> What if every musician just set up their own store on their own website?
Can anyone imagine the hell that would be "every musician setting up their own website?" Centralization offers a lot of benefits to the users. I can buy CDs of multiple artists at the same time. I can find similar artists (there's a natural competition here). None of this one password per artist. There's a reduced security risk for me buying from a centralized service (just need to trust one site instead of hundreds, and specifically small artists that might not know things). I definitely would not have answered that question so well.
Can anyone imagine the hell that would be "every musician setting up their own website?" Centralization offers a lot of benefits to the users. I can buy CDs of multiple artists at the same time. I can find similar artists (there's a natural competition here). None of this one password per artist. There's a reduced security risk for me buying from a centralized service (just need to trust one site instead of hundreds, and specifically small artists that might not know things). I definitely would not have answered that question so well.