We never needed digital scarcity; what we needed was a toll booth.

Had the record companies brought Napster and charged 10c a download they would have made $2m a day.

Currently iTunes sells around 9000 tracks an hour yet Napster was trading 14000 tracks per minute. Thats $9000 vs $84000 an hour in revenue.

The launch of Netflix as the gatekeeper to convenient streaming brought video piracy to a crawl (although the fracturing of the streaming market has meant an uptake in the last 2 years)

Spotify's sub numbers, Microsoft's success with Gamepass and Sony's followup PS+ announcement this weeks proves that there is no future in digital scarcity when what the consumer wants an all you can eat buffet.