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MP3.com 'Subscriber Service'
nelomolen writes: "Looks like MP3.com is trying to promote a new $2.99/month ($29.99/year) ad-free service. as a listener I've come to love MP3.com as it provides exposure to a LOT of good music (and bad). In the past I know artists have had it out for MP3.com in regards to their "payback for playback" -- wonder if this new ad-free subscription service will help?"
WTF? I have to pay 20$ a month to get paid? Mp3.com takes their cut of the subscriber money and then redistributes the rest back to artists by popularity ... So alot of artists loosing money is paying for the few who are making alot of money :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
I haven't really been paying attention to popular music the last few years. Are their any "break out" bands that have come out through the ranks of MP3.com? In other words, is there any of this "good music" that has appealed to a wide audience?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
You'd never know they existed, but eMusic is already offering unlimited mp3 downloads of major-label albums for $10/month.
I think the reason you don't hear anything about them is that they were acquired by Vivendi-Universal, who is quietly sitting on them until they roll out whatever big new service they're developing.
I assume eMusic's successor will only offer crippled mp3s that can't be copied or that expire after some period of time, but for now, they've got plain ol' mp3s -- and they even make it easy to download a whole album with one click.
The downside, of course, is that they have a limited selection of music. You can't download any CD ever recorded. But there is a lot of good music on there. For example, they seem to have the entire Fantasy Records catalogue online, which, if you're a jazz or blues fan, means a whole lot of really good albums. In the first week, I downloaded 62 albums.
I assume that one day eMusic will morph into something I no longer want to subscribe to, but until then I'm sucking down everything I can grab.
It's definitely worth checking out.
What would happen if someone added micropayment downloads to Internet radio? This would require a custom player, which would be capable of both streaming and downloading (with secure payment). It would work something like this: In addition to the normal netradio controls, there would be a "buy" button on the interface. Clicking that button would cause the player to charge you a small amount ($1?) to download a high-quality version of the song that is currently playing. There could be additional "Would you like to know more?" buttons that would take you to more information on the artist, customized streams, user ratings, etc.
Let's see, if a guy on Oak Street was selling popsicles for 25 cents a a
stick and another guy on Elm Street had the exact same popsicles for free,
where would you go? The simple fact of the matter is that consumers will
always make the most logical choice when acquiring what they want. In the
field of digital music, it is readily available for free via many
different routes on the internet. Hence, in setting up membership fees for
service, MP3.com will be nailing it's own coffin shut. Undoubtedly,
millions will abandon the service for something else out there that is
equally as resourceful and above all free (Morpheus come immedialty to mind).
For these companies, MP3.com ludicrous decision is a golden opportunity.
If MP3.com wants money, then fuck MP3.com. As a company, all they are is
a popular conduit for digital music tansfer - big deal. They've done
nothing to achieve loyalty in me as a consumer. If they are banking on the
fact that the majority of MP3.com users are capatilistic moral crusaders
who believe that paying for thier service is the noble thing to do - then
they are banking on bullshit. Furthermore, even if I did feel that way,
why should MP3.com be making any money? Nobody at MP3.com wrote the music.
They don't give a fuck about the artists, they just want money, like any
other company under the sun. Morpheus here I come, so long MP3.com.
I would think of paying because I want them to stay in business. Sure, I could pay 50 cents and take every single newspaper out of the dispenser, but I don't because I'm not an asshole. Likewise, just because you _can_ get rid of ads with various programs doesn't mean you should. Why not support a service you enjoy? I'm tired of all my favorite sites dying because they don't have any money, we don't need people like you making things worse
Stops raising the damn prices of CDs!!!! They have been slowly yet steadily raising the price, ugh! It now costs the same to download a CD as it used to buy one, grrrr.
Are you sure that's all MP3.com's fault? According to their Help section for musicians, the artists are setting prices on their own CDs. MP3.com just sets the limits on the minimum/maximum price (currently $3.99 and $30.00, respectively) for the downloaded CDs, then adds $3.99 to determine the price of the physical CD.
Maybe too many artists bought into the hype they can get rich off the Internet? Or (more likely), they raised their CD prices to compensate for not being in the "Pay for Play" system?
Musicians don't always make sensible business choices when it comes to pricing CDs. (After all, if they knew everything about selling music, they'd probably run a record company.) For example, I've found one singer who charges $6.99 and $10.98 for the netCD and DAM versions of her CD, when the real thing only costs $6.49 through her label's web site. I like her music, but I have to wonder what she's thinking there....
Proud to be / Smiley-free / Since Nineteen / Ninety-Three
That only applies to CD's really: it costs the same amount of money to produce/distribute/carry a CD Single as a CD Album (and the single isn't significantly less expensive than a double album). The record industry spent decades on a single-based business model and prospered. The compact disc is the reason for the change in approach.
