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Vivendi Offering MP3 Song for Sale
pmorelli writes: "Maybe there's hope for the media dinosaurs yet: According to News.com, Vivendi is teaming up with Maverick Records, MP3.com, RollingStone.com, GetMusic.com and MP4.com to offer a remix of a Meshell Ndegeocello track, 'Earth,' for $0.99 online. No restrictions, just a plain old MP3. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of her stuff, I just may pony up a whole buck to economically encourage this sort of behavior."
i mean mp3 is a good start i guess but IM not going to pay for lossy music
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
I'm not a big fan either, but I'll gladly fork up a buck to offer support of the idea, in the hopes of encouraging more for the future. I'd like to see a million purchases of this one track for just that reason. Its about time some of the "biggies" got their heads out of their asses.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Forgive my ignorance, but would someone mind enlightening the stupid as to who she is? What genre, how good is her music, etc? I might just buy the song if it's any good.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
I have not heard of this artist and I'm assuming that most people haven't either.
But my question is, if this sells poorly will they point to it as proof that straight mp3 sales don't work?
I have a shitty sig!
...you can download an mp3 pronouncing her name.
Anyone with some knowledge of online transactions knows that offering something for $1 is generally not profitable. First, you've got fees from the credit cards, and then you've got the the whole chargeback thing. One song gets charged back, and you've wiped out any profit from at least 100 sales. The only thing they've got on their side is that an mp3 is not a very good target for credit card fraud, and most people will not bother to chargeback $1.
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
"Sure, there is always a concern of piracy; there's always the concern of people illegally transferring things. But we feel the best way to combat that is by giving people a legitimate alternative, and this is a test to make that alternative available to them," I couldn't have said it better myself. This could be a viable alternative, although the price might be a little high. A 15 track CD at this price is just as expensive as a store bought version, without the extra goodies and higher quality. Still, if I were interested in the music, I would consider spending the buck just to support this practice.
But if you take into account that you only have to pay for it once and spread the cost over all users of the purchased song, the cost is really quite minimal.
I have been pwned because my
I still wont pay for sh*ty music. There's more to it than just offering it online in mp3 format folks.
Heck most of what the recording industry puts out these days isn't even worth stealing.
then the music industry will deploy this on a larger basis....we can all afford $1...even us po' ass university students...com' on every one...lets /. the shopcart software!!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I can't help but notice there's no mention of how much the artist will see from each sale.
And also, it's not much of a price break, is it?
I know this is feeding the trolls, but compare $0.99US to:
$15 for a new DRM-supporting CD player.
$150 for a new DRM-supporting DVD player.
$1500 for a new DRM-supporting PC.
Life in prison for ripping a CD.
Pick your poison.
OK the price is a little high and she's not a big, big name, but you get an unprotected download to do with as you please.
So buy it and show support for the concept, check out the quality and if you're happy with that then send nice feedback
as a customer(lower price, different artist, etc) and give them a chance.
In a time of universal lies, Telling the Truth is a revolutionary act - George Orwell
can you hop on gnutella and drop me an email with your IP? I love her stuff.
.99 for stuff, but really, how many people will when you can get it for free?
Free(as in beer) > All(nonfree beer) People say they'll pay
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
I really have no clue who the artist is but I can already hear what the RIAA will say. "We tried to sell MP3's on the Internet but nobody bought them because there was no digital rights management." "This is why we need the Hollings bill!"
Record companies are assuming two things:
1: People want to hear mainstream music.
2: People will prefer mp3 format over CD.
3: People are paying money for the "art" on a CD, and thus they're willing to pay for the 'song' in any format.
What their assumptions should be:
1: People think mainstream is pretty much shit.
2: People will pay money for GOOD music.
3: People will rather have a lossless copy of a song on a tangible media format than a file that can be deleted with one bad keystroke.
The problem isn't mp3's. It's horrible bottom-feeding mainstream music that they use as their benchmark for performance and profit.
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
Welcome to the grand world of theory business.
The bigshots say "Oh hey. Maybe people will pay for their MP3s" So they call up the IT department, and as "Will you sell MP3's for us?" As the IT department laughs merrily, they put up a song, and set a token price of $0.99
And then they watch. The bigshots want to see sales, even if they're selling a no name song, and the IT department wants to get raises for what they did.
Ergo, it is hoped that the system will work. Don't whine about the format-that's not the issue. Selling music for a reasonable price is.
"To make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -Carl Sagan
$1? :)
Make a statement.
I'm DLing it right now, for $1 I don't even care *what* the song is. I just want to wave my dollar in the face of this company, to show them that I have dollars to spend on DLing songs!
Great idea, but at 1 buck per song, a whole album would cost plus than 10 dollars, I think it is a little expensive ...
But if you take into account that you only have to pay for it once and spread the cost over all users of the purchased song, the cost is really quite minimal.
When you take into account that the creator only has to make it once, then take out all of the packaging, advertising, etc. needed for a typical album, the cost seems rather high.
Then again, That's still around $12 a CD, which is well below the current average.
Vivendi is teaming up with Maverick Records, MP3.com, RollingStone.com, GetMusic.com and MP4.com to offer a remix of a Meshell Ndegeocello track, 'Earth,' for $0.99 online.
How is it that when two people want to exchange mp3s, they just do it, but when a corporation wants to, they've gotta make it all complicated?
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
I've seen a few posts encouraging everyone on here to buy the song even if we don't care for the artist or the actual song.
That will achieve nothing. Depending on the success of this pilot they will determine whether it is worth doing at all. Next, they will probably release a whole CD that way and see how that goes. That will be followed by release of another few - say 10%. Unless every Slashdotter is committing to buying every thing they ever release online, buying this song now is not going to serve any purpose.
At this point they are probably trying to assess the extent of piracy/online fraud they are exposing themselves to as well as trying to figure out the logistics of every step of their operation. That's what pilots are for. I doubt they are going to say "ooh, we sold a million copies of this, let's release everything this way!"
