What’s most interesting to me is that the new easy-access formats for music, in which we can instantly jump to any song we want, have devalued music. Everyone used to be comfortable paying $20 for a CD in the 1990s, or before then $10 for a tape in the 1980s, but now we expect to get songs for free off the internet.

Perhaps profit, the driver of business, is easier to derive when there is friction between supply and demand. If consumers have a difficult time getting something, they are more willing to pay for it. But if music becomes like air, floating around us whenever we want, we don’t want to pay. Great for consumers, but bad for the artists trying to make a living.