Interesting Tim O'Reilly article.

13 Dec 2002

...
    I became
dubious as soon as he trotted out the "sample-then-buy" myth.
 While
 this argument might not have been laughable 4-5 years ago before CD
 burners were cheap and widespread, it's preposterous today. 
 Why is that?  Five years ago, when a friend would make me a copy of a CD
 and I liked it, I would go to the record store and buy one.  Today, I do
 the same thing.

 I'm sure that not everyone does that, but presumably not everyone did it
 five years ago either.
 You are a rare breed of a bygone age.  The college market, for example, a prior
mainstay of music sales, is largely gone.  At most campus dorms you can get any
current album burned by a fellow student for $1.00 plus media.  And this is what
they do.  Why?  Well, the money, bolstered by the fact that college campuses are
infected by a "nothing is ever really wrong" moral relativism where only a fool
would pay an extra $10 for the real thing.

Five years ago you probably had a job, disposable income, your friend could
afford a $500 burner with media at $2 per CD, and you didn't mind waiting for a
burn at 2X.  Given the costs, I doubt there were that many burners at colleges
then, and even fewer people in the burning biz.

-W

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Interesting Tim O'Reilly article.