Convenience

I just bought Tha Carter III from Amazon.  I feel an obligation to temper my filesharing with the habitual infusion of cash into the recording industry, but on this occasion, I was struck by the convenience of using amazon†.  Tha Carter III is sixteen songs, and Lil Wayne is such a prolific artist that tracking down a good copy of the CD on Soulseek would have been a pain in the ass.  This way, I get the album with one search and one click, and I don’t have to worry about the ID3 tags being wrong, so iTunes and my iPod will properly recognize the music.  I suspect that as people move up their lifetime income curve, these sorts of considerations become more and more important, and you’ll see them buying a larger proportion of their music.  That’s part of the reason that I’m relatively unconcerned about the impact of file-sharing on the music business.

† I suppose for full consistency, I should be supporting a smaller act, but see the following point about convenince.  Also, Amazon sells the album for $3 less than iTunes, which can’t be good for iTunes in the long run.