Sulcalibur Extra

Umbrella by The Baseballs

(download)

Click here to download:

01 Umbrella.mp3 (5.91 MB)

I love this track :) Much better than the original IMHO

Now correct me if I'm wrong but surely a digital version of something that we download should cost a fraction of the physical (hold it in your hands) version. Since with a physical version there is a huge amount of costs involved (I'm just concentrating on the stages from the point of when the product content has been made to the point of sellable). From sourcing the materials, paying workers to work in factories to make the items, pay all the workers in the factories, insurance, premises etc. Then pay for transport of the items to the various destinations, pay for the packaging etc, pay for the advertising POS, etc etc etc. I mean, I don't have a clue about this stuff and I'm probably forgetting loads of extra costs but you get the idea.

Now with a digital version after the content has been made, all that I can tell comes into it is for whomever the provider is to pay for bandwidth (similar would be shelf space for a physical item). Other costs obviously come into it such as payment fees, but these would be at the sale stage, similar to the physical item also.

So, with all this in mind, why are digital versions more expensive than physical items in many cases? With illegal downloading so common place I would have thought that this would be the ideal solution to phase this out. Viruses and bad quality downloads are enough to push many people into paying the little extra to buy a legit digital version. But when they cost as much or more then something someone can buy at the shops, most people wouldn't bother (I know it's wrong, but it's true).

In the recent light of Apple saying that eBooks will be a set price, this is just adding to this problem. It will lead to users jailbreaking and just downloading eBooks. Once the jailbreaking starts the users will then just start downloading the apps too. It just doesn't make sense to me. Especially when I could buy a paper book for about £5.

Any views or facts about this please share.