Complementary Insults

Since my parents are moving away some time in the next few months, I went with them down to my aunt’s house for Thanksgiving.  It has been a fun trip overall, but since we drove the RV down that means in both directions I have a ~9 hour span of counting the mile markers.

For the last few years I’ve had laptops so I can watch movies and play games on the go, but this time around I also have an internet-enabled cell phone, which has led to amazing time killing.  Flash games, discussion forums, and news sites are all readily available.  If I’m near a major city the service is even fast enough that I can watch Youtube videos and the like.  As I type this message, we’re on I-70 heading East and closing in on Indianapolis (I think).  The sign we just passed said 169 miles to Columbus.

If you travel often as a passenger and have a laptop, a mobile internet connection is possibly one of the best things you can have in my opinion.  Depending on the provider they can be had for as little as $10/mo for unlimited access, I pay a little over $50/mo for high-speed unlimited access from AT&T.  That’s probably a bit too steep for the casual user, but for me it’s worth it since I also use that connection to work from on a regular basis.

This morning, the EMI Group announced that they would begin offering their music library for sale online without DRM. Not only that, but the DRM-free files would be encoded at a higher bitrate than their “protected” counterparts. Of course, this comes with a cost. Rather than the now-standard $0.99 per song, these files (which certainly do offer more to the consumer) would be priced at $1.29 per song.

As I was reading this, I began to think about what the real value of a digital music purchase is and whether the current pricing model makes sense, so I looked up the numbers. What follows are my results.

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