Record companies used to charge a fee for making it possible for people to
listen to recorded music. Now their main function is to prohibit people
from listening to music unless they pay off these corporations.
Or to put it slightly differently, they used to provide you with the tools
you needed to hear recorded music. Now they charge you for permission to
use tools you already have, that they did not provide, that in fact you
paid someone else for. Really what they are doing is imposing a "listening
tax."
-- Bob Ostertag
"The Professional Suicide of a Recording Musician"
April 11, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/50416/