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Universal, Sony Cutting Prices on Downloaded Music
Don Symes writes "Sony Music and Universal appear to be getting ready to allow downloads of singles for $.99 and albums for $9.99 without crippleware or restrictions on personal copying/burning." Another semi-interesting piece submitted by several people is this propaganda from the recording industry. 2.8 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were seized in the U.S. last year (9 million world-wide); from that the IFPI extrapolates that 950 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were actually sold, world-wide. How do you get from 9 million to 950 million? Mostly hand-waving .
But the cable company set a lower bandwidth cap...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Yes, you heard correctly - secret watermarks. Want the music cheap? Sure, here you go. Of course, if you do trade it online, we'll get back to you on the number of times we find it on other computers and charge you full price plus treble damages. It's not as if we couldn't see through this business model by now...
...Althought $5-$8 would be a lot better. Problem is, if I buy an album, I want 44.1khz PCM data, and not a compressed stream with a not-insignificant portion of the data missing.
.94 cents buys .05 of an ounce of cocaine to line the nostrils of a record exec.
If my $.99 bought me the raw stereo PCM data to burn, MP3, ogg, or sample then I would consider this reasonable.
Of course the artists probably get less than $.05 of that sale. The other
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
not 128kbs, but at LEAST than 196kbs, otherwise it isnt worth the cash outflow...
personally if im going to pay for something I want a solid object in my mitts, a physical CD, liner notes, pictures, etc....
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
2.8 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were seized in the U.S. last year (9 million world-wide); from that the IFPI extrapolates that 950 million copyright-infringing CD-R's were actually sold, world-wide. How do you get from 9 million to 950 million? Mostly hand-waving.
I can only assume that Michael doesn't actually understand what the numbers he's quoting mean. Hard to believe, I know. 9 million == number actually seized. 950 million == estimate of how many actually produced and illegally sold.
Obviously it's difficult to have hard numbers about what CDs were NOT seized, but who thinks that it's unreasonable to claim that only 1 out of every 100 illegally produced CDs sold are actually found and confiscated?
In fact, it surprises be that it's as high as 1/100.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The one advantage of having lower $0.99 "per track" charges, is that once the artists' royalty percentage is rounded, it equals zero.
Everyone has their opinions. Who says it won't work? I've been getting my MP3s for free since I started downloading them on my 'BRAND NEW 14.4!' back in the day. BUT, if a company were to promise me good download speeds (40k/s would make me happy), high availability at any time, a HUGE selection covering all the genre's I like, then I'd happily pay $9.99 for a CD or a buck for a single song. In all reality, P2P programs annoy the bloody piss out of me. I can't stand their spyware, and their connectivty scheme tends to chow ALOT of bandwidth. IRC is quite a pain in the ass too. 700 people in one channel, you can't even go in there on dialup because the user list will cause loads of lag. So if a company could legitimately sell me a high quality MP3 for a buck, and I could find it easily in a search engine, and then download it right away with no queues, then I'd be a happy consumer again.
Can all fish swim?
And do you know what? This will flop. Terribly. Why? Because the same people who have been shouting that they'll pay for music will, in the end, not pay for music.
Once, a few years ago, I pirated music using Napster. I got quite good at it, amassing more than 5 GB of songs. But eventually, I had to face the facts: I was stealing music. A few of my friends asked me to justify what I was doing, and I couldn't justify it. I was stealing music. I thought about "making up", by buying all the CDs that I wanted music from, but I didn't. And do you know why? Because it would cost money.
I know it's not hip to agree with the RIAA on Slashdot, but in this case I feel that it's correct to. The pirate community has been screaming that they want low-price music, and now they're offering it to them. But it will flop, because in the end, people don't want cheap music.
They want free music.
Ten bucks is roughly what a record store pays the distributor for a CD. The music industry is just cutting out the middleman and keeping their profit the same. Not a bad thing to try.
"Here's an idea: Maybe if we give them something they actually want, they'll pay us for it."