Mmmm.. Donuts
...it has the words "little" and "late" and there was something else that sounds like the number 2. Now what was that phrase?
Seriously, does this strike anyone as an excellent way for the RIAA to claim that this kind of system "just doesn't work". Just put out a no-name artists that nobody really likes or cares about, and when that fails to sell 500,000 copies, just throw up you hands in despair and tell congress, "Well, we tried. It just can't be done."
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I feel like a kid who had all his toys stolen by a bully, who was told he was a bad person for protesting, and now I should be happy to get that toy back, all mangled beat and ruined. Yeah.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I am not an audiophile.
Personally, I would never pay for an mp3'd version of any song. I wouldn't even pay for an ogg'd version of any song. When I buy a cd, I am paying for the quality of the music that comes from the cd. If I were to ever pay for a song online, it would have to be in a lossless format that I could convert to format X without any problems. 10 years down the road, there will not be mp3's. The mp3's you buy online now, will not be convertable to other formats without a reduction in quality (kind of like why you can't go from mp3 to ogg's without the result sounding like shit).
So refresh my memory...why would I buy a "lossfull" (is that a word?) mp3 again? I've got the bandwidth to download whatever I want at home. I don't care if it's 1/5th it's original size. Give me a wav or whatever, and I'll happily pay.
Let's assume that any music distribution scheme has to appeal to preteens and teenagers as well as adults. (Not necessarily this particular promotion, although if the artist's other song was *Wild Night* you might get some hits. :-)
The big problem with the $0.99 song is this: kids don't have credit cards. If mommy and daddy paid for the kids' music subscription (to, say, PressPlay), mommy and daddy would want to know what the kids downloaded, which kids wouldn't like for the obvious reasons.
The best solution I can find (if you have a better idea, comment on!) goes something like this: Joe Teen walks into Wal-Mart (or some venue that wouldn't require censored songs), plunks a quarter or two in a kiosk for every song he wants, selects them onscreen from sizable catalog, and out pops a restriction-free (read: rippable) CD.
I know there are online sevices that do similar things; problem being, they all require the aforementioned credit cards. There are a lot of times when I really only want one or two songs off a CD, and no way in heck can I afford to pay $15 for a couple songs -- and no, I don't have a credit card.
Thoughts?
1. You're assuming that you would buy a 12-song CD. I think this is a mistaken assumption. You would purchase only those songs that you felt were worth the cost of purchase. Therefore instead of paying $13.98 for 3 good songs and 11 bad ones, you'd pay $2.97 for only those 3 good songs. Sure, you don't get the nice packaging, but that is another debate for another day.
2. You don't value music very highly. This is something that one has to determine on their own. If you feel that $.99 is too much to pay for 3.5 minutes of entertainment that can be repeated as many times as you like, then that is your opinion. There are certainly music sharing sites that you can download the media for free and avoid financing the musician at all.
I don't know how to respond except to say that I disagree with you.
I have been pwned because my
She's the one that played "Wild Night" with John Cougar Mellencamp (or whatever HE is called these days) several years ago.
Decent bass player, she is.
http://www.remhq.com/html/remix/remix.html
A full CD of remixes, with album art.
Not my taste in music, but its nice to see Stipey and the bunch practicing what they've preached in interviews with me and others.
In addition, REM did "pre leak" these songs on various peer-to-peer networks to see the rate of propagation.
This is the second time REM's put free tracks online for fans. The first was Peter Buck putting some tracks he did for a play's soundtrack up. In an interview last year he said he wants to do this more frequently with the "leftover" tracks from recording sessions.
This was covered in major media, but not as extensively as a one dollar MP3. Sad.
Ethan
is ridiculous. And it isn't even new; it's just a remix! Hello, silly "record" "industry" people...
Marked money, my friends. Something to think of....
$.99 for one track? No linear notes or hard media copy? No option to rip it as .ogg or higher/lower bitrate? Many $12 CD's have 14+ tracks, obviously this breaks down to less than $.99/track. I think I might buy when they offer a download for $.05. Think of it like pay-per-view movie. They go for a couple bucks, vs the "hard copy" DVD going for $19.99. No one would pay for a pay-per-view movie if it cost the same as the DVD of the same movie.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
Okay, if the music biz is finally waking up to reality, let's make sure that they set the terms of their initial toe-dipping at a realistic level. Having persuaded them of a general, provisional willingness on our part to pay for content, it's important that they don't develop overly high expectations, Stephen King-style, only to have them torn down by reality, causing them to retreat back into denial.
As I see it, many people (certainly the same number of people who currently buy CDs) will eventually be willing to buy music online if it fulfills the following requirements:
1. Reasonable cost. I always suspected that, for sound marketing reasons, we'd end up paying a dollar per song. It's a fair price and I've no doubt that music companies are about to make more money then their thieving little minds ever dreamt possible; at a $ a pop, there will be a massive increase in the casual purchase of music.
2. (Convenience) Now that we, the consumers, are going to be covering the cost of the physical storage of music we've purchased, the industry needs to fully accept that they are in the business of marketing and selling rights, rather than physical products. Storing downloaded songs on our computers and portable devices, there's a high chance that we will loose them at some point and need to download them again. For that reason, songs we pay for must become part of an online, permanently accessible portfolio that we have permanent, eternal access to.
3. (Convenience #2) No messing around with weird-ass propriety/encrypted formats. Take it as read that if people want to pirate music (and, of course, many will) they're going to find a way no matter what you do. That, however, is no reason to inflict inconvenience and device incompatible formats on your paying customers. Accept reality and move on.
So, there you have it, follow the above, simple ingredients and the music industry enters a new Golden Age as the world's highest paid web hosts.
Finally! Wonder how long it'll last? I just know that I would defenitely pay $5 to download a good album ... perhaps one day artists (music artists, that is) won't need publishers! They can record, set up a web site, and get an marketing company to show them to the world. What a wonderful world it would be...
and *this* is the fucking problem with modern music.
Nobody takes the time to write an *album*.
