Music-industry veteran Sandy Pearlman spoke in regards to music
downloads at the Canadian Music Week conference in Toronto last week. His idea is a simple one, maybe too simple. He says we should put the entirety of recorded music on the net and charge five cents a track so profitability is a matter of volume not variable pricing.
Apparently Apple is listening to his ideas, and he has plans to sell
the concept to Google as well.
Quote:

Pearlman proposes putting all recorded music on a robust search engine -- Google would be an ideal choice, but even iTunes might work -- and charging an insignificant fee of, say, five cents a song. In addition, a 1 per cent sales tax would be placed on Internet services and new computers -- two industries that many argue have profited enormously from rampant file-sharing, but haven't had to compensate artists.