"The folks over at Techdirt just put up a great story today, with the RIAA claiming the cost of a CD has gone down significantly relative to the consumer price index. The RIAA 'Key Facts' page claims that based on the 1983 price of CDs, the 1996 price should have been $33.86. So naturally, you should feel like you're getting a bargain. Sounds an awful lot like the cable companies saying cable prices are really going down even though they're going up."

I just don't see what's the point of buying a cd of songs you don't care about when you really only just like one.

Metal is a community unified by the sharing of ideas/experience through art. For this reason, keeping the metal available is more important than commerce.

In cases where an album is out of print, and cannot be purchased anywhere except sporadically at high prices through ebay or trades, we reserve the ability to make it available in lossless (exact same quality as on original CD) format to those who would otherwise find it inaccessible. Music is more important than commerce, and a band that is not selling its music cannot lose money on the digital duplication of that music.

We recommend using FLAC format and codec. These plug into your CD burner and allow you to create audio CDs that are byte-exact copies of the original.

Much as it is our belief that people who download albums here assess them and later buy the ones they feel will be enduring musical assets, and that this process weeds out the weaker music and prevents more landfill from being pressed onto CD, it is our belief that making available out of print classics will enhance the listener base for the art these musicians would like to have find an audience.

It would hardly help considering the amount of people who download today anyway, illegal or not.