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CDs Want To Be Free
Dotnaught writes: "An article that I wrote about a new music promotion service called fightcloud.com and CD pricing in general has just gone up on Salon. And heeding the advice of Dave Winer, I also posted the full transcript of the interview on my Web log, Lot 49, for those curious about what got left on the cutting room floor." Rather than complaining that Big Recording's CDs are overpriced, it sounds like this company is simply demonstrating that music (even on physical media) just don't have to cost that much.
ugg.. I hate advertising...
If I have to pay $4.95 for shipping and you are making $2.64 "profit" from that $4.95, how the hell is the $4.95 "for shipping"..??
$4.95 != Free
although calling something free and charging five bucks for it is kinda scummy, at least these folks are punching a hole through the perception that there's something expensive about producing a CD.
15 bucks is NOT reasonable, and was the price point initially agreed upon to finance the cost to convert to the new format (i.e. from vinyl). CDs were supposed to cost about eight bucks in stores.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
This is a good idea, but the state of Nevada for instance has already made progress towards placing price floors on any "mainstream music distributions". Because of pointless legislation such as this, projects like these will never succeed.
A CD really does cost money to produce. The reason you (well, not you necessarily, but somebody) want the Mariah Carey CD is that somebody brought it to your attention. "Attention", as everybody on the Internet knows, costs money.
Physical stores cost money: clerks, rent, utilities, inventory overhead. Some of what Fightcloud is doing just matches the Amazon model of using the Internet to reduce many of those costs. Good for them; I applaud it.
Now comes the real question: will they have any CDs worth buying? And if they do, how will you know? Most CDs are crap. Even in a general area that you like, most CDs aren't worth the plastic they're printed on, at least to you. It's the job of marketing to match you with that CD, and that's expensive to do. We'll see if $4.95 gradually becomes $9.95. Still a better price than the RIAA wants you to pay, of course.
I'm a twenty-something programmer/analyst. I have a DSL line. I don't pirate movies or music or pc games or video games. I, like most people, like to pay for things, including the things I could get for free. For better or worse, we are all consumers and just because we can download things for free doesn't mean we do.
Why bother with the copy protection crap? If I want to pirate a game protected by safe disc, I will, and there isn't a damn thing anyone can do about it since I am just one person out of millions.
Why not save the money? Honestly, the only thing I have pirated in the last year was Windows XP - I paid for Windows 98 and I just consider it an upgrade to a working copy. That and paying for it would have meant registering. I may just buy it and stick the shrink wrapped copy on the shelf.
I would rather see the money spent on more content than some stupid scheme to stop me from ripping a cd that doesn't even work. It doesn't stop the poor pirates and it doesn't stop the rich pirates. It doesn't stop me from making legit backups when I want. So why bother?
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
...tells you to sell the product at the price at which you will make the most money. Let's assume $4 per unit production cost. If one million people are willing to buy your product at $14 each, you make 10 million dollars. If only twice that many people are willing to buy it at $8 each, you only make 8 million. I'd be an idiot not to price my product at $14.
Best Windows Freeware
There's certainly a place for professionals in music (questions about how well the current payment system works aside), but music should also be an amateur (look it up) endeavour. If you have a day job, then share what you create!
Finding my recording of the Brahms Requiem is left as an exercise for the reader.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
People hate hearing "free" when it means $4.95 shipping for something that's cheap to make and ship.
Instead, they should've said that the CDs were $4.95 with free shipping. Then we wouldn't feel like we're being lured in by "free", it'd just be a good deal.
It's just wording, I know, but it makes or breaks this company's "image".
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I would agree
The difference is that CDs are priced by what they think the market will bear. I have no problem paying to support artists (and all the other people necessary to produce them). I'm happy to pay a little to a store that gives me the benefit of immediate access (as opposed to online/shipping, etc.) - but if they want to run the "you're paying for the content" argument, then the cost should be the same regardless of the media.
I remember back in the days when software first started coming out on CD-ROMs. You had to pay extra to get floppy sets. That made sense because the media cost more. But in music, you purchase on a less expensive (to produce) media and pay more. Curious.
In the article, 54 cents per CD covers the plastic disc and the printing. But even low-budget, professionally recorded albums typically cost $30k to $50k in the studio and mastering rooms before they ever go to press. When most CD's only sell a thousand copies or so... the $15 price tag makes a bit more sense. Most record companies are losing money on the majority of albums they produce. The few albums that go platinum allow the record companies to continue giving smaller artists a chance.
Assimilation would be the better of the two choices, although I don't think they'll do that either.
The majors have become less and less interested in artist development, and more and more interested in risk management. You need someone to wade through all the crap, and believe me, there's a whole lot of crap out there.
Labels are banks that loan money at really high interest rates. The benefit to the artist is that if you default on the loan (walk away from the deal or get dropped) there's not really any financial penalty - the label has taken all of the financial risk. You probably won't ever get another deal on any major, but you don't owe anybody any money. They've given you money in return for you signing away your copyrights, name, likeness, etc. For some people this is a good deal.
Unless you've been groomed by the Disney machine for stardom, you can't really even get a foot in the door unless you've already self-released at least one or two CDs, have an established fan base, and are more or less self-sufficient. An independent artist who has achieved this doesn't really need a label deal anymore unless they want a more widespread audience/fame and are willing to take a paycut (for 90% of them anyway) to get it.
