Look, nerds, don’t take this the wrong way (because I’m a nerd too!) but your acquiescence to Apple’s Buck-Thirty DRM-free singles deal is the same as you selling out. Here’s why.

As much as we don’t want to admit it, the mainstream (ie. that 50% plus slice of the population that *still* doesn’t understand bitrates and sampling frequencies) still purchases their music on polymer platter. So when we whine about how we want better bitrates in our music singles, and we want them re-mastered from 24-bit or 32-bit digital sources, we’re crying a lamentation that the bulk of people just don’t care about.

As it stands now, the hipsters (ie. that 50% minus sliver of the population that lives a digital life and spends as much time online as off) are the only people that care about so-called higher-quality recordings. It’s been this way since long before iTunes. That’s why only .00024% of the population subscribes to Audiophile; that’s why cassette tapes, laborsome to produce and horrible-sounding after the second or third playback, lasted well into the mid-90′s as a primary means of distributing music. The mainstream doesn’t care about premiums. If they did, might we all be driving a Porsche? Same with music. You can charge more for a premium feature, but premiums like an extra 84 kbps of sample bandwidth aren’t going to make mainstream dollars flock to iTunes.The extra bandwidth only serves to attract nerd dollars.

Which was my whole point to begin with. If I’m a mainstream consumer that’s happy with a recording that costs me less to enjoy, I’m going to save my dough.  Apple should cut to the chase, sink the idea that you should pay more for something in low demand that does NOT exhibit higher manufacturing costs, and drop those EMI recordings to a buck just like everything else on iTunes.

The increase in quality doesn’t matter to Joe Six Pack. It was just a spoonful of sugar to make the EMI $0.30 anti-piracy fee an easier pill to swallow for people who pay attention: NERDS.