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I've bought a couple of CDs and a few individual tracks from the iTunes music store (not to mention all the freebies I've downloaded). They sound fine, even when burned onto CDs to play on the Bose in the car. It's a bit of a pain sharing them between computers (PowerBook and PC at home and PC at work), but hey, blank CDs are cheap.

Of course, in general it's still cheaper for me to buy CDs through a service like BMG or Columbia House. I order maybe 10-20 per year from BMG and end up paying between $5 and $8 per CD. Then I can rip those myself to whatever quality I'd like and avoid the ridiculous prices that most stores charge. Sure, there's the whole shipping delay, but I'm a patient guy.

That said, if I could import music purchased from Real's music store into iTunes (and from thence to the iPod), I'd jump on the $0.49 thing in heartbeat. But I use iTunes for everything now, and I'm not about to start running multiple different media players just for the grins of saving a few bucks. That's my choice, and I'm sticking to it.

Hey don't be too hard on ole bmg. They're the only place I can find new cd's for about $5 a piece.

cdclub

And didn't they buy napster? Seems like they are thinking about the future at least.

How long before the mainstream record industry either:

A: Assimilates this.
B: Tries to kill this.

Hate to break the news to you, but this "Free CD +S&H" scheme is old hat...

BMG Music Serivce: 7 Free CD's (plus s&h)
Columbia House: Join their music club, get 12CDs FREE (plus s&h)

Or just open up any TV-Guide...or Sunday newspaper magazine...

• $6.23 -- Retail Markup
• $0.85 -- Co-op advertising and discounts to retailers

The labels can do away with these by selling directly to the consumer. Mail-order music subscription services such as Bertelsmann's BMG and Columbia House already do something similar.

• $3.34 -- Company Overhead, Distribution, and Shipping

If they ever decided to get a Clue and sell their albums online as 192 Kbps Ogg Vorbis secure downloads, they could reduce this to the cost of Akamaized bandwidth.

I've just been wondering, if CDs cost this $18 to make, sell, whatever, then how the heck can BMG give me 12 free cds for buying one, (the only cost I have is $2.50 shipping & handling.)

Now I ask you, doesn't $2.50 s & h for one CD a little high?

Do you think it might cover the manufacturing costs?

So, 12 cds for the price of one. One costs $16.95 from BMG, shipping is $2.50 each, for a total of $46.95, which is exactly $3.91 a CD. So they must MAKE MONEY, and bmg must make LOTS OF MONEY, at only $3.91 a CD. :)

For the bored, the link is BMG



.sig

Okay, here are my devil's advocate responses to your extremely well-thought-out and (dear God!) rational reply. I almost hesitate to argue, because it's the first reasonable post I've seen in a while... but here goes:

MP3.com isn't going to claim they are entitled to "fair use." They'll claim that I am. RIAA can't sue Sony (the tape recorder manufacturer) or Maxell (the tape manufacturer) for the copy of "Led Zeppelin iii" I made for my car. Suppose I leave this at my friend's house, since he lives near the freeway and I only like listening to Zep when I drive long distances; is it wrong for me to keep it at his house so I can pick it up when I go? If he offers to let everyone in the neighborhood use his tool-shed as a depository for driving tapes, would he be at fault? We'll let the judge decide.

The real problem (as I see it) is where MP3.com got the MP3's. Their database is almost certainly CDDB, but I doubt that they actually own every album they stream. This is where I anticipate the trouble, since they would be in possession of copyrighted material that they didn't pay for. The chicken-egg argument then becomes:

MP3COM: "These MP3's are being used legitimately by customers!"
RIAA: "Where did you get them, you rebel scum?"
MP3COM: "We made them in advance, anticipating that they would eventually fall under fair use!"
[in which case they're liable for any MP3's that haven't been accessed, as these have not been subject to any "fair use"]
{OR}
MP3COM: "We create them on-demand from our customers with a small warehouse of Jawas, CD burners, and a million phony subscriptions to BMG and a h4cK3d credit card number, d00d!"
[in which case MP3.com can't sue them for anything, but, uhhhhhh.... let's hope the SPCJ doesn't complain]

But you see where it's going--MP3.com could have their ass covered. I recall an RIAA argument that says that using a CD burner in a computer is illegal (see last week's Baltimore City Paper) because the "intended use" is to copy data (vs. music, which is so different...).
The RIAA has never tried a test-case, and it's easy to see why. MP3.com could end up testing the case and busting down all sorts of barriers.

Or the Emperor could rack them with intense agony utilising Dark Side Force Lightning, in which case all bets are off.

--Jurph

Here's my tale of 15 CDs or so... For most of my life, I didn't listen to music at all; my friends didn't, and my parents only had classical stuff, which was just boring. Then, a few years ago, I found an MP3 site (by accidentally typing ftp:// instead of http://) and figured that I'd download a couple of songs from a few artists that I'd heard about. Of course, there were a few songs that I didn't like, but I did like many of them (They Might Be Giants, R.E.M., The Simpsons :-), et al.) This pretty much started my interest in music. I signed up with a CD club and ended up buying the CDs (~15) with most of the songs. Buying 15 CDs cannot possibly be construed as hurting these artists.

As for the songs I downloaded for which I didn't buy the albums, even without MP3s, I would not have bought their albums. Also, I don't listen to those MP3s (after all, if I liked them, I would have bought the albums). This certainly doesn't hurt the artists.

I'm sure that in the future I will definitely buy more CDs, further helping out the artists, all due to MP3s. Have I hurt these artists through MP3s?

I do know some who never ever buy any CDs but rather just download the MP3s, but I think that they are in the vast minority. CDs are cheap if you join one of those clubs (12 free CDs if you buy just one at BMG), and if you quit after fulfilling the obligation, they typically send you an offer to win you back after a period of time. It's simply easier to buy the CDs that than search for and download the MP3s.

Daniel J. Peng

BMG has a feature now where it's all done electronically - no postal mail at all, except, of course, when I order CDs. No more ship by default. When I first set it up (it's on their web page somewhere) i couldn't believe how much less paper it would be - and it really has elimanted all the mail from them. I get an email every month that procmail deals with quite well.