing, etc. They've also invested a ton of R&D into things like Quicktime (including AAC support), iTunes, Safari, iPod just to make the store feasible. Your model would cut their share from $2.5 million to $125k. Where is the justification for spending all of those resources into such a small return. That's not even enough to support the staff needed to get the music and artwork uploaded each week.

And at the same time, independent artists like Prince would get significantly less money your way too. Prince should be all over the iTunes music store. He should exclusively release material from his vault there. The material is already recorded and mastered - there'd be little overhead on his part and he'd be the top selling artist.

Of course, today's Prince wouldn't release his old music without editing/censoring it first.