$5 per month for all the music you want

I could have sworn I blogged about this before, but couldn't find a quick reference to it. But anyway, one of the suggestions put forward by some people in hopes of re-defining the online music model is to charge all high speed internet customers a surcharge on their internet connection fee (let's say $5). This would entitle you to download all the music you could ever want - legally. The surcharge would be collected by a music industry organization responsible for divvying out the collected fees to artists based on the number of times their stuff was downloaded / traded.

It's an idea I like very much and it seems to have attracted the attention of the Songwriters Association of Canada.

Thanks to Ernest for the tip about the article.

Unfortunately, there are a few people who don't think this is a fair way to collect fees, as it 'punishes' those who don't download music at all. While I understand their argument, you could say that you don't want to pay for the bandwidth other internet users are using for peer-to-peer file sharing or downloading (even legal) video - but you are.

If the surcharge idea won't wash, I have a different idea - advertising. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility to make music available for free from sites that push advertising on you when you choose to download.