Amazon.com,

I have a business proposal for you. I think this might help you gain some control in the music market as well as discourage illegal downloading. Downloading mp3’s is only cool if it’s free. Paying for something that you can’t see or touch is hard to [...]]]>

Amazon.com,

I have a business proposal for you. I think this might help you gain some control in the music market as well as discourage illegal downloading. Downloading mp3’s is only cool if it’s free. Paying for something that you can’t see or touch is hard to cope with. Buying the original album (CD or Vinyl) is important. You get the full experience when you buy the CD. Albums typically include lyrics, album art, CD cover art, stickers, and posters. Who wants to miss out on all the band memorabilia?

At the same time, as soon as you get the CD, you’re going to rip it anyway. You want it in a format that you can carry with you on your iPod. What I am suggesting is very simple, but the RIAA might be a bitch to deal with (no change there). When you buy a CD from your website, you get the option to download the ripped contents. Not only is the actual CD on its way, but you can go ahead and download the mp3’s and put them on your mp3 player.

You might be worried about people returning an unopened CD because they are trying to beat the system and get free mp3’s. But I am sure you already have a restocking fee in effect. Just jack up the restock fee if they decided to take advantage of the download and try to return the merchandise. I don’t think this will be a huge deal, because if someone wanted to download music for free there are much easier ways to go about doing it than dealing with the hassle of returning a package.

Buy the album from Amazon.com. As soon as you check out, and the order is in, the customer is e-mailed with the option to download the contents for free. The customer downloads the contents and eagerly awaits their CD. When the CD comes in they look at the album art then store it away for safe keeping.

What do you think?