Slashdot Mirror
Music 20 Cents a Track in India
xzap writes "Indiatimes.com , an Indian portal is now offering "International Chart-Busting" music for download legally at Rs 10 (20 cents U.S) a song. They say they (through a partner) have tied up with music labels like BMG, EMI, Warner, Tips, Times Music, Lahari, Enrico Hindustan (which is the oldest catalogue of HMV) and Archies Music "." I still believe that if the bigs let us download MP3s for
a quarter a track, we'd do it.
You have to remember something about this:
There's a huge difference between 25 cents here and 25 cents in India. The average income is much lower.
For instance, 25 cents in India could equate to around $4.00 there.
Now do you really want to pay four bucks a track? $40.00+ per CD?
I didn't think so.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
"I still believe that if the bigs let us download MP3s for a quarter a track, we'd do it."
Don't delude yourself. As long as something is free, people won't pay for it. The only correlary is that some people will pay more for convienience. But again, be serious...if you bought more than one or two albums worth of songs each week it would STILL be money you don't have for beer. Free is always cheaper than cheap for most people.
------
Today's Top Deals
Laws can only be so effective, the easiest way to make people abide by the law is to make it the easiest option to do so.
If it were easy (read: cheap, fast, convenient) to get music legally, I'm quite sure the illegal methods would become much less popular. On the other hand, squash one illegal method with the "might" of the law, and another springs up to replace it.
At the minute, it's very easy to get music illegally without being caught. It's going to cost a lot of money to make it a lot more difficult whichever way you look at it, so a scheme like tis seems the only viable option!
Tom Newton
I agree.. I'd even be willing to pay a buck a song. I know that from time to time I want a very specific song, and a buck is a fine price to pay. Considering how much it costs to print and ship actual CDS, the labels would be raking it in. I've tried this with a couple of sites (like cdnow.com) that claim to support "downloadable MP3s", but they are always crippled. Getting these MP3s to play, even under Windows (which is always the only OS supported) requires a net connection, a special player, and all sorts of authorization.
In short, let me buy and download MP3s for a buck (real MP3s that will play on any platform) and I'll stop about 75% of my pirating... it's not that I"m not willing to pay, I"m just too lazy to get to the record store, and I don't always want the whole album.
--Bennett Prescott
Former Lord Of Packets
I'd pay 25 cents a track. Lots of people would.
;)
IF...you could get any track you wanted. Imagine if the labels had giant servers that contained their entire catalogs in 192kbps MP3 format. No more hunting around for what you want. MP3s ripped by people that know what they're doing. Ahh
THAT would be worth 25 cents a track.
Yes, there are always people who don't pay for things. But if they were truly reasonably-priced, of high quality, were easy to get, and had no strings attached, I think you'd be surprised how many people *would* pay.
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Finding music illegally isn't always easy. I'd pay $0.25 a song if it was a fast reliable connection, and the song was really the one I wanted recorded with a high bitrate. Knowing you're not wasting your time downloading something mislabeled/corrupt is worth $0.25 to me.
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
Let us compare:
25 cents
versus
0 cents (and a nil chance of getting busted).
Let's try again:
You have to wait until the Tuesday of release.
versus
You can go out, get a full promo copy of a cd that isn't out yet (El-P - Fantastic Damage, Blackalicious - Flaming Arrows) or a cd version that will never be released (N*E*R*D - In Search Of (import version), Latyrx).
Hmmm, ok. No, there has to be something that will prove that an honor digital music system would work:
You get to be monitored by a large corporate service and are accountable to the government.
versus
Complete and utter anonymity (for sake of argument).
Conclusion: There is no way in Hell that commercial digital music sharing will take off as long as a viable free PtP service(s) exists.
What is music when you despise all sound?
"When a business model fails, it is not the government's responsability to make laws to sustain it."
Robert Heinlein, I had no idea you were still alive...
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." -- Robert Heinlein
My father is a blogger.