"Wow...you think so? Well, let's give it a shot. Can't be any worse than that MiniDisc fiasco."
This is $0.99 more that I am ever willing to pay a record company for a song. I would gladly give the artist the money, but never the record company. Back to good ole lopster and sending donations directly to artists.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
The music industry is still trying to cover their own ass. They know they are going to lose this fight, so if they push everyone else out of the business first they can take it over like they have every other avenue.
Supporting them now is like caving to the first offer to a street vendor in Thailand.
I am bias and not afraid to admit it, we offer MP3s for $.10 - $.20 that are encoded at 128bit to 192bit. That's good enough to burn.
CD Cost: ~$1.50USD
MusicRebellion
Let me save you the time of reading all the hypocritical comments, just read this one.
"This is a great start, but I'm not paying [current price] for a song/album. Maybe I'd consider [current price / 2], but it would have to be available in [some other format] and at [current sampling rate * 2]. And even then, I wouldn't pay without getting [a CD / liner notes / etc]."
99 cents a song is a steal. Let's figure there are 3 good songs on a CD nowadays (generous assumption). That's 3 bucks for a CD's worth of good songs. As opposed to 15+ dollars in the store.
But I'm sure people can justify not using this service anyway. Hell, I will admit that if I want some song, I'll probably get it off of KaZaA (I don't really listen to much music nowadays). But I'm not gonna criticize the system, I think it is perfect, they are biting the bullet and offering us a great alternative to stealing music. If this fails, it's not the record company's fault.
Mark
The music files will be avaliable in Liquid Audio format.
"Liquid Audio files are scrambled so they can't be freely copied from computer to computer. But Universal has decided to let buyers burn the files onto conventional CDs in unscrambled formats, meaning they could be copied or moved freely from that point."
People wants MP3s. We have MP3 walkmans, players, car stereos, stereo components. We don't want a crippled version of song no matter the price.
Universal- will allow buring to CDs with you can then rip into MP3 format.
Sony- will not be allowing any burning
It's regrettable, because this is a step in the right direction, but this won't fly.
The article mentions that the tracks discussed by Universal are to be in Liquid Audio format.
(More about them is available here)
Closed-format music that I can't play in non-Windows operating systems or in a dvd or car cd deck that can decode mp3 CD's doesn't interest me in the slightest. MP3 succeeds because it's portable and small. Liquid audio files may not be very large, but they're not portable at all (except to Rio players).
By the time I've converted to CD and then ripped to mp3 again, I've spent way more than $1 worth of time, and I'm inclined to just go get an mp3 rip of the song and have done with it.
Sorry guys, try again. They're halfway there, but it's got to be MP3, or bust. The really depressing part of all this is that when this fails, it will fail because the dirty thieves on the internet want something for nothing, not because they tied themselves to a wrongheaded proprietary format that nobody asked for and nobody needs.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
How many VH1 "Behind the Music" specials have driven _that_ point home?
Honestly, I cannot FATHOM that the number of CDR's they claim were seized actually were. Honestly, if 2.8Mega CD's were confiscated, where was the news coverage of the busts? I have never once heard of any of these busts on the news. There would HAVE to be at least a few big hauls of confiscation that would warrant news coverage. Hell, every time someone gets caught smuggling a couple of pounds of pot in, it gets news coverage.
The source of the data is missing from the Yahoo story, does anyone know who's ass this data was pulled from?
It should be noted that the files are NOT released in a open format, but in Liquid Audio.. For which, to my knownledge, there is no Linux player. So its still a Windows-only format..
You should have stopped right there. The record companies are stating these numbers as fact instead of admitting that they are pulling numbers out of thin air. Their strategy is similar to the ONDCP's: design the numbers to fit the agenda. In the case of the ONDCP, they estimate higher drug usage when they want a higher budget, then they estimate lower drug usage to prove their efforts were successful. The record companies are giving an outrageous estimate to shock people into believing that there is a serious problem with piracy. Wait a few years, until the DMCA and other dragnets have imprisoned and fined a large number of people. Then the record companies will revise their estimate to prove that the legislation was effective in reducing piracy.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
From dictionary.com (emphasis mine):
theft
\Theft\, n. [OE. thefte, AS. [thorn]i['e]f[eth]e, [thorn][=y]f[eth]e, [thorn]e['o]f[eth]e. See Thief.] 1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same ; larceny.
Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief. See Larceny, and the Note under Robbery.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
SO give me a high bitrate MP3... 128Kbit is not an acceptable quality at a buck a song.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
From page 7 of the IFPI document:
Since Ukranian artists cannot make money selling their albums, they are forced to give endless concerts to survive.
I guess I should feel bad... except that this is the situation for all musicians everywhere, regardless of piracy. Musicians don't make money selling albums. Period. Especially musicians who have signed a recording contract.
Having been a musician myself, I have only one response to Katya Cilly: If you hate playing music so much, go get a real job.
I don't support piracy, but honestly, I never cared about it with regard to my own stuff. The point of recording music is so that other people can hear it and enjoy it when I can't be there to play it live. If somebody bought my CD and made copies for all their friends, great! Maybe all their friends would come to my next show. Nothing compares to playing a live show. That's what being a musician (or any kind of performance artist) is all about. If you don't like doing it, then being an artist is not the profession for you, and you should look for something else.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
You're completely, 100% wrong. Yeah, it will flop, but not because people won't pay. It's silly to assume people don't pay for music. People pay for music all the time. How else do you think the recording industry stays in business? No, piracy is most certainly not why this will fail. It will fail because the suits misunderstand their thetarget audience for this service.
I have ~18GB of MP3 files. They are all, to the last file, arranged in complete albums, with proper ID3 tags for each file. Why? Because I bought the CDs and then ripped and encoded them myself. Napster was useless. You got iffy quality, screwy naming conventions, weird ID3 tags (if you got them at all), and the files sometimes (mostly) had defects. Even if I didn't want to pay, I'd still pay rather than listen to the crap you get off Napster (or Kaazaa -- same problems there).
I require two things for digital music: The complete album in high bit-rate MP3 format. I do not want single songs. I do not want proprietary (read: non-MP3 or non-OGG) formats with built-in "digital rights management". I do not want to "burn" anything. Why the heck would I burn a Liquid Audio (whatever the hell that is) on to a CD-R? I want the music on my fileserver where it belongs. Where my AudioTron downstairs and my workstation upstairs can get to them. Where I can stream them from work. I might even put them on a portable MP3 player, but last time I checked the portables didn't support "burning" or formats besides MP3.
I'd love the chance to pay $10 for a complete album. As long as it's in MP3 format at a decent bit-rate. But this "service" can't give me that and therefore is completely useless. It will fail because they are going about it all wrong -- not because people don't want cheap music.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
This is an old problem in research that has already been solved by the "Rhino problem". I'm not saying this is the method they used, but it might be of interest to some of you.
The problem is how to count the number of Rhinos in the wilderness when you know you can't find them all and count them.
The solution is to capture 100 Rhinos. Tag all of the Rhinos and then release them. After a period, you go back out and capture another 100 Rhinos.
Let's say that out of the one's you've captured, 10 have your tags on them and 90 don't. From this you can extrapolate that you have 10 times the number of Rhinos in the wild than you originally tagged, or 1,000 Rhinos.
Don't know if they used the method or not, but its normally accepted as good research methodology.
Of course, the labels don't really want this to work. They want it to fail so that they can go back to Congress and say "See! We lowered prices and they're still stealing! They wont pay 99 cents! We're bleeding from our arteries here! You guys have to do something to protect our profits, er, the artists!"
If they want to make this work they have to devote themselves to it. But for a label there's not much reason to do it. There's no way that selling over the internet isn't going to cut into their gross for a while. People wont pay $16 for an album's worth of MP3s.
But it's not a zero-sum game, because RIAA can't control their end-users. Their music is digitalized and distributed for them, at no cost to anyone. Actually, for RIAA they may just be stuck.