Process is as such (pseudo-code)
eval gimmick
case "cover song"
add "metal guitars"
case "offensive lyrics"
add "whine"
case "no talent"
add "cleavage"
case "spoiled teen angst"
add "heartfelt lyrics"
case "big tits"
do nothing
Repeat between one and three times. Add ten tracks out of the void filler_song() function, run one iteration through the slick_video library, and compile with the -D_HAVE_HUGE_MARKETING_BUDGET options. You're done!
Seriously, though. I wish some artists would take the time and write one good album every three years a la Tool or others, instead of one shit album every nine months.
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
.... we sure are sending the wrong signal by slashdotting her site. shes gunna think shes the missing beattle or something.
The beauty of MP3 for me is that I can elect to sample at 224k or 256k for my car CD/MP3 player or I can sample at 128K for my Rio 600. I can encode with LAME or whatever encoder I like best. I can set the options based on file size, encode speed, or sound quality. It's all my choice.
I don't want the record companies to sell me some compromised, one-size-fits-all MP3 of their favorite song off of the album. I want the ability to rip and encode the CDs I own without legislation or copy protection to hinder me. I want the RIAA to recognize that I am a customer with hundreds of CDs and not their enemy. I want them to sell me a CD at a fair price and not cripple it in an attempt to prevent me from making a copy to play in whatever device I want.
You feel free to give them $.99 to sell you an MP3 of a song you don't know by an artist you've never heard of. I'd rather just keep asking my Congressional representatives to sponsor legislation prohibiting copy prevention and guaranteeing consumers the right to copy and format-translate any music or movie that they buy.
It took them 3 years to finally think this up???
AC comments get piped to
What is (was?) the sampling rate of vinyl?
I have MP3s that I have purchased and even though I share music (mostly DJ mixes + live sets- stuff that isn't available elsewhere), I won't share the music that I've purchased. It's one thing to give away copies of something that you've recieved for free, and a totally different thing to give away copies of something that you've paid for.
You people!
Over the last year I have read post after post where you all say "If only they'd offer unencrypted music downloads in a standard format for a reasonable price, where I could pick your songs one at a time instead of having to buy the a mostly bad album. I'd do that in a minute!"
Well, ladies and gentlement, Maverick and Vivendi appear, at least, to be offering an olive branch, and is giving us exactly what we've been clamoring for.
A few of you, like me, are going to go download this song and pony up a buck no matter who the hell the singer is, just to add credence to our point of view, but as I look through the responses to this story, what are the most prominent responses I've seen? (I am quoting you here:)
"MP3 is a good start but I won't pay for lossy music."
"I still won't pay for shitty music."
"Great idea, but at 1 buck per song, a whole album would cost plus than 10 dollars, I think it is a little expensive." (NOTE: $10 per album is still half fucking price!)
"Can you hop on gnutella and drop me an email with your IP?"
Jiminy Christmas, people! Here's your chance to make a difference. Put your damn money where your mouths have been for the last year. After this, I can almost see things from the RIAA's point of view. Thanks a lot.
(I apologise for generalising and lumping all Slashdot readers into a collective "you." I'm just really annoyed at some.)
I am the very model of a modern major general!
Could someone who has downloaded the song please post a brief review? What kind of music is it? Similar to the works of what other artists?
I know that US$1 isn't much, but I'm not going to spend that on every artist who chooses to sell this way without at least some idea what I'm buying.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
So I guess I should download the song from kazaa first to see if I like it... Hmm, that would be pointless.
Hacker Media
This. Is. A. Set-up.
This special remix will eventually appear on Gnutella, and everyone will know where it came from. Some third-party company will analyze traffic and estimate the extent to which this song is shared. Then, they will compare it with how many copies were downloaded.
And they will demonstrate that DRM is the only thing that will protect their $$.
... while kicking our "we want unbridled access to our DL'd material, and we'd buy THAT" rhetoric right in the teeth...
The "Good People" of the world will then believe that such DRM must be implemented (taking entirely for granted that the xxAA's $$ deserve to be saved)and will attempt to do so.
This is just a distraction to nullify any normal-sounding approach coming from us, leaving only radical ideas involving the death of old business models-- which noone wants to hear...
$1 for 1 MP3. A quick glance through my CD collection shows a range of 10-18 tracks per CD.
Do the math, then consider that they aren't giving you a CD. Then consider that they are cutting the retail store out of delivery-chain. I think I saw a post elsewhere that said stores pay about $10 per CD.
It is an interesting experiment with some interesting potential, and it's a step in the right direction, but it isn't worthy of a major celebration.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
In what may be a first for the recording industry, Maverick Records and Vivendi Universal's online division are asking listeners to pay just under a dollar for an unprotected MP3 version of a new single.
Yeah, you'd almost think they are ahead of their time. Music over the Internet? That's just crazy talk.
"Sure, there is always a concern of piracy; there's always the concern of people illegally transferring things. But we feel the best way to combat that is by giving people a legitimate alternative, and this is a test to make that alternative available to them," Grady said.
He says it right there. They want to try what we've been bitching for. Let's all drop a buck and support this kind of behavior. (She's not half bad, btw)
My grandma always told me you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If this is what we want, then we should support it. end of story. Time to vote with your wallet, even if for the purposes of this experiment, you've never heard of the lady.
I'm buying my copy. Are you?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Damn, y'all. Emusic has been offering all-you-can-eat, unencumbered mp3 downloads for years now, for a modest fee ($10-$15/month depending on the plan), and not just sample tracks of no-name garage bands, but complete albums of real artists from Bad Religion and NOFX, to John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk, to Creedence Clearwater Revival to Belle and Sebastian, to Bob Marley, to Guided by Voices, to Yo La Tengo, to Pizzicato Five, to Pavement, to Willie Nelson, to Bush, to Isaac Hayes, to The Donnas, to Apples in Stereo, to Edith Piaf, to Otis Redding, to the Goo Goo Dolls, to George Carlin, etc. etc. ad nauseam. (and, yes, They Might Be Giants - blah)
More often than not, they even have an entire artist's career, not just an album or two.
