Why I Torrented "Funeral" and "Neon Bible"

(or "Why new media need not be free - just cheap")

1. To Hear Them
   (or "Advertising Wants to be Free")
   
   I first heard about Arcade Fire around the time Neon Bible was released. I heard good things, and I was curious. The website, at the time, held no samples, and evaluating music based on the quality of clips on youtube seemed like a poor plan. So, in order to hear it, I torrented it.
   
   Some bands(and/or labels) have got this right - Evermore, notably, posted the entirety of Truth of the World on their Myspace page the week before it was launched. But in this case, it was the only way I was going to hear the music - they certainly weren't the sort of thing I was going to hear on Top 40 radio.
   
   Certainly not the first time I've walked that path, nor was it the last. Liam Finn's I'll be Lightning, Crowded House's Time on Earth, and indeed Evermore's Dreams, Real Life and Truth of the World. The common ground between them? All of them were later purchased by myself or Cass.
   
   Yet I still don't own these particular albums. Why's that?
   
   
2. To Get Them at All
   I'm not sure why, but "indy" and "alternative" music is ridiculously hard to get hold of here, regardless of how sucessful the artist is. At the time, I was keen to buy - but they were nowhere to be seen.
   
   
3. DRM
   At the time, iTunes was infested with DRM, and provided only poor quality lossy encodings. The CD versions were copy protected - an avoidable nuisance, but enough to put me off, given that:
   
   
4. Music costs too much in Australia
   It makes some sense that new music should be costly - after all, it has to pay off the cost of studio time, music video production and marketing. And obviously the record label wants to turn a profit.
   
   That's all good and well - but that doesn't need to be an ongoing cost. Why is it that unless I can catch a special, Neon Bible still costs the same $29 I could have found it for the day it was released? By now, the label has their share, the costs are paid. The only people left to pay are the band, something I certainly don't disagree with.
   
   Then we turn to the ongoing costs, those of printing, pressing, packing, transportation, breakage, distribution and shelving - why should I have to pay those fees, when all I want is the music? Certainly, I want it in lossless perfection (preferably unmarred by the Loudness War), but I don't need it to come on a disc.
   
   Of course, the internet makes distribution practically free, per unit. And all the initial costs are well and truly paid off by now. I, for one, would gladly pay Arcade Fire themselves $5 per album (twice what they'd get from a CD). The record label can have a few bucks too, for now. So call it $7.00 for a paid-off album. Just how much this scheme would have a new album cost, I don't know - but would it have to be that much more? Make CD's $9.99, and they're an impulse buy item again. There has to be a balance point for maximum profit - and I don't believe that it's $30 an album. That's just old media thinking.