Music distribution is no longer tricky. Just stick mp3s on your website. Finding new talent can be done just as well by a bunch of independents as it can by a giant music conglomeration.
In the next decade, music may just go back to being an art instead of an industry.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
If Sony and the other labels had offered this low-cost downloadable music option a year or two ago I think it would have revolutionized their business model and been a roaring success.
Unfortunately, they've left it so late that I fear (like others who have posted here) that it will fail.
Why?
Simply because music theft has become an "acceptable" activity in the eyes of too many Net users.
Pirates have learned to justify their activities by citing figures that indicate the recording artist sees only a tiny percentage of the sticker price for CDs.
If the recording companies had moved in while there were still pangs of guilt associated with the unauthorized duplication of copyrighted music then they could have pulled it off.
I predict that some people will opt to buy legal downloads (just like some have signed up to the subscription-based online services offered by record labels) - but the vast majority will continue to get their music for free.
This is unfortunate for all concerned because it means that we'll all end up paying more for our music.
Just watch the demise of the audio CD within the next two years.
The recording companies will force everyone to move to a new format with built-in DRM. Okay, so it won't affect hardened pirate (nothing ever will) but the recording industry will go ahead and do it anyway -- and we'll all end up having to buy new players just to gain (legal) access to the latest releases and paying the premium required to offset those development costs.
The solution?
The recording companies should give the damned music away for free!
No, I'm not kidding.
Let's face it -- they're effectively doing that every time a music vid screens on TV or when an FM station plays a track. Sure, there's a fee paid for each public performance -- but there's nothing to stop people from recording those broadcasts and burning them to disk or CD. Hell, I've got a great (and growing) collection of MPEGs containing all my favourite music videos. When it comes to "pop" music, I just capture what I want from free-to-air broadcasts and burn it to VCD or SVCD. I don't have to download MP3s -- I just record the audio and video track.
Artists and recording companies should put all the music on the Net for free and switch to other revenue streams.
What other streams?
1. Product endorsement (how much does Britney Spears make from her Pepsi commercials??)
2. Live concerts. Let's face it -- how does any recording artist justify earning millions of dollars for a few weeks in the studio cutting a new album?? Perhaps they could do some *real* work for their money -- just like the rest of us have to.
And there are an armful of other revenue streams that could be generated by giving away free music.
Perhaps it's time that the recording industry realized (just as the manufacturers of carbon-paper, horse-shoes and vacuum tubes had to) that the market has changed and old products and business models may no longer be valid.
The MPAA will have to take the same long look at itself -- and perhaps actors will have to realize that a couple of months work simply isn't worth tens of millions of dollars.
I suspect that the 20th century will be viewed as an aberation as we move to a "Star Trek" economy of art, where no one watches TV anymore (or listens to the radio, etc). Instead, people will prefer to attend live performances, usually by firends or family, occasionally by a recognized star. Like the Grateful Dead always did, recordings will be used primarily to introduce someone to a performer; the "true experience" will be the live concert.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I want a program I can download from the record companies that will scan my MP3 directory and tell me how much I need to pay to legitimize my collection. They don't have to encode music for me, pay for the servers and pipe for me to get music, I can get my MP3s through my own means. I just want the license to legitimately listen to what I want on my computer, MP3 player, etc. I will even deal with the shitty quality.
There's no reason that they couldn't charge me $0.05 per song or less. Hell, it's resonable to expect that it's $0.99 for the first ten MP3s, $0.50 ea for up to 100, $0.05 for up to 1000, and a penny thereafter. No cost to them, no loss, it's basically free money. Now, if/when I ever get audited for my music I come up green and not red on their Good Boy/Bad Boy list. Everybody wins, except probably the artist, but then again, they're the ones who sold their rights to the music. It's a fucked up system, but this would at least appease two of the three parties in the tight spot.
Regardless, until then, CDs are too overpriced and inconvenient for me. Call me a bastard, I'll deal.
