The music industry is on the road to self destruction: They sue their own customers (12-year old kids for crying out-loud) and they have no common sense when it comes to selling music. The music industry wants to make more money, but they also make it so hard for themselves to sell the music -- most of the music that they try to pawn is not that great anyways. Steven Levy writes an interesting article comparing the price of downloadable music (on iTunes Music Store) versus the price of CD music. He finds some interesting points. Most of the CDs can be bought for download from iTunes Music Store for $9.99, but for some reason some of the more popular releases cost more. Levy finds that Jessica Simpson's The Very Best of Sheryl Crow is $16.83 at iTunes Music Store and $9.99 at Amazon.com. So, I guess you are like me: Scratching your head and wondering who in the hell is running the concert at the offices of the music industry. A few other thoughts are probably: What are you music industry guys thinking? That we, the music buying public are completely stupid? This pricing of music is just inane beyond belief. Why is the music industry trying to charge more for a digital download (which has no physical CD, liner notes, or even a free DVD)? I would figure that the digital download would cost less since it cost less to distribute the music: No need to press a CD nor print everything that goes around it. It is a wonder why people aren't flocking to buy digital downloads and continue to download music illegally. The music industry is on the road to self destruction with this type of business practice. My suggestion for the oh-mighty-ones-who-act-like-idiots-who-run-the-music-industry: Chop the price of music by half for digital downloads. Sell a full CD for $5.99 online. Sell individual songs for 49 cents. Make it about selling in volume and not about high initial price. If you price the music right (and produce some good music) then people will be willing to pay for it: It is blatantly obvious that people know how to download and listen to music -- and it is also obvious that a lot of people do not buy CDs from traditional brick and mortar stores either. Give these people who prefer digital downloads a reason to pay for it. The more you sell, the more you will rake into your fat pockets. If you keep up this stupidity of overpricing digital downloads, you are only shooting yourself in the foot and killing yourself slowly. Digital downloads of music is the future and if you are going to full around like this now, you might as well pack up and close up shop. And hey, stop suing your customers -- especially 12-year olds.