The Business of Selling Electronic Documents

TL;DR

This paper discusses how the music industry can reinvent itself by adapting pricing strategies and reducing costs in response to the ubiquity of digital copying and free information exchange.

Contribution

It proposes a new approach for the music industry to adapt to digital realities through demand-based pricing and cost reduction strategies.

Findings

Demand-based pricing can reduce copyright infringement

Lower costs facilitate new business models

Reinventing the industry is essential in digital age

Abstract

The music industry has huge troubles adapting to the new technologies. As many pointed out, when copying music is essentially free and socially accepted it becomes increasingly tempting for users to infringe copyrights and copy music from one person to another. The answer of the music industry is to outlaw a majority of citizens. This article describes how the music industry should reinvent itself and adapt to a world where the network is ubiquitous and exchanging information is essentially free. It relies on adapting prices to the demand and lower costs of electronic documents in a dramatic way.