There was a multistate class action lawsuit on this matter, but please continue to shill for gangsters.
English rock group Pink Floyd was one of the hottest bands in 1980, with an LP shooting up the charts and a concert tour that sold out within hours. But the group was unable to get airplay for its latest single, at least not without engaging the services of a nascent breed of freelance promoters whose practices ushered in a new era of payola. These promotors, dubbed "indies," used illegal methods and had suspected mob connections. That the recording industry not only tolerated but embraced the indies is indicative of the questionable tactics now employed in this high-stakes arena, charges Dannen in a sharply critical study. At its center is industry leader CBS records, whose president Walter Yetnikoff is depicted as a bully of Machiavellian proportions whose style set the tone throughout the business in the '80s. Dannen, a reporter for Institutional Investor , mixes the skills of an investigative journalist with the gifts of an expert storyteller in an expose that will intrigue and appall readers with its disclosures.
They can charge what they want, they can't price fix and gouge consumers.
It is "interesting" that a digital download of an album can cost the same price point that a physical CD (which could be resold to a used store and then repurchased by another consumer) which has manufacturing costs, delivery costs, brick and mortar inventory costs, salesman costs...
Digital download copies do not have these investment costs (and there is no "overproduction" resulting in cutout bins).
I don't stand with those who say "give it away". I don't see why patents should have to exire "for humanity's benefit" and copyrights should last 100 years now.