I'll don't understand why people are lining up to pay Vivendi $1 for one lousy track. If you're going to pay a major label (VivendiUniversal bought emusic a while back) your hard-earned cash to support a business model based around unencumbered MP3's, emusic seems like a better deal.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Her most well known performance is probably "Wild Nights", which she performed with John Mellancamp Jingle Heimer Schmidt. It charted in the Top 10 on the AT40. Can't remember the exact position at the moment, but I DO remember the bloody thing playing every third song for MONTHS on local radio stations.
:::The Spear in the heart of the Other is the Spear in the heart of You; You are He - Surak of Vulcan:::
I'm feeling grim, but I just don't think this will suceed in any way.
... As soon as one person gets it, it's all over the networks for free."
Benyola from Raymond James Financial said:
"I think you'll be able to count the number of sales on one hand
If this track shows up on a single peer to peer network, the recording industry will parade this in front congress as the prime example of why legistlation is required: "See, even if we give them [internet users] a product as a very low price, they continue to steal it!"
Even if a large number of internet users reward the recording industry for good behavior by making the purchase (symbolic or not), I'm sure the recording industry will find some way to spin any sucess as a failure. We might see something like:
"This wasn't a real show of acceptance because there was a grass roots movement to buy this MP3 track. The results were inflated, and as such indicate that this isn't a viable market."
This is a token gesture at best.
One of my favorite "local" bands has been doing this for way over a year. Check them out at http://www.greyeyeglances.com. I definitely think this sort of thing is cool. The band's manager has said that the online transaction costs about that much, but the band does it for the fans. This way, they can release their songs when they're done, not when they have enough for songs for a record. It's a very cool way to run a band. It would be way better if they could make money off it somehow (without charging an excessive amount per song).
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
The RIAA members are interested in ways to cut out the record stores, media costs, shipping costs, return processing, and every other cost associated with selling CDs.
If they can get people to buy online, they have no cost. MP3.com will eat the cost of the bandwidth in order to get you to view their banner ads. The record companies will have gone to an essentially zero-cost model for distributing their music. Compared to the cost of a CD, printed liner notes, packaging, shipping, and splitting profits with the local record store, it's a lot better for them if you just PayPal them the money.
End result: If you want music, you will get it online compressed at whatever rate the publisher wants to supply it. If you have invested in a high-end audio system, that's tough. You'll take the MP3s at 192K like everyone else.
For those who may not know, Meshell Ndegeocello is also pretty well known for her duet with John Mellencamp in the song "Wild Night."
At least, from the looks of it, they're heading in a better direction. if it's a 320k mp3 i'd bite for about a dollar.
However, they should make it a priority to get ahold of rare remixes, covers, etc...anything obscure and that is hard to find.
Also i know there's an acoustic version of "Wild Night" out there somewhere, this as an example would give me reason to use such a service.
A penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
This is either legitimate, or it's the most insidious thing that the recording companies have done yet. They release a single from an artists CD, in both mp3 and CD format, and monitor the sales. Then, they release another single from another or artist (or the same one, it doesn't matter) in only CD format. They then add the total "sales" of the CD+mp3 song and compare it to the sales of the CD only song. If the total sales for the CD only song are higher they now have their golden excuse for copy protection... if it doesn't, they just ignore that it happened.
I think the original poster wanted opinions from Slashdot, rather than opinions and data from the web. Its that whole sense of community...
$.02
Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
First of all: I bought it just because I wanted to support the "effort". I do want the music companies and musicians to think that this sort of distribution will work because this is how I would like to be able to buy music. As for the song itself. I have never ever heard of Marshall Mdegeacella, but I have heard of Ben Watt of Everything But The Girl fame. I like EBTG's music generally, but I'm not a huge fan. Earth, the tune in question, is good stuff. The mp3 is 8 minutes, 45 seconds long. The sound quality is good enough for my Altec Lansing ATP3 computer speakers. But for me, the tune is not compelling. It's a little funky, a little dancable, the vocals are nice, the music is fairly simple, and the rythm is groovy but basic. But I go for stuff that has a little more energy and this isn't it. I'll put it in my playlist and see how it grows on me and I suspect that I will like it more with more listens. But for now? For the creativity and quality of the music: 6/10 and for my personal taste: 5/10. Worth $0.99? Not really, but not a big disappointment either.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
I then sent this note to Maverick:
The more cynical among you may view this as sucking up, but I don't think so - after seeing schemes like pressplay.com, this is a breath of fresh air.
The track is 8:45 in length, and I guess you could call it dance music - in the same vein as Everything But The Girl (Ben Watt, who created this mix, worked with them). I thought this was easily worth a dollar.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Get a good receiver, no, your 79 dollar Aiwa system with blinky lights galore doesn't count, and some respectable speakers.
These guys did, and they found that LAME 3.92 can encode CD quality sound transparently at an average data rate between 160 and 192 kbps. For more information, read the "quality" section of r3mix.net.
You can definitely tell the mp3 artifacts
What artifacts? You mean the artifacts from the Xing encoder?
Will I retire or break 10K?
If you're not hung up on top-40, check out emusic.com - sign up for a year subscription at $10/month, or 3 months at $15/month; there's a 14-day free trial, and you can download:
- as many songs as you want (max 50 tracks during the free trial period)
- unencrypted
- with no special DRM
- and keep the tracks after you cancel your subscription. (They even tell you to keep the 50 tracks if you choose not to subscribe!)
They claim they split the revenues 50/50 with the artists. (even if you allow for some exageration here, it'd almost have to be a better deal than the few pennies an artist gets per CD track sold through traditional outlets...The only restrictions are:
- they ask that you not hog the system by mass-downloading everything; just grab what you plan to listen to now or in the near future
- and you are on your honor not to "steal" from them by sharing those files elsewhere
In other words, they are selling MP3's exactly the way we want to buy them, and trusting us not to rip them off, instead of imposing some clumsy technological constraints - just like any other honest business. (ok, I would prefer higher bitrate encodings, but so what? 128k sounds ok on my pc. I signed up, I sent them a long letter telling them what I liked about the service, and what I would like to see improved, including the option to pay a bit more to download better quality encodings. Who do you think they are going to listen to more - their existing, paying customer base, or people heckling them from the sidelines? [I got a personal response to my letter from their customer service. They didn't promise anything, but at least i know they heard me.])They don't have many huge names (probably the most famous contemporary group in their catalog is They Might Be Giants,) but they have an awesome collection of old jazz and blues collection, a good classical section, some really bizarro-but-intersting international stuff, and a bunch of small indie labels. (They claim over 200,000 MP3 tracks available, from over 900 different [mostly small] record labels) Oh, and some comedy too, like most of George Carlin's albums.
Sorry if I sound like a commercial - I'm just a subscriber who loves this service, and I don't understand why more people haven't signed up yet...
Hmmm, Manowar (www.manowar.com) has been selling their mp3s for a very long time now(more than a year for sure), so this has been done by a far more famous artist and in a pretty decent manner(although i haven't bought them myself). And didn't mp3.com sell cds filled with mp3s from their site?
Join the elite! Post at score:2! Ghostwheel is online.
Yeah, you're right. It's not bad... for elevator music...
If you want to "teach" the music industry a lesson, don't waste $1 on one stupid track, get a $10/month subscription to E-music and download all-you-can-listen-to!
(Besides, you get this track free from emusic, too.)
is Manowar..
maybe not everyone's cup of tea - they are personally my favourite band on the planet - they have been offering MP3s of ALL their songs (8 CDs + other live recordings and compilations making 19 CDs all up!!!).
All MP3s have been produced by Manowar in their studio and cost US$0.99 each. or you can buy the entire albums in MP3 format for $5.99.
You tick what you want, cash in and you have 8 hours to download the songs.
It's a great idea because they know they can't stop people from pirating things, but at such a low price, most real fans and honest people will fork out such a pittance.
I have all of their CDs and some are starting to show their age. Being able to download them off the net, I can still support the band and not need to re-pay full price of a CD when mine are so scratched that they aren't listenable any more.
if you want a look, go to http://www.manowar.com
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
Case in point...I know I wouldn't buy a DVD if I hadn't already seen the movie, and concluded that I liked it enough to watch it again.
pony up...
fork over...
shell out...
Why is it the smaller the amount, the more often phrases like these are used? Does anyone *ever* "fork over" amounts more than $10?
sigh...
Bout 98 cents too high for one of her tracks, no?
What do you mean by 'her'?
slashdot!=valid HTML
And they can't sell a CD for that price/track? I'd be more than happy to purchase some CDs for $12 instead of the 18 or so they are now.
Until CD prices reach something reasonable and everyone stops going against file sharing and restricting my use of where/when/on what I can play things, I'm not buying. I use to only buy a few CDs a year just because I didn't know too much about different artists. Then came file sharing and I have tons of CDs I want to buy, but I will not at that price and with file sharing going down the drain.
I don't think anyone would bother pressing charges against a single person who ripped a CD.
Vivendi is teaming up with Maverick Records, MP3.com, RollingStone.com, GetMusic.com and MP4.com to offer a remix of a Meshell Ndegeocello track [...]
So, how many different companies does it take to change a lightbu^W^W^Wsell a single MP3 online? (Or, equivalently, how many man-hours were wasted on high-level executive meetings to sell a single MP3?) Yea, there's hope for them, but just how much hope remains an open question.
// zyqqh
But "I think you'll be able to count the number of sales on one hand," he added. "As soon as one person gets it, it's all over the (peer-to-peer) networks for free."
OK - let's prove him wrong. I need five more people to go buy it. I just did, and if you like dance music, it's worth a buck.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Hail, Brother. funny we posted the same thing almost simultaniously hehe. anyway, wimps and posers leave the hall, i feel i'll be moderated down to hell.
Join the elite! Post at score:2! Ghostwheel is online.
Amazon(!) is selling the whole 16-song fair-usable album for $14. H.S.A.
Hi Ethan. :)
-kev
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Id rather pay $10-15 US a month for a service that would allow me to download say 2 to 3 gigs a month to say 10gigs at $40. But it would of necessity have to be all the major labels. No DMR, no bloated 320kbps/44kmz forced on us, no commercials at the end of tracks. Perhaps make it user configurable on the bitrate.
:) at a bitrate we want? Yeah many gnutella users would continue stealing, er downloading that way, but the labels would start making money off this thing called progress, you know, the internet, you would in effect be relevant again. Tracking who gets payed on the labels side would be easy; total downloads per label as a percentage of the total from the service. Defray some of the overhead costs with advertising, those cookies gotta be good for something, and I'd rather see adds for the kind of music I enjoy.
Get an intro offer going with a WD or IBM; "Buy an 120gig HD and get the first month of service free." That's an agreement with the HD manufacturer to drop a CD into their box with your "client software" along with the HD and a sticker on the outside with the offer. OEM's could preinstall the "client software" and get a kick back from the label consortium. It would be just another check box on Dells customize page. "Would you like a free month of 'MP3 FOOBAR'"? Again, the first month is free. Shit it would work just like crack. After a single month of downloading exactly the music we wanted, whatever we wanted, with the track names consistent
Some kind of Napster, CDNow, MP3.com homogenization. Wrap that all into one clean, fast interface and you would have MP3 crack for sure. give it to us, you'll make a mint guys. Or rather another mint. Because if you don't people will just get out their felt tip pens and say "fuck the RIAA" and negate your copy protection. Further, if you don't do something, your honeypot gnutella servers will continue showing your latest releases being served up in about 3000 places, days before official release. Sorry but that's just the way it's worked out. If not Napster, gnutella, then something else will come along and break your balls, because these people your pissed at for thieving your music are smart, they are not going to get stupider, shit they haven't really started to get crafty yet. Don't wanna play ball? wait until someone like China decides they want to setup their own "service". Think those guys are gonna pay royalties to the RIAA? forget it.
