So basically MP3 music is over priced. A problem I think described by my economics lecturer as one of price discrimination - how can you charge in a market different prices in a market to different groups based on their utility assessment of the good. Essentially there are a number of different segments out there with different supply and demand curves. One group could be the market that missed out on the Napster generation who seem quite happy to spend over CD level prices on MP3 music, because they see it as more convenient to carry with them and have never questioned just how cheaply MP3 music can be distributed. Then there is another segment that experienced services like Napster and similar, which gave access to almost all recorded music including some genre's and artists you would never otherwise pick up because the marginal cost of hearing a different track or album to your regular favourites is zero. For this group there are high fidelity streaming services that include the ability to store your music offline if needed and the price compared to CDs if you "consume" a lot of a wide range of music is much lower. (and fortunately for me no artist I care about has boycotted any streaming service yet) And another group where physical ownership is important - like keeping favourite books on a bookshelf to tell a story of who you are and what you are interested in. There is something for everyone basically. Gotta love the free market.
I miss Napster. I came up into music when Napster was peaking and it was excellent. But what really blew up my music collection at first was iTunes' sharing client in a dorm in college. I went to Mizzou for a semester before dropping out, but was a student in the Journalism school while I was there. Everyone had to have a Mac computer in the J-School so we all had iTunes. Within about 15 minutes of setting up my computer on the dorm LAN I realized that I could stream whatever the hell I wanted from all of the connected iTunes profiles. A quick google search found that Apple had not programmed a way to download this songs directly, but that's okay, because someone else had. It was called 1.2.OhMyGod.SwingClient. It was excellent because at a time when most people had dial-up I had LAN access to a library of a jillion songs. So, of course, I deleted all of those as soon as I realized how ethically dubious and criminal I was being.