Of course we're excited about Steve Jobs saying that he'd love to offer all of us free music on iTunes, but the record labels have his hands tied with their DRM schemes.
(All kinds of reports on that here and here.)
(Thanks for the image www.mccombs.utexas.edu.)
Easy to say you'd do it when you know you can't and you set up iTunes not to do it from the get-go.
Let's face it -- while everybody can take a very altruistic stance, we still live in a capitalistic society where people buy and sell goods and services.
Now this really won't get anywhere unless those who control the music (the records labels and some artists directly, sort of) decide that they can live with a smaller price for each song sold.
But it wasn't too long ago (well, maybe it has been a few years) that a single (but with a B-side) sold for 79 cents (so 40 cents a tune -- but maybe you didn't want that second song). So is 99 cents a song really that bad? (And even less bad a low low Wal-Mart?)
I'd be more juiced if CDs were priced at the same level for downloads as the physical CD -- will that day ever come?