There would still be a place for record stores. just like some people still want vinyl for the fidelity, others are not going to want to deal with the download, cd burn time. They'll go buy your albums just for the jewel box and jacket, but probably after they used up a few megs downloading it on this, "hypothetical subscription service" I'm talking about. win win for you.
And no, I'm not talking to the Slashdot crowd here am I? I'm talking directly to the information miners at the big record and movie labels, the RIAA and MPAA who we know are reading this stuff by way of the search engines looking either for the name of their label or band and musicians names being swapped on websites. Thus the title of my post. (go web spiders, go) So lets just drop a few names: BMG, Sony, Atlantic, Elektra, MCA, Philips, RCA, RIAA, MPAA. Think about it guys, one distribution channel, some fiber, a few routers, a huge data center full of servers. Don't worry, the geeks know how to implement this thing, it's bread and butter to us. Hell, I'd take a cut in $$ to go work on a thing like this.
Try starting with a test, say an oldies site. All those retired people living in the sun belt looking for out of print vinyl have the cash and are not really known for thieving MP3's off the internet correct? hmmmm? I know you people already thought of at least some of this. Just one more bit in the bucket to say yes, we, or at least I, and most people I talk to would pay for such a service. Do this consortium as a not for profit and put CEO/CFO's from the biggies on the board perhaps. And let the little guys in too. You'll find out who really is popular, buy them up and make room for more small labels to play.
Good luck Vivendi I hope this works out well for you.
sauron23
Someone needs to compensate me for listening to that preview!
As I recall Vivendi bought MP3 earlier this year. It was a big loss for the internet music when the original designers of MP3 burned up their investment capital in an absurd copyright lawsuit over their Beam-It CD technology.
I don't know much about mp3.
Don't know much of that O G G.
Don't know much about encoding.
Don't know much about music pirating.
What I do know is Napster's gone,
But I know some servers that songs are on.
What a pirate's life it will be!
I have been pwned because my
I went there to get it, and admittedly, it's not as bad as some I could mention (and start a flame war ;-) ), but couldn't they offer up something good?
Otherwise you're just going to keep downloading the music and not pay the artist anything.
No, hey, I understand!
I have been pwned because my
This song can be found as an "EMusic Exclusive" on this page, for my fellow EMusic'ers.
Mozilla's a nice operating system, but it needs a better browser.
Ogg can be resampled to lower bitrates on the fly. Mainly for streaming, but i guess it can be changed to make smaller files really easily.
Of course, you wouldn't download it uncompressed.
The track Brothers in arms by Dire Straits is seven minutes long and 70.7Mbyte. Using Monkey's Audio (for instance, there are others) it compress to 32.31Mbyte.
A typical "radio edit" track of about 3-4 minutes will compress to around 20Mbyte.
If I'm to buy music online it would have to be a more flexible scheme, ranging from a lossless encode to lossy of my choice (I use Ogg Vorbis 'quality 6' for all my encoding at home).
A 128Kbit/s encode using some unknown codec using unknown settings? You've gotta be kidding me.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
There's Universal Music (i.e., Bronfman's mafia, with their hard line on banning anonymity and stamping out MP3s, and their copy-restricted pseudo-CDs), and then there's their new media division, which includes mp3.com and emusic.com.
This could be part of a power struggle between the two poles, the hardliners and the moderates. If enough people buy the MP3, the moderates will get more power in Vivendi, and the hardliners will be discredited. If this fails, the hardliners will just say "I told you so".
I initially posted this as a reply to someone else's post, but it looks like enough people are curious about her that I thought I'd give this it's own thread.
Synopsis: I think she's fantastic. She's currently the only thing that gets bumper sticker space on my car.
Meshell has three prior studio albums to her credit, all on Maverick.
Her debut release, "Plantation Lullabies" is a mostly funk/hip-hop crossover album, featuring her playing bass on most of the tracks in addition to singing. She is, without a doubt, one of the most solid funk bass players that no one has ever heard of. Prior to this release, she cut her teeth playing bass in the DC area for such progressive jazz luminaries as Steve Coleman.
Her second record, "Peace Beyond Passion" is more of the same, although many fans were a bit put-off by the heavy spiritual bent to some of the tracks. The album is seen as a bit preachy by some.
Her third album, "Bitter", is a very different animal. Somewhat less of a funk album, most of these tracks are slower, more organic, and feature primarily live musicians and less programming.
Several things to consider:
-the mp3.com song is a REMIX. Those of you judging her by this track are missing the point entirely.
-like her or don't like her, but be wise enough to recognize that she most definitely is NOT part of the "sound-alike" herd that the major labels have been shoving down our throats for the last few years. As a writer (and more importantly a PLAYER - you really need to hear her play bass) she's already worlds beyond the rest of the pop crowd.
But to really appreciate her, you need to see a live show. For her last three tours she's assembled one of the most ridiculous bands I've ever seen on any stage in any genre. Her drummer of choice, Oliver Gene Lake, is one of those skilled funk drummers on the planet. Her live shows are consistently some of the best musical experiences I've ever had, and her small crowd base means that she always plays intimate club venues.
If you like funk, you owe it to yourself to check out Meshell. She's one of a kind.
...that it takes 6 companies working together to sell a single MP3 online!
How is that companies can sell bottled air or water?
Simple: they add some value (they gurantee the contents is clean, or enriched with minerals or whatever).
Music distribution costs is zero. The Big Dinos need to wake up to that reality.
What can they do? I don't know. I would have not known either if a horse-carriage company would have asked me when it became evident that cars were becoming widespread.
