Dollar music downloads are a good deal?

Apple's recent "victory" in retaining 99 cent song downloads has me wondering: What is wrong with the music-buying public? I've been interested in digitally-stored music for some time now. For me CDs are simply a transportation mechanism to get the music onto my computer. I use a Roku SoundBridge (highly recommended) to listen to music in the livingroom, my iPod for portable listening, and J. River's Media Center (also highly recommended) for listening on my computer. When I get a CD, I immediately rip it as high-bitrate MP3s and put the CD in a box.

I have tried a few times to get comfortable with downloading music but I keep running into issues that make me wonder how these companies are staying in business. I can't wait for downloadable music to replace physical CDs as the music distribution mechanism of choice. But, I have a few issues with the current system.

Digital rights
So, let me get this straight. I buy the music and I'm limited to what I can do with it? I might only be able to burn a limited number of CDs? You want to limit the number of computers I can play my music on? I have five computers running just in my house and I replace parts often. Oh, and if you go out of business, my music collection might go with you? This doesn't sound like a good investment.

Price
I can go to the store and buy the physical CD for around $15. Or, go hit Amazon and buy it new for around $13 or get it through their marketplace for like $8. But, the music sites want me to pay $10 to download highly compressed files that sound terrible. I don't get any of the packaging or physical media. Is this simply about convenience? Why would I buy the files when I can probably get the physical CD cheaper and rip it myself at a higher quality?

Audio Quality
You want me to spend $10 to buy an album and be happy with your "CD-quality" encoding? The ~160kb quality I hear from the popular services is NOT CD-quality. It might sound fine through a $5 set of earbuds. However, when I compare quality on a decent sound system the difference is obvious. Large portions of the music are often missing from the compressed files.

I'm not an audiophile, but I take sound quality seriously. Given decent audio equipment, I can tell the difference between a CD and a file from iTunes and I think anybody else without damaged hearing would be able to also. I've had some recent experiences that have caused me to give this digital audio revolution a lot of thought.

First, I traded some airline miles for 400 song credits on SonyConnect. I started downloading music like crazy. Sony's Sonic Stage software is pretty awful but the music is encoded in a format that no other jukebox software can read. Of course, since I host all my music on a single server in my house, I wanted to convert it all to mp3 to make the files useful at all. I found a way to get it converted and I enjoyed this "free" music for a while but then I started noticing the audio quality problems. In the end, I feel like my free music wasn't worth the cost. As you might guess, I would not pay SonyConnect any money for their music.

I like iTunes much better but, again, I just can't justify $10 for an album given the low quality and DRM issues.

I recently had the opportunity to try out allofmp3.com. This is what really caused be to see the light. Before I go any further, you should know I want allofmp3 to be legal. I mean, they say they are legal but it seems too good to be true. But, putting legality aside, I hope the music industry will study peoples' reaction to allofmp3.com before they start sueing everyone in sight. This site is unique. You can choose the quality of the music you download. You pay by the megabyte, not by the track. The higher quality you choose, the more you pay. But, even at the highest bitrate mp3 encoding, the price for a CD is in the $3-4 range. And, to top it all off, the files you download are not crippled with DRM.

I assume the record companies would consider this all lunacy. But, I think they'd be missing the point. What's the first thing I wanted to do when I found allofmp3.com? Go fill a bunch of holes in my collection! And, at those prices, I wouldn't hesitate to go pick up a new album if I wanted. I wouldn't have to go through any mental cost/benefit analysis to justify the expense. I would't have to carefully listen to each track to ensure it's worth buying the whole album. I'd just buy it. Heck, if I like the artist, I might just buy all their CDs. And, for those who argue that DRM must be included, why would I steal the music when I can go buy it so easily and cheaply? It wouldn't be worth it.

Think about it. If albums were the price of a coffee how much music would you buy? The music industry is missing the boat! But who's fault is it? Theirs for creating this crazy business model or ours for buying the product?