I'm equally skeptical that people will pony up money when they can still easily get it for free, BUT I have a Lockian sense that people will choose to do what is legally and ethically correct more often than not. Which means if an easy to use service, with a simple User Interface were to appear which was tied to an account (not a credit card, but an account that money can be deposited into in order to control willy-nilly downloading), offered free streaming music a la spinner, offered oddities like MP3.com, allowed artists/record labels to offer tracks for free, and was a no brainer to use - people would use it.
I am the type of person who listens to Spinner, hears a song I like, goes to the new Morpheus and looks for it. I may be atypical, but I don't think I am. I think a lot of people would do the same if given the opportunity. Hear a song on the radio and have the option to buy it immediately . . . it is a great sales strategy. Music stores do it, they play stuff that they think people will buy once they hear it.
Get the service software bundled with PCs with the downloading option disabled until an account is activated, people will still get the radio ability which can have little ads between songs letting people know that if they really liked they song, they can download it.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
I do not use music swaping software much but when I do use it it is usually a time consuming task to find the songs I actually want. I know I would be personally happy to go to a site like cdnow.com where I could preview each song (30 seconds) and then download the song for anywhere between 50 cents to 1 dollar.
I cannot see how anyone else out there would not be willing to do this as you would get exactly the songs you want and you would download them at a fast rate. Downloading over a DSL line with at a max rate instead of at 5-20k a second would be well worth the 50 cents to a dollar.
I know I would still go out and buy the cd's because there are some kewl things that come with cd's like memberships to sites to download other hidden tracks and lyrics or what not but I can promise, like most people, that I would go to a site and pay 50 cents to a dollar before I go to limewire because I know it would take a lot less time.
--MD--
Download music for 20-25 cents a track. Consumers would be happy being able to pick out music they like and not have to pay $15 for one track+a lot of garbage. Unfortunately, this will never ever happen. Think of the cable industry-how cool would it be to pay $1 per channel for normal channels? I don't know anyone who watches more than 10 channels, the rest are all wasted on them. But if the cable companies were to use this pricing scheme, they'd go bankrupt quickly. By packaging content as a whole, they are able to subsidize crappier channels, just as the music industry subsidizes crappier tracks/albums.
Colin Winters
My friends who are geeks or geekish have this in common: they buy a lot of music and they download a lot of music.
My friends who are not geekish have this in common: They do not buy a lot of music because it's expensive and they don't download any music because they think it's a hassle and probably wrong.
The second group has the largest growth potential for the music industry and the artists themselves. If they make downloading cheap and easy they will make mo' money.
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
I see this argument over and over again in the copyright-related threads, and it irks me. The laws are designed to combat something that is already illegal.
Awhile ago, the government came out and said something to the effect of, "Okay, we're creating this copyright thing. Yes, it's essentially a legal fiction (then again, so are currency and government), but we think it's good. Basically, we'll reward people who devote time, effort, money, and talent to creating information-based works by giving them a time-limited exclusive control over that work."
Now in the interim, we've had the government do stupid things related to copyright, such as the Sonny Bono Act and the DMCA. However, that doesn't change the underlying principle that people who venture into the business of creating works for commercial sale are doing so because the government has created an artificial system that allows them compensation.
When it comes to P2P music sharing, the problem isn't that it's invented a new loophole that isn't covered by copyright. Instead, the problem is that it's a new form of massive copyright violation that's nearly impossible to prosecute on an individual basis. When something's already illegal, (allegedly) massively cuts into sales, and unstoppable, that's not a failing of the business model, per se.
Anyway, getting back to the point of the article, it looks like an interesting idea. I'm honestly curious to see whether or not it succeeds. It's a service offering cheap, legitimate equivalents to what's already available free on P2P services.
I'm not sure the U.S. price would be that low. It's 10 Rs (20 cents) for an Indian mp3, but the regular CD there costs 250 Rs ($5). So if the prices are proportional, it'd be 50-60 cents per song here.
Shall I give you my number one reason? DRM.
The partner in this instance is Soundbuzz, and - as usual - they're missing the fucking point, big time.
