Mercurial

Daring Fireball (John) points to the small print in Napster service, and a scary one it is: You own nothing, and you are tied for life to the service.

On the other hand, let's say I got my music from CDs, and from used vinyl records that are around for $1 a piece. Just ripping from those, I can have all the music I want, free of dreadful DRMs and similar.

I may go to a garage sale, and get all the music from the original owners, in CD, and still get a fabulous deal. I might go to a used CDs from a college store and get all the discarded pop and some better tunes.

The recording industry needs me, user, to listen to top forty and billboard albums, in order to sustain their coke-addled and sex addicted musicians: groupies are expensive, you know. However, I have other resources, and thus I get gifts from friends, and mix CDs, and the like. If I do not listen to Clear Channel at all, then DRM schemes and business models are completely adverse to my music experience. If I am a eclectic listener, it is through a network that I get my music, instead of one (corporate) channel. Surprisingly, the same applies if I am a highly specialized listener, say, one that only likes goa and therefore has to proceed through a tight network of musicians and listeners.
For the great mass of indiscriminating listeners, though, or the people that have to have the latest album by Lindsay Lohan in order to be hip, the associated costs of purchasing music through DRM biz models are part of their expense: they are cultivating an image, and knowingly spending money in limited music and dubious quality.
Then again, what happens when music, as pointed put by John Gruber, becomes experience instead of status or fashion? We listen to music that is not current because its appreciation is internal, and therefore according to our own criteria. As we go past the stage in which we consume for approval and start to search for ourselves (At least music seems to be one good that is free of that conspicuous consumption meme by Veblen), we want the concrete good in our hands, not some shady and unestablished service.

All in all, I am a fairly atypical user. And my music costs me very little.