So if there's a company willing to wade through the crap and can provide the labels with some hard numbers on sales, it makes the label's job that much easier and less risky. It also provides talented independents with a potentially good source of exposure and distribution which is, after the creation of quality works, probably the hardest part of any artist's job.
Remember that the majors no longer as interested in long-term sales as in increasing quarterly profits - they have stockholders and parent companies to keep happy, and let's face it - the majority of the top selling music today is disposable. There are a few standout tracks that might be popular 10 years from now, but those are getting fewer and farther between.
Assuming that this company can stay afloat, I think the majors will treat it as a semi-weeded flower bed. I know for a fact that mp3.com is surfed by several major A&R reps - think how happy they'll be if they can deal with a company that actually has some quality control going on.
Slashdot comments... splitting hairs since 1997.
This article explains to HER that:
> $16 of the $18 she's spends on a CD is record company profit.
Prices on CDs should be going down, not up.
A $5 CD sold direct to the consumer makes almost double the profit for the artist.
The positions of the RIAA on P2P and DRM are likely motivated by greed, not survival.
In my view, it's a LOT more important *where* this article is than *what* it actually says.
I'd love to see a big name (Madonna, U2, N'Sync, etc.) use the net to direct-market a low cost original CD just to confirm for everyone that the RIAA is obsolete. Likely, however, it'll go the other way - one of these 'unknowns' is going to hit it big and promote the hell out of this approach.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
For one, the value of the game is much higher than that of music because consumers get a better utility out of the game than out of the music. A game has huge reuse value as compared to a music CD. And there isn't just a demand for lower priced music, there's one for games too. Ever see those warez sites? Same thing. The major difference is that the gaming industry isn't trying to have burners and copies eliminated completely (yes there is copy protection, but it's more to discourage casual piracy rather than complete blockage). The RIAA want's burners to not work period. If the gaming industry did that, we would be up in arms just the same.
Also a game will go down in price over time, music does not.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
On the Web Log (lot 49), he said, "Here is the biggest mistake of them all: two good songs on a CD. How many times do we have that? Remember that girl who sang "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone"? Vaguely. She was a kind of folksy singer. That was the only good song on that CD."
That was Paula Cole, and for that albumn she got nominations for Best New Artist, Best Album of the Year, Best Pop Albumn, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Producer of the Year.
If this guy didn't know that, how would you feel about his business acumen? And if his musical taste is that bad (Paula Cole's This Fire is one of my top 10 CDs of all time), then I don't want to listen to what ever else he's selling (Kid Rock ripoffs?).
Scalfani makes some excellent observations, predictions, and explains his business model fully. He carefully selects the artists he features on Fightcloud.
I expected this to generate some insightful, intelligent commentary here on Slashdot, but all I found was kneejerk whining about shipping and handling and the number of artists on the site.
Damn, I'm really disappointed in you all. Go read the full interview.
I can see the fnords!
1.1. Price != Variable Cost
1.2. Price != Fixed Cost
2. Price != Value
PRICE = WILLINGNESS TO PAY
I'm the customer, I decide what the content is worth paying for.
If I decide you're asking for too much, I won't buy (*cough*MP3 sharing*cough*). If I decide the price is fair, there is a good chance that I buy it.
The RIAA just has to lower prices if they wish to sell more. That's what one calls "being competitive".
ask yourself -- why is the price where it is? record companies, when explaining the price of cd's explain that much of the price of cd's is because of the budget required to promote albums. so why do you have to pay fifteen to twenty dollars for a CD that has no promotion? when you pay $20 for a cd by an actually talented musician, you're paying for the record companies to promote britney spears and n'sync. the drive to make a select few records into "hits" drives the promotions budget skywards.
meanwhile, joe consumer decides he doesn't like britney spears. he decides to shell out $18 for an old david bowie album instead.* this is one less britney spears cd sold, and so the record companies get annoyed that people aren't buying what they're supposed to be brainwashed into liking. and so they increase the promotions budget, and take it out of those david bowies cd's.
* did anybody else notice that three years ago, rykodisc charged, like $8 for bowie's back catalog? then virgin bought it. they cut the bonus tracks and more than doubled the price. there's no way any production costs warrant that kind of abuse of the consumer.
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I don't think that inherently the value of a game is greater than the value of a CD. I'm sure I have several CDs, specifically the ones currently in my car, that I've listened to WAY more than I've played any video game that I've bought, and I consider myself a pretty addicted gamer.
I might agree with your argument if you changed CD to DVD, because I know for a fact that I've only watched some of the DVDs I own once or twice, as compared to most music CDs that tend to get many, many plays. My DVDs are mostly for when friends come over and want to watch something, rather than when I want to watch something.
And music prices do go down, just go to Best Buy and find some old or unknown artist's CD that's been on shelves for a long time. I'm sure you can find things that have been marked down to move. I'm fairly confident I've seen lower prices on older stuff.
Because it's been said 6.02x10^23 times before....copyright violation is not stealing. If you pirate a CD, it doesn't mean the publisher/artist does not have it anymore. If you walk into someone's house and take the CD from their player and leave, THAT is stealing.
Copyright violation is not a criminal offense, it is a civil offense. Do you understand the difference?
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