I would be reasonably sure that the record label that introduces affordable single file downloads will be successful. Most people I know only buy an album if they like two or more of the songs on it. The logical conclusion, therefore, is that there are a fair number of people who would buy one song but not the album, in which case, the record label is ahead on the deal.
And the Euro scene is still single dominated.
WRT changing music industry business models, take a look back some 60 years:
In 1942, Capitol Records was formed. Within ten years, they were the dominant record label worldwide (with Sinatra and many other luminaries on their roster). One way they achieved this: they realized that radio wasn't the enemy. Until Capitol, record execs refused to license their records for radio play and routinely sued disc jockeys. Capitol realized that DJ's were free publicity, not a threat to album sales. So they negotiated extremely fair terms with disc jockeys and the rest is history.
Replace radio/DJ's with modern counterparts, and it makes you think, doesn't it?
No, actually, fuck *you*.
What if the guy down the street giving away the popsicles had STOLEN THEM from the guy selling them for 25 cents!?! Still interested? I would hope not.
MP3.com gets their music with *consent*, and still gives it away for free. You don't have to buy their premium service to get the free tunes, you just have to put up with ads. MP3.com is entitled to whatever they make in this business, as they aren't STEALING anything from artists *cough*Morpheus*cough*, and they're providing a valuable service, ie: storage space, organization, search utilities, and how about that giant monthly bandwidth bill?
On the other hand, if Free-Uber-Alles is really your mantra, expect to see me at your house tonight with a flashlight and a few garbage bags. I figure, why should I BUY anything, when I can just raid your house for it? I mean, it's the *obvious* decision, right?
The Free desktop that Just Works
No, most sites DON'T get ad impresions if the page is loaded without viewing the ad. Most of these softwares work on the principle that the counter isn't incremented until the banner loads.
But yeah, I think it is an individuals right to not load up advertisements on his or her computer if they want. I just don't think its very moral.
I simply tend NOT to go to sites that bombard me with advertisements. I use to love the Onion, but there is something in their Javascript that constantly crashes my browsers with their popups. I don't visit them anymore. Its like the X10 stuff...I have a crap load of this stuff from back in the days when they simply had the skanky ads of half nekkid women that had nothing to do with their products. I can deal with small advertisements...and I can laugh at sites that know how to get their target audience to look (see: half nekkid), but once they stated spamming every damn site with the popups I stopped buying their products. Smarthome.com offers the same thing without all the popups, so they will be getting all my purchases from now on.
Maybe some of us content providers should start applying the DCMA to our websites. By loading the following links into your computer, you agree to have them display as they were intended by their designers. My site doesn't advertise for its bandwidth, I don't like obnoxious advertising, but its really the owners of the content that should decide how it should be displayed. If you don't like that, there are a dozen other sites that give you the same thing...
clif
sonikmatter.com
The nicest thing about only enabling Javashit for my bank and brokerage, and surfing with it disabled everywhere else, is that one tends not to notice.
There is a special place in hell for the fuckwith that dreamed up the abortion called Javashit/ECMAscript/LiveScript/Whateverthefuckscri ptitscalledtoday.
And I, for one, hope the pigfucker roasts there for eternity.
i'm really frustrated with the way the web is going.
sometimes i think the federal government should just take it over and say "fuck it, it's a free national infrastructure for everyone -- register here, put your content here, the hell with it".
for example, the large city libraries could become information nodes, a server farm on one end, access at the other, and high bandwidth to the local cable or telco infrastructure.
i hate to put it this way, but the riaa and mpaa are abberations that steal our freedoms. we, as primates, are natually inquisitive and expressive, in both an auditory and visual sense. for industries to claim they have an inherent right to profit from either side is simply a localized abberation in time against human rights.
visual and auditory products are so easily replicated, and it's such a fine line between parody and duplication, that individual rights (or perhaps individual activites) will, at some point, destroy the visual and auditory monopolies. i firmly beleive stardom, famous actors, and guitar gods will become a thing of the past at some point.
if you have a tangible, physical product, you make money on markup. if you have audio or visual entertainment, you make money on advertising. the powers-that-be may not like it, but they are so screwed, i don't see how they can win in the long run.
simply put, i buy three or four magazine subscriptions. they cost me about $120 a year. i'm not going to "subscribe" to web sites. not gonna happen...at least not yet. the closest thing i've seen to something i'd pay for is yahoo. they have pretty good news, quality personals, lots of informative links. if they had audio and visual, and said they need subscribers to stay alive, i'd pay for them.
same for google. i'd be pretty adamant about a "one-stop" portal, maybe $36 a year, with access to a wide variety of services.
after 25 years of modems you have to question whether the private sector is (in any way) up to the task. federal control of bandwidth and storage could go a long way toward moving the web forward.
my favorite area of mp3.com is :
comedy and satire
...some of the music areas are cool, but a lot of it is real crap.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
If you're a service that wants to go 'legit' by asking me to help line these people's pockets, so that they can afford more of this and that, you can blow it out your ass.
