Back and forth they go; the consumers versus the recording industry executives and artists. The consumers simply want value for their money, and the RIAA wants what exactly?

CD sales are falling and the RIAA likes to place the blame on the advent of peer to peer file sharing. The problem is, their argument doesn't hold water. Every bit of research finds consistent results, more old songs are traded than new ones and those who download songs are actually more likely to purchase a CD. CD sales appear to be falling due to a lack of quality music and not due to any new market, free or otherwise.

In the five years prior to 2002, I purchased zero, zip, zilch, nada, none, not a single music CD. Nor did I trade in MP3s, neither downloading them, nor copying from my extensive collection of over 1000 disks, because I don't listen to music on the computer, only through the CD players in my home and car. The RIAA, and various music artists, have already made a good sum from me, averaging 1000 disks times $12 retail equates to my annual salary of $12,000. And yet, I've not bought a CD in 5 years. Why? I found the quality of new music to be substandard.

Not worth my money, not enough value for the dollar. For $12 a CD, I would get 8-11 songs, of which 2 or 3 are worth listening to more than once, so a total of about 6-11 minutes of value. With that same $12 I could purchase a new movie on DVD and have 2 full hours of enjoyment. The value just isn't there.

This year I downloaded a file-sharing program and took a look and a listen. I still don't like most new music; very rarely do I encounter a single gem. But when I do, I don't download a whole album and leave the RIAA and the artist in a lurch, I skeptically put down the money to give the album a go. Recent purchases include Spirit Room by Michelle Branch and Eleventh Hour by Jars of Clay, and neither have been a disappointment.

Piracy has been shown time and time again to be unstoppable, just look at the video game industry, and they've been fighting the battle for 10 times as long. Every method of protection has been broken, and every future method will be. The money wasted designing and implementing the protection will be fostered off on the law abiding consumers, who will just become even more disenfranchised with the recording industry, creating a perpetual downward spiral of lost sales.

There are those who download music because they can't afford to buy albums. And even if they couldn't download the songs, they still wouldn't buy the album, so there is no lost sale there anyway. But everyone I know who downloads music files do it because of the lack of value. Three quality songs on a album of 9 songs for $12 equates to a 1/3 return value on their money. And the only advantage, besides complying with the law, which they see as a gray area at best, is they get it pre-printed on a CD.

Ask them if they'd pay $1 a song to download and burn their own songs which they knew they liked and it's a unanimous YES! Give us a method to get our money directly to the artist, paying only for the products we want, without having to pay extra to get products we find untenable at best, horrendous at worst.

Give me a way to give you my money for the services you provide that I want, without stealing from me my money for the services I never asked for, and I'll gladly stand in line to pay you.

Take my money, please.