If you used something like ipfs, syncthing, or generic torrents you could easily distribute anything you want at large scale at no cost, as long as people were interested in having it.<p>If you choose to centralize distribution on one web server that is your own choice, but the better phrase is &quot;digital distribution is free if you want it to be&quot;.<p>I doubt we will see a return to pay-to-listen models in music. Reality has taken too big of a bite around the copyright extortion ring surrounding sine waves. The future of music is in patronage, merchandising, and live performances - which really, it has always been. Only extremely rare unicorn performers ever have the stars align to be able to monetize their music itself (in the past it was making it big with a label, today last decade it was topping itunes) while we are seeing the rise of music as a viable profession without extraordinary fame as long as you can provide a niche and be good at it, you can attract enough whale fans to support you regardless of if the tracks themselves are free - your real audience is those that not only want what you already made, but want you to continue to <i>make</i>.<p>Remember, as in all things IP, it is not the actual music file that is scarce or expensive to produce, it is the idea behind the music that took an artist hours or days to hand craft into a digital creation. The first iteration was the expensive one - all other ones are effectively free. It is essential that going forward we culturally recognize the distinction and move to seek sustainable business models around the former rather than the later, which we only invented as an imperfect way to translate ideas into the physical goods market back when they were less distinct than they are now (ie, costs of distribution <i>did</i> exist for paper books, so pigeonholing writing into markets via copyright was a reasonable train of thought when per-unit costs still existed and thus people could not effortlessly propagate the information on an individual basis).