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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.
25 cents a track is three bucks for a CD's worth (twelve songs) of music. I can do better than that by clever manipulation of CD clubs.
I think more like ten cents a pop would defintely do it - think ten bucks, one hundred songs.
And if we cut the middlemen out, most artists would probably end up ahead.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
its not like CD's where you get something 'better' having an original...
Oh yes you do:
1) Guaranteed quality - no chance of an incomplete, low bit rate copy of a CD that skips part way through the track
2) Guaranteed availability - no searching for tracks, only to find that the host is too busy, just go to the website and there it is, quick 'n' easy
3) Peace of mind - no worries about getting busted for having illegal copies of music on your machine, no worrying about your ISP logging your activity, etc
Okay, so 3) is pushing things a little, but I'd pay for 1) and 2). In fact, I only started using P2P apps to find music when I was unable to find a way to legally, quickly obtain a certain song that I just had to listen to (I get like that sometimes). I couldn't even find anywhere online to buy a CD single of it, let alone download it.
20 minutes later, I'd installed Kazaa (yeah, I know now, and it's history), found it, and downloaded it. At the time, I would have happily paid 2 or 3 pounds sterling (roughly 3-5 dollars, or around 10 times as much as in the article) to have legally downloaded a high quality electronic copy.
Of course there will be people who will download illegal copies regardless of how cheap, quick and easy it is to buy them legally, but I think you'd be surprised how many people will think "how cheap? At that price, I might as well just buy it"
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
While I agree that the mp3 piracy most probably will continue even if they did that sort of plan, I personally would pay a quarter a track for a high bitrate mp3 or ogg vorbis file. Secondly, the tracks I get off of the trading services have a bad habit of being cut off early as well. If they give me high bitrate and guaranteed download, thats worth a quarter to me. In fact thats the main reason I still buy CD's, 128 sounds like garbage to me on both ogg and mp3, and 160 is barely usable on ogg, and I always know when I do my own rips, that I am getting the full song. The record companies have to market themselves differently, they have already lost the price war, so the only thing they can market themselves with is quality, but they will be carried kicking and screaming down that path.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Why, then, are the bells going off in my head, telling me that RIAA will use the argument, "We tried. It cost only a quarter a song , and it failed. See! That business model doesn't work!"
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
"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?"
found here
and
"Rs = Roupees, current exchange rate is about 1 dollar = 49 Roupees.
Studies vary, but the "average" family income in India works out at about $450 per year." found here
Very interesting and informative here. Proves price fixing doesn't it? You see, if the cost/person in Indea compaired to their income is the same as the cost/person in America compared to our income and the cost in the UK/person comapred to their income all work out to about the same rate, then we know they are fixing prices globaly.
I think that 10 Rp to an Indian making $450/year works out at about 22,050 Rp. That means an average income equivalant to the US, about $20k/year/citizen.
IANA Economist, but I would love to know if Indians are having to pay the same amount of their salary for music as Americans would have to pay for their music.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
(Maybe if I search for "All Star" or "Lucky Star" individually....)
Clearly the major record labels are giving Soundbuzz.com nowhere near their entire collections of music. At this price, I'm reasonably certain they never will. Nothing to see here, folks.
Since we are talking hypothetical, the cost per track is the core of the discussion. I agree the cost should be variable, based on many different factors. Length shouldn't necessarily be a key factor, though. I don't want bands doing 15 minute intros to their songs to boost price.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Here's something worth considering:
If most people will choose free over inexpensive, then why do the major Linux distributors, such as RedHat, make the money they do (looking at gross revenues)? This isn't pocket change, here.
For example, I have decided that I don't want to pay $600/year for a broadband connection and that my 33.6kbs modem is mostly just fine. However, I also found that the time involved in downloading software packages is prohibitive. I, then, quickly decided that time saved is worth some money, which is why I have purchased CD distributions of Linux and OpenBSD without any regrets. Also, I like the idea of providing some money in support of free software.
If the music industry can achieve something similar--providing high quality downloads & CDs for the market value of the time saved by not using peer-to-peer priateware--then they just got for themselves a guranteed revenue stream, since time will always equal money in the minds of many people for as long as people exist.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin