[twohearted]

The music industry has been fighting against the natural economic theories of capitalism ever since the mp3.

Digital files have infinite supply. Draw a classic supply and demand diagram using that information and look at where the price should be. The supply curve is a vertical line at infinity on the x-axis. The demand curve crosses it at $0. Everyone knows and feels this intrinsically.

The artist is the thing with extremely limited supply. Something like Patreon will end up being the correct model.

[klodolph]

This argument falls apart because it is using the incorrect definition of “supply”. The “supply” is the amount available on the market. Just because the cost of duplicating a digital file is nearly zero does not mean that the supply is infinite. The supply is limited by laws that restrict who is allowed to duplicate the file and the limited number of people who are willing to break those laws.