2.99 a year? How much money are they paying for their bandwidth?
When I was younger ( about 7 months ago) I would spool 20 gig of MP3's a day from the nntp.
I know that wasn't cheep for the ISP to offer and I can only emagin how much its going to cost them. Can some one explain how they can do this that cheep and still pay any form of royalties?
Ascii artist &
This is a great idea. I would gladly do this. Have the low quality streaming(64kbps?) tracks available for free on the artist's page, and then allow members to download the 1440kbps .WAV version of the song for like 1$ each. That would be a great music site. You could have like a $5 annual membership fee and a free trial period. Of course a 3 minute song would be about 30MB or maybe 16MB if it was losslessly compressed with, say, Monkeys Audio or FLAC. Probably not practical for people with dial ups, but there are probably enough broadband users to make it profitable. I, for one, will never pay for lossy compressed garbage.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
For people that pay the extra $$$, make available 160-256 VBR Ogg files
Pointless. Decoding the 128 kbps MP3 songs that artists upload and re-encoding them as 160-256 kbps OGG will only further degrade the sound quality.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Well, advertising doesn't generate enough revenue. Subscriptions only work for very specific audiences. (Porn and financial data, mostly. I make no inferences.) Now we hear nonsense about squeezing more money out of ISPs -- a totally destructive proposal which is (fortunately) unimplementable.
So what does it take for content providers to give micropayment a try?
I don't mind the fee. They do have phat bandwidth, and as such, their service is fairly reliable.
However, I only will pay this fee if:
The bands get a cut of the action. They're the ones making the music and giving it away. If MP3.com recieves a penny more than operating expenses + a little for a rainy day, then screw them. If MP3.com charges, the bulk of that money better go the the artists that spent their hard earned dough to write and record it.
They respect my privacy. I should need no more than authentication and authorization to get in. I am more than willing to put up a pot o' gold on paypal for pay sites to deduct from, so I don't have to give that pay site my personal info. Anybody interested in making such a "pot o gold" payment protocol with me should email me. I will GPL it if interested.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Trust their customers? Haha! Guess they forgot to mention their little crusade back in the days before the Napster filters, when they encoded watermarks into all of their MP3 files and then got users who were trading them on Napster banned...
;-D
BTW, most of the MP3s in my collection are 128k. That seems to be the most popular format for trading, since it fits decent quality into a very reasonable file size (something slightly less than 1MB/min.). Yeah, I know you "purists" out there will mod me down, but I just don't have the hard drive space to store 320k MP3s of all my music, and 128k sounds fine to me on my system. Not as good as higher rates, of course...if I were burning to a CD or something, I'd want better quality, but for listening on my computer, I'd rather have twice as much music at 128k quality than what I could fit on my drive at 320k. And since my CD player's busted...
Also BTW, I've found many great artists through MP3.com...Blue Cyberia, Amethystium, 303Infinity, Egan, Higgins, and my favorite, GNOMUSY. All excellent music that probably won't ever see the light of day on a RIAA-produced medium. If you find an artist you like, buy one of their CDs for $10 or so.
DennyK
I love their service! I would happily trade a latte per month for their continued survival! I listen to them DAILY...
Seriously, guys! This is one of the largeest available archives of international, cultural music... anywhere.
They want less per month than a beer at the local pub. Give it to 'em! I urge my friends to do the same...
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
"Besides, if you chose to use an ad blocking proxy, then you're the kind of person who's very unlikely to click on an ad in the first place, and that's what the advertiser wants: clicks. So if we showed you an ad, you'd be very unlikely to click on it, and the only result would be that we'd spend money on the bandwidth without the advertiser getting any benefit."
;-)
Whoa, an ad exec who actually has a brain in his head and understands. Will wonders never cease? You should teach a course dude
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
The objections to the P4P plan are silly. If you don't make more than $20 per month, YOU DON'T HAVE TO SIGN UP FOR IT! In other words, it's not just a simple redistribution scheme. The money for P4P comes out of a flat amount (originally $1M per month, if I recall correctly).
.sig!
If you aren't signed up for P4P, you can still track how much P4P you would have made if you were signed up for it. This way, you can spend several months building up traffic to your MP3.com page, getting people to click on it and check it regularly, until you're sure you can make that much.
I signed up for the $20/month "Premium Artist Service" as soon as they started it, and I have yet to have a month where I didn't net a profit...
...and I've done nothing more than put my URL in my Slashdot
Imagine how much money I'd make if I actually marketed my music?
It's the federal government that is stealing your freedoms. It's being asked to do so by the RIAA and MPAA, but it's nonetheless it that is doing it.
If it took over the web things would be so much worse, you
Perhaps I didn't make this completely clear, but the payments would not be required at all. The stream is free, the high-quality songs would be paid for.