It is the rare album indeed.....
Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you. I have 2 CDs that I bought recently that (I believe) are top notch all the way through. I was more than willing to buy these CDs at retail. I also remember buying LPs with my allowance which had 1 good cut. In that case, it's a good question as to who's stealing from who. (I say it's the industry,since I believe they knew it sucked when they released it, it's "product"). IF(BIG IF) I can download a single song in a lossless format, then burn it to a CD as a CDA file with no DRM I would be more than willing to pay for that. It would, after all, save me at least $10.00. I don't have to own most albums for the sake of owning them. This whole discussion is doomed to be a conundrum as long as people are people. CEOs are greedy, listeners sometimes are poor. But, and this is really important, when you get too dependent on the computer for your music and movies, you can bet your last dollar that the entertainment industry will keep sticking more and more DRM to you. Just like the price on Vista is "so low now" because M$ has put the brakes on piracy, you can bet the price on media won't drop as more and more control is put on it.