[Bodoc]

Don't sell the content -- sell a content delivery system. And don't do it as "piece goods" like iTunes.

Charge a subscription fee for a service that is so compelling, well organized, user friendly, value added, etc that the alternative (sitting around and spending time searching to see what music some folks might or might not have made available to steal) is a relatively poor investment in personal time and trouble.

There is larceny everywhere in our society. But there are more people earning money than stealing it because it is actually more cost effective and convenient to develop a skill/product to trade value for value than it is to make a living snatching purses, embezzling, etc.

The service's catalog could be encyclopedic as well as current, featuring podcasts and specials, content filters, artist access and interaction, rapid downloads of superb quality and a variety of daily changing enrichments that would make the subscription fee a BARGAIN.

Artists could be rewarded based on downloads and/or some other formula.

This kind of service is already available in other content forms. One great example is HIGHBEAM.COM, which has a huge, flexible, multi-filtered, searchable database of newspaper, magazine, etc content. A great aspect of the Highbeam service is that subscribers may use copyrighted material in their own blogs.

Selling piece goods in the information age is, obviously, a loser. Making that model work by suing individual consumers is also, obviously, a loser. It didn't work for the horse and buggy and it won't work here.