Are there still horse-carriages? Uhm, yes, in museums and as nice tourist attractions.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
At the end of the day, who'd want to pay a buck a track for something as non-permanent as an mp3 track? I reckon that the reason why ppl in general refuse to pay for mp3s is, if u hit two buttons on the keyboard, its gone. even tho more behaviour from RIAA like this should be encouraged, a p2p system with subscription still seems more feasible to me - suppose you pay $15 for unlimited downloads of music. i havent checked the numbers, but i would imagine that the money saved from packaging/distribution should more than make up for the lower income. How difficult can it be to monitor which songs are downloaded and pay artists accordingly? And ppl will pay the subscription fee if theyre guaranteed high quality content. But how come that the guys at Epitaph , Fat wreck and Roadrunner as the only ones have found out that while selling mp3s is possibly not a great idea, its great for promotion. "How you remind me" by Nickelback was put out as a free mp3. Gold and platinum records started streaming in and international success for the band is a fact. Not bad for an independent label.
***i watched you change into a fly***
Well Ive never heard of her (by the sounds of things this is good for me!) but I think I would of defanatly payed $0.20 (not $0.99) for most of my 730 mp3s, but $0.10 of it should end up in the artist pockets.
What cost is it to the record compainys if they distrabue though the internet? $0.01 more than pays for there bandwidth never mind $0.10
Wrong, wrong, wrong.... You really are.
Vinyl may have better soundquality than CDs. But thatsnot really the issue here.
A CD has a specified, fixed audioresolution. No matter how the original audio sounds, it will have to deal with these fixed limits. But there arent any loss due to compression. If you master a 16-bit 44.1 kHz tune on your PC and save the music as uncompressed audio, you will be hearing exactly what you originally made. Hence it's not lossy. How hard can that be to get?
As for MP3s... Any decent program informs you MP3 is a lossy format, when you try to save MP3s from your own actual work. You don't get back what you saved. That is lossy.
That CD's have a fixed resolution doesnt mean it's lossy. That the channel from artist to instrument to mixer to mastering (and ... more) is lossy is something entirely different. Get your terms right, huh?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I'm reading lots of posts saying people should get it even though they've never heard of the artist before; well, I for one would love to be able to get a good song legally for $0.99 but I am not rich enough to spend money without sampling the product first. Especially when it comes to something like music, where the quality of a song varies with the listener. (Ie, the same song is one person's jewel and another's garbage)
Luckily, neither I nor you need shell out our $0.99 before having listened to a sample, conveniently linked from the front page of MP3.com.
Now even if you don't like the song, you should still consider shelling out for it as a sign of support for the business model. But if you're a cheapskate like me, try the sample first.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
... please post a review of it (genre, style, influences, quality). Just a wild thought, but shouldn't we be using the power of this big ol' inter-web thing to make informed decisions about mp3 purchasing, rather than just making the point that we'll buy any old junk as long as it's mp3?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"Currently available for United States residents only."
It probably makes sense - credit card payment probably costs more for them when done from a non-US country. But that also means they are missing out on everybody in the rest of the world, which is a loss both for the record company and us international customers.
My guess is this song has been fingerprinted (md5 or something slightly more subtle) and they're going to watch the P2P networks to assess how quickly this will be "shared".
That's the info they're looking for, in my opinion.
Because if they really wanted to prove something, they'd choose a band or act that people have heard of.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I felt like trying this newfangled 'buying MP3s' thing out, only to end up with an 8.4MB, 9 minute 128K MP3.
At a buck per song, most albums I own would cost over $15, often around $20 or more. That's more than it would cost anywhere except the most expensive record shops.
The "I still won't pay for shitty music" argument isn't so bad either. Making this test run with only a single track available almost smells of a deliberate lack of effort. Using ten or twenty tracks from a wide selection of genres would have made for much more realistic results; this way, few who aren't Meshell Ndegeocello fans will make the purchase.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Aren't these the guys that own Blizzard, both of whom are taking bnetd to court? Screw em in that case. Paying legal fees, with every $0.99 in the bucket.
Hecubas
you get an unprotected download to do with as you please
Whoa, not so fast there, Tex. You get an unprotected download, sure... but don't think for a minute that you can do with this as you please. You better believe this song is still protected by the full force of the copyright and that it is still illegal to distribute it over the internet.
But what's most offensive to me is the cost. At a buck for a song this is hardly a better deal than a CD - for a lossier format! That's a terrible deal and too much trouble for no physical product and no packaging.
I'm mystified by these abortive forays into electronic content. Pay three bucks for a book that stops working after fifteen days! Pay a buck for an ephemeral, lower fidelity electronic impression of a song! Pay ten to twenty-five bucks a month for "Internet Radio Minus" - download limits, and when you quit the service you lose the ability to play everything. There are still plenty of unfettered CDs, used and new, for sale out there at ten times the bargain and usefulness. And I'm not even interested in file trading - I've never uploaded or downloaded an illicit MP3. I'm just concerned with the value and versatility of my own collection.
Earth to the publishing and recording industries (and those who would seek to replace them): when the deal doesn't SUCK I'll "show support for the concept."
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Wow. They're offering a whole entire track. A
/. people even
throwaway dance mix, at that.
Very bold, indeed. Innovative, even.
Maybe next month they'll offer a _different_ track.
What the music industry needs is a change in business
model and attitude. That analysts and
seem to give a flying fuck about a multi-billion
dollar industry offering up anything for a buck...I
can't quite get my head around that.
c.
Log in or piss off.
I just downloaded it... paid my $0.99... am listening to it right now.
You know, I never really had any funk music before. I kinda like it.
Quality is pretty good (not the best)....
I think I'll support this. Vivendi, good job. Next, offer multiple versions.... perhaps charge a bit less for this quality ($0.75) and a bit more for higher quality VBR ($1.25). But I like this first forray.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
I don't know the artist,
:-)
I don't know the music,
Hell, I don't even know the song...
But at least if I liked the song, artist or music, I can download it painlessly and efficiently without any ethical quandries to consider, and all things willing, they will begin to place music and artists that I cannot easily find in the music store (or on P2P), or ones that I just like a few songs (not entire CDs) online. Then they will have my 200+ Dollars, 'cause I know there is a lot of music I would love to download, and not feel bad about it.
