Who's going to pay?

In a comment on one of my posts about a P2P marketplace, someone wrote "If the user has to pay, its not going to work."
I'm struggling to decide whether this is a trite statement from a miserly warez hound, or a profound moment of truth that undermines any attempts to legitimise and commercialise the digital distribution of music.
Some alternatives are 'everyone pays', ie compulsory licensing/broadband tax, and 'no-one pays', as we have now.