Hello all. My good friend and perennial hockey pool adversary Brian invited me to join this group, and I’m delighted to be here. Kyle submitted a one-liner last week about the songwriter’s association proposal of a monthly music fee which I think bears further discussion – and which ties into the other theme of just-what-is-the-personality-of-the-decade. I think that one of the big trends in music at the turn of the century (“the aughts”?) is the trend away from album-oriented music consumption to singles-oriented music consumption. With so many people listening to music on mp3 players in shuffle mode, I think the notion of the album is in danger of disappearing. But back to the proposed fee - I currently pay $10 per month on emusic for 40 songs, which I consider to be good value. But I’m not willing to pay $1 per song in general – that strikes me as too much. $5 per month for all you can eat seems too little; how can that approach generate enough money to sufficiently compensate everyone involved? And which artists will be compensated? Will this cover only Canadian artists, with other additional fees later imposed for international artists? How about indie bands – will their music be tracked and compensated from the same pool of funds? The existing system for calculating and sharing revenues is pretty complicated, and not entirely equitable. It should be possible to create something simpler and fairer online, but it will probably also be hard to monitor and maintain it because the technology changes so rapidly.