Forbes.com: Music Like Water:

People should pay for their music the way they pay for gas or electricity.

I like the proposal Dave Kusek and Gerd Leonhard have made for music compensation. The one minor adjustment I would suggest is that instead of compensating artists based on downloads, allow users to designate what percentage of their monthly fee goes to what artist.

A reward system based on download volume will only foster a huge hype machine centered on getting people to download a tune regardless of the quality. Users will buy into the hype machine because, hey, it doesn't cost them anything more, so no big deal.

But if artists are instead compensated based on how much their listeners are moved by their work, we can expect (or at least hope) that music will continue to evolve into something people enjoy listening to, rather than being a byproduct of a saleable image or lifestyle.

Of course, many consumers won't care enough to cultivate the artistic garden by designating who their monthly fee should support, so unvoting user's fees should be divided pro-rata to parallel the chosen allocations of people who do care enough to provide such cultivation.

Another unspoken aspect of the scheme they propose is that it need not be limited to music. Any intellectual property can be offered.

The interersting thing about such a system is that it returns art back to the days of patronage, with individual patrons deciding which artists their compensation will sponsor. But it is a democratization of the patronage system, allowing everyone to sponsor whomever they will.