Re:Didn't Pepsi do this? (Score 1)

Eventually, I do think the time will come when anything more than 5-10 years old that you want on CD will be recorded right there in the store, and only new CDs will be pressed, with all the accompanying liner notes and art. It will become just too cost-prohibitive to have backlogs of CDs sitting in a warehouse waiting to be shipped.

I'm not sure about that. It depends on the cost model you use. If you treat every one of those units as a fully priced CD then yes, its a lot of money you have sitting on the shelf. But if you think of every one as a $0.25 piece of plastic and paper that has no value until someone buys it (which is what they really are), then you can afford to warehouse a heck of a lot more of them.

And there's no wastage as older music is fairly non-perishable. Not like a warehouse full of beasty boy or JLO CDs - that would make a rotten smell real fast.

I think the record companies will fight like wolves for quite a while longer to prevent digital distribution starting up. Once they are no longer seen as delivering "units" people will start asking just what it is that they do do.