When we listen to radio all day long, we are not listening for free. We pay by being forced to hear advertisements mixed in with the music. Those ads are paid for by the various advertisers that the radio station does business with. The radio station, in turn, pays royalties for the music that they use to frame their ads with. In reality, it's really the advertisers who bear the cost of paying those royalties, and it's they who benefit the most from the music that the radio station plays.
Radio waves are truly instantaneous and perishable and are also fully paid for.
Using your bootleg cassettes as an example doesn't even fly with me because that is, after all, an analog format. In all of the debate over Napster, I've never seen any mention of how they make their money. Send us email with the story title and we will post the best. Copyright 2000 MP3 Newswire. All rights reserved.