Might This Be The Future of the Music Industry? This Might Be The Future of the Music Industry.

Having failed to stop piracy by suing internet users, the music industry is for the first time seriously considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users.

Griffin's idea is to collect a fee from internet service providers -- something like $5 per user per month -- and put it into a pool that would be used to compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels. A collecting agency would divvy up the money according to artists' popularity on P2P sites, just as ASCAP and BMI pay songwriters for broadcasts and live performances of their work.

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Perhaps the internet isn't the perpetually wild frontier I like to think of it as.

We're all pretty well yoked to our internet service providers, and we're all pretty well used to downloading music -- many of us for free (this isn't just me talking, it's in the linked article). As much as I hate to admit it, I think something like this could work: a passive system of payment that is routed through the internet service provider.