I think I am going to like this brave new world.
(As always, this is not meant to be offensive, just IMHO)
~ kjrose
I think your spin example is unlikely. The RIAA acknowledging the economic power of grassroots movements? I doubt that. I think that a more likely spin is that they will use the volume of sales as a factor in their "piracy" calculations, for example by assuming that it was copied X times for every copy sold. Millions and millions of damages...
I really would like to know who this is for.
In my opinion, filesharing does not act as a substitute for cds, it acts as a substitute for radio. You hear a song you like on the radio, you buy the album. You find a song you like on a filesharing network, you buy the album.
The people who don't are the same freeloaders who used to tape their friends cds, or cds from the library, etc. Nothing will make them buy music.
The supposed drop in music sales, which is far from agreed upon by statisticians, could be due to a lot of other factors:
* They shut down Napster. Even now, nothing is quite as pervasive, because there was only one game in town. I know I used to buy a lot more when Napster was around, because I used to find a lot more. I've used all the other networks, but the community is definitely more fragmented, and also seem to be interested in videos a lot more.
* They are pushing crap music. TBH, not much produced in the last couple of years has been stellar...
* They killed the single in the US. Then complain they are not selling as much? Do they have no understanding of their market? A lot of singles are sold to children. This is how we get so many boy bands etc in the charts. They were a small purchase. Now they have to buy an album, its a big purchase, and parents won't buy large amounts for kids.
Anyway... who the fuck buys music from an artist they know nothing about? This is an experiment set up to prove how evil mp3s are, nothing more.
Why not go to Smells Like Records (Sonic Youth Label) or Matador and download free MP3 samples. Then buy the reasonably priced CDs (~$10).
The record companies are about revenue not music. We can make them irrelevant.
I don't think ANYONE is under the illusion that consumers _want_ DRM. It's being sold to legislators as a way to protect "content providers" (ie. their compaign contributors) from their own pesky customers who don't behave the way they should. More likely it would be "Nobody is willing to pay for mp3's, because they're ALL stealing them! This is why we need the Hollings Bill!"
Freedom: "I won't!"
Firstly, I have no clue who this person is. She's obviously not mainstream. There's nothing wrong with that, mind you. It's just that I have no motivation to buy this track. I can't even locate the track on the gnutella network (okay I found 2 hosts with it, but I couldn't connect).
Second, the bitrate is horrible. I mean, it really is. I'm no audio snob, but I stopped downloading/encoding anything less than 256kbps about 2 years ago.
Contrary to others, I have no problem with the $1 price tag, as I don't have a problem with the "buy more, pay less" scheme. That is, I don't mind $1 for a single, but I wouldn't pay more than $10 for a full album in this way, regardless of the number of tracks it has.
You want to impress me, Big Label? Release the current top 5 or 10 songs in all mainstream categories (pop, R&B, classical, new age, country, rock, etc.). Offer than for a buck apiece. This would blow me away -- I'd buy a Britney Spears track just to support the effort. Even at 128kbps I'd do it, just because this would be a major scary step for the labels. Next, offer me an uncompressed file format -- straight WAV, baby! I'd pay a 50% premium over any compressed format, though I'd still not go over $10/album as any more would lead me to pay for a real CD.
The point is, if the labels offered something really revolutionary (for them), I'd take these kinds of offerings a little more seriously. Until then, I'll remain skeptical.
Method of processing duck feet
Not likely, it's possible they're modifying each downloaded copy slightly (like in one of the ID3v2 tags) so they can find out who lets their copy out into the wild. Maybe then they'll try to hunt down pirates based on information given upon purchase.
It's definitely possible; I know a company that modifies each of their software's installers upon download so info provided during signup can be retrieved for any particular installer file.
You can get Joe Jackson's latest album, a really fun live album that I highly recommend, at his website. You can download the tracks for I believe .75$, buy the CD for $20, or listen to the streams.
This worked for me- Joe got the $12 from me, and I burned a CD with the tracks with his blessing. I'd love to buy more albums like this. No hassle, I got to sample the album before I bought it, and Joe gets a good chunk of the money, while the hosting company/record company/whatever that company is got a chunk to pay their expenses. Hey, works for me.
I decided to support this effort even though I am not a fan of her music. I went to the site and it failed horribly. I have posted my letter to mp3.com below. I hope no one else went through this idiocy.
================
After seeing all the information about the new
"Earth" - Ben Watt/Lazy Dog Remix
I signed in and put in my credit card information clicked on buy it now and got the following error...
There has been an error:
The charge has failed: Field amount has bad amount value
Now I don't like this particular artist in the slightest but in an effort to spawn more of this sort of promotion I decided to pay my $.99 and get this in the hopes that music companies would get a clue and do this more often. Your site got too complicated though and I now am not going to buy this track. I had to sign up for an account. I had to sign in to the service and only then could I begin to try and purchase this song. Then on top of it I get that useless error message above. This is one of the most egregious error messages I have seen. What field has a bad value? How can I fix this message without writing you and having to go through this? There is no way for me to fix it on my own and in this day and age, if it takes me this long to buy something I give up and go somewhere else. At the very least I hope this message prompts you into telling your programmers about this message so they can change it from garbage to useful information. I really hope everyone else who tries to do this does not have the same results I did or this whole mp3 revolution you are trying to assist into profitability isn't going to go very far. You had a chance to convert me, you have a chance to convert a lot of people. You failed on my but I hope that you don't fail everyone else, customers, artists and record companies alike.
Jesus may love you, but I still think you're an asshole -BVB
Offer it in multiple different formats. Some Monkey's Audio for a lossless copy, some VBR MP3 encoded with LAME using the --r3mix tag, some Shorten lossless audio for those that prefer it, some OGG Vorbis for those that prefer the ultimate in open-source audio, and perhaps an AIFF. Makes sense to me.
[insert witty comment here]