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by jrm4 1703 days ago
No, royalties are objectively not part of the marginal cost, by definition. Marginal cost refers to things that must be paid for before the thing is made. This isn't a "should," it's essentially a principle of "the science of economics" (which isn't always much of a science, but this one holds up pretty well over time.)

The one that doesn't is the bit about "how much value they derive from it." All sorts of real-life experimentation/psychology, etc shows that people don't much know or understand or generally follow this thing of "a person develops a sense of how much something is worth to them and makes purchases accordingly," I mean, a moment's thought reveals that if this were true, advertising (and perhaps, google and facebook et als entire business models) wouldn't exist.

I have idiosyncratic music preferences like you, but we much don't matter.