The one thing that their site managed to tell me before it squealed and died was that they use a Digital Rights Management system.
Sigh. Forget it then. If I want to listen to music where and when it suits the music to be listened to, I'll use the radio. I won't pay 10 cents for a crippled .wmf. I wouldn't take a rights restricted .wmf file if you gave it to me, and if the labels keep pushing on down this insane road, it might very well come to that.
It's a pretty simple proposition. We can all get completely uncrippled music for nothing. It's no big secret. And the labels just don't have a big enough stick to threaten us with. The guilt trip doesn't work, because we can all see that sharing isn't hurting the music industry nearly as bad as they claim. DMCA hasn't made a dent in it, and CDBPTA looks like it's failed the laugh test. Crippleware music disks (not CD's, dammit) are about the worst idea they have come up with yet; if you buy one and want to assert your fair use rights to space shift, you have to break the DMCA (which demonstrates how insane that is) and/or grab an MP3 from a P2P system (and they are all over it like a rash). DRM just illustrates how great MP3 (/ogg) is for music lovers.
I can't believe that the labels don't get that. They must understand that by trying to sell DRM content (on disk and online), all they're doing is driving people - including their best paying customers - to P2P.
It's not a difficult proposition. Give me a site where I can enter my CC details, listen to a low quality streaming mp3, then download a high quality (200 kb/s+) version at 25 cents(*) a pop. Bill me monthly. I'll use it. Yes I damn well will.
MP3.com is close, but no cigar. It's too service oriented, too limited, too much aimed at pushing specific end uses ("burn CD's!") and maintaining a customer relationship. Often you can only buy without streaming. Sometimes you can stream without buying (!). I don't want a relationship, all I want is the mp3. Just give me the track, and I'll give you money, and we can both go away happy.
I mean, what is the label's major malfunction, that they can't understand this simple proposition: I'll pay them 25 cents for the same content that I'm already getting for nothing. I hadn't paid a red cent for music for ten years before Napster appeared, and I haven't paid any since. If I'm allowed to, I will pay for tthe good tracks, even though I don't have to. However, if they continue to offer padded, over produced, over promoted, over priced CD's and DRM protected music disks, and crippled DRM downloads (at any price), I'll just keep on doing what I'm doing right now and sharing it for nothing.
Don't they want my money?
(*) 25 cents a track. Yes, that's right, not a dollar, not fifty cents, twenty five cents. Maybe less. Because as we've seen with the instant Slashdotting of an Indian site, we're in a global market, so we need a global price. If you're wondering about the real reason why the labels won't offer online music, keep on thinking about the implications of global pricing on their market segmentation.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I can think of a very important third benefit as well. Most of the MP3s I've downloaded over the internet have been really crappy encodings. Even at 192kbps, whatever encoder the average joe uses seems to do a really lousy job! I would think that a legitimate service would provide high-quality encodings (perhaps using the Fraunhofer codec), complete with proper ID3 tags, etc. I would consider this a great convenience, because I hate having to download something 10 times from 10 different sources and then analyzing each of them to figure out which is the best. To me, that's well worth 25 cents (or even more) a track!
If you want to support downloadable tunes, then go join eMusic. For 5 - 10 bucks / month depending on the plan you choose, you can download unlimited tracks from their website. These aren't crappy proprietary tracks either, they are high bitrate MP3's, no restirctions. And I have checked out their content, they have some really good stuff available. Not just a bunch of unknoqns like MP3.com has, they have stuff from all kinds of people including GooGoo Dolls, Rancid, Bush, Green Day, and many more. These artists all have multiple full albums available for download.
So if you really want to show your support go sign up. Or, if you want to keep whining and leeching free stuff from Gnutella, go ahead. But don't complain when the whole MP3 format becomes outlawed when no one uses it but pirates.
stealing is too easy. Their solution to the piracy is to make things affordable instead of trying to deter it by punishment. If they weren't buying the cd's, why would they buy the song, no book, no case, and no hard copy?
"i can never say no to anyone but you"