Last month I came across one of the most interesting books I’ve had the pleasure of reading in a long time: Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age by Steve Knopper.

As well as a riveting account of changes in the music industry over the past several decades, it tells the story of the birth of Napster, the rise of peer-to-peer downloading, and the terrible choices the industry has made that have directly led to the situation we find ourselves in today.

The sheer scale of the head-into-sand plunging that evidently went on in industry boardrooms until very recently – and still does in some – is astounding, and it’s hard to feel sympathy for the fat cats who are now seeing their bottom lines being squeezed by punters with more technological nous than they. The plight of the artists themselves, and the music they make and we enjoy, is a different matter entirely – one which the book seeks to address.

But Knopper’s not looking at ways of preventing illegal downloads. He’s more interested in how the industry can make legally downloading a song a better experience than taking the free alternative route. It’s an obvious point, but in my opinion Apple’s recent stranglehold over the digital music market and its rigid pricing (not to mention the appalling design of iTunes) were standing firmly in the way of that ever happening. To this end, even though I use my iPhone as my primary music player, I’ve never purchased a track from Apple.

This Christmas I received the best present I’ve ever had: the knowledge that my Apple boycott (if you can call it that from someone who handed over an arm and a leg for an iPhone…) may long continue. It was thanks largely to the Rage Against The Machine vs X Factor internet campaign that somehow managed to spark a million people into action. I didn’t buy either track, for the record, but I was surprised by the number of alternative MP3 stores offering both. Amazon, Play, 7Digital, the legal Napster… the list is growing and the competition means we’re seeing plenty of prices below those offered by iTunes. In fact, a visit to the Amazon MP3 store revealed the RATM single was being sold for a loss-leading 29p, but that wasn’t what caught my eye.

Armed with a “Best Albums of 2009″ list, I found recent, hugely successful albums selling for £5, and £4. Some for £3 or less. Twelve tracks for less than the cost of a London pint is firmly inside the realms of the impulse buy, and before the hour was out I found I’d bought 14 new albums – more than I’d bought in the whole of 2009, 2008 and 2007 combined. The whole lot cost me less than £45, and they immediately downloaded and automatically added themselves to Windows Media Player at my request.

I know I may be late to the party here, but the prices on offer changed my view on downloading music so completely that I’ve since found myself asking friends for recommendations, looking through specialist websites and exploring the back catalogues of bands I’ve recently enjoyed. A quick look on iTunes tells its own story, as those very same 14 albums would have cost me more than £85 – the kind of unappealing amount I had previously associated with buying music.

Most people use torrent sites not out of a desire to get their entertainment for free, but to acquire it at a price that doesn’t feel like they’re being taken for a mug. Whether a supermarket-style price war on digital music is good for the industry is a question for another blog, but making music legally available at attractive prices is by far the best way to drag the vast majority of torrent addicts back to legality.

The highlights of my bleak two-hour trawl of our nation’s capital involved four people claiming not to speak English, despite the English-language novels sticking out of their pockets, half a dozen “not interested, never heard of online music, don’t want to hear about it, go away before I set the hounds on you”, a couple of “got a meeting”, two “late for buses”, and my personal favourite – one woman who looked like Nicholas Anelka, telling me “not to follow her” after my opening gambit of “hello, sorry to bother you, I’m a journalist with PC Pro and…”

Needless to say, after a couple of hours of this soul destroying work I trudged back to the barn, slumped in my seat and quietly reflected – through sobs – on what had happened. I’ve done these things before and normally people are quite happy to have a chat with a slightly dishevelled, Ringo Starr-voiced journo. I can only assume it’s the issue. The bald facts are that a lot of people download music illegally and they probably felt I was trying to herd them straight into a confession and subsequently the clink. Which is fair enough – but I beg you, if ever you see a slightly gangling, youngish man, with a slightly vacant expression and wayward hair approaching you with a tape recorder in the street, give him a minute of your time, or at least, a funny excuse.