I love free things. If I could get music for free I would, but a lot of us understand that nothing is really “free”. I get that, and that’s why I buy music on iTunes instead of download it via a p2p network. I’d prefer to give away a lot of things for free too, but then I wouldn’t be making any money, and without that little bit of income, I wouldn’t be able to continue what I was doing.
It might just be me, but I feel obligated that if I’m going to use something that someone else created, that I should compensate for it. I listen to music a lot, I watch video a lot, and use software a lot. If I just keep taking all of that for free, then the people making it wouldn’t be able to keep making it, and that would mean I don’t get the enjoyment I used to.
I think Steve Jobs understood that all of us would pay for music, if it was affordable, and what we got in exchange for the money was something that we wanted - 99 cent downloads, instant enjoyment, good quality. I think he’s trying to do the same thing with video (be it TV shows, music videos, or movies), and I’d love to support him in that, but the quality of the video just isn’t good enough for the $1.99~$12.99 price tag.
A lot of my friends would agree with me when I say that we listen to music many, many, many times more than we watch a single episode or movie, so I don’t see why the movie industry won’t let Apple provide better quality products to customers that would prefer to pay and download then download for free off of a p2p network.
Hopefully this will change in the near future, I love using iTunes to manage my media, and can’t wait for it to manage my video too.
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