--
Do you have something against the ability to trace the original source in the case of wide spread distribution? No, really. I'm curious
Um, I'm against having to try to change the format into something I can play in my DVD, Rio, Car, etc in a compressed format. I hate jockeying a box of CD's in the car while driving, carying a box of CD's while out hiking, etc. I want the small portable format of MP3's. Liquid Audio is incompatible with my hardware and 8-10 songs per CD is too bulky to carry everywhere. Lugging enough batteries for a weekend hike is bad enough without also lugging along a case of CD's that have to spin 100% of the time to play (battery eater). I prefer a MP3 CD player for hikes as they start once or twice per song vastly extending battery life.
The truth shall set you free!
Well first of all, its convenient that you left out definition a from www.m-w.com which is exactly the same as the first one from dictionary.com. Secondly, from a legal standpoint, copyrighted materials aren't even property. They are works for which the government has granted someone an exclusive liscense to control the distribution of the work for a limited period of time. Insisting that copyright infringment is "theft" is just a convenient way to distract people from the real nature of the crime.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Calling that little PDF hand waving is being too generous, it's fraud. Notice the little bar graph about "disc piracy" and how CD-Rs are fuelling the growth of piracy?
Well, take another look, this time at the cute pie graphs. You'll notice that while CD-R piracy increased from 165 million copies in 2000 to 450 million copies in 2001, cassette piracy dropped from 1.2 billion to 900 billion.
Out with the trusty HP calculator: 450 - 165 = 285, and then 1200 - 900 = 300. Oooh, look at that: 285 < 300. Cassette piracy dropped more than CD-R piracy increased.
Lets add in the pressed CDs: 500 million in 2001, 475 million in 2000. That would mean an increase of 25 million. So, takin all formats into account, we have an increase of 10 million. A whopping 0.5% increase from 2000!
Gee, wonder why they didn't include cassette piracy in that bar graph, huh? Would have spoiled their party.
Now, if my sources are correct, the annual growth of the population of the world is somewhere around 1.3% annually, which is more than 0.5%. I guess this means that piracy per person, at least where physical copies are involved, dropped.
But of course, the goal is to levy tax on CD-Rs as "compensation" to the music publishers, so why look at the facts?
>You don't have to deprive someone of something to be guilty of stealing.
So, if I, as a parent, stopped my child's allowace because they misbehave, I've stolen it?
Does a murderer steal lives?
Does someone who is greedy and buys all the CDRs in the city (this happened where I live) steal them?
Does someone who makes a profit steal it? I mean, there is no law saying you are entitled to make a profit on anything whatsoever.
Does someone who decides not to give a dollar to the bum on the street in fact steal the dollar from the bum?
No. You are confused on the issue and I reccomend you consult the dictionary on this matter. Perhaps a synonym might help.
This is the definition of piracy. Notice no mention of theft, or its synonyms, unless your name is BlackBeard or Bin Laden.
Dictionaries were very careful to clear this up in the past because people were beginning the confuse the issues. I am happy they've done so. Notice how dictionary.com went out of their way to use the verbose sentence "The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material" rather than "Stealing Intellectual Property". That's because they saw the difference.
If you read the Berne Convention, the international foundation of modern copyright law, you'll never see the words steal or theft. The world's lawyers were careful to separate the meanings even though they have the most to gain. If english teachers, lawyers, judges, and many other respected people around the world firmly agree on this issue, why don't you?
I think you'll be very interested to know that in my country we are allowed to buy CDRs from America (bypassing a special media tax) and burn a copy of any album we like at a friends house and take it home. This is a law agreed to by the people, the lawyers, the artists, and the media companies, even when this loophole was explicitly pointed out once (we've all agreed to the law a second time, even after the rush on the border for CDRs). If any of these people considered that stealing (which, by your definition, it is) they would have most certainly not have agreed to allow this to happen.
Put simply, piracy is (for example) copying a song when you shouldn't, plain and simple. Stealing is when you take a car for a joyride. The difference is remarkable.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC