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Burn A Song For 99 Cents
tusixoh writes "CNN is running an article about an online music company, Listen.com, who has signed deals with Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group allowing users to burn songs from both companies' catalogs (more than 75,000 available tracks) on Listen's Rhapsody music subscription service for 99 cents per track. Until now, Rhapsody had primarily offered only streamed music to subscribers from all of the world's largest record labels as well as several independent labels." The upside of this, of course, is that it won't be necessary to pay for songs that are just "album filler".
Now: let's see if they also allow independent artists distribute their music the same way.
Finding God in a Dog
They're actually changing their business model to coincide with modern times. I'd like to believe music companies generally care about their customers. This may be the first step to realizing that dream.
Honestly, from this point on, if I want an mp3, I'll check to see if one of those labels are the labels that the artist in question is on, if so, they get my 99 cents.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Then, all you have to do is buy 10 more songs at our regular price of $2.99 and you're done. There is nothing more to buy... ever!
Now I don't have to bother will all those inconvient P2P networks.
Metallica S&M would run over $20 on this. I'd rather pay the $16 for the CD and be able to burn it in the for4mat of my choice. (i.e. ogg)
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
This is wonderful news. I think this is what I wanted all along: good songs for a decent price. Seems like the record industry is finally coming to the point of realizing that people aren't out to rip the artists or the music labels off... just have a good deal for their music.
These are the good old days you'll be telling your children about. Make them worthwhile.
This might actually get me buying music again. I'm content with radio at the moment. But if I can get good songs w/o all the crap, especially at a decent price, this is good. Maybe the music industry should start looking at this as a main music model...
make it 25 cents a minute. Canadian!!! I can't afford 99 cents per track... That's like $18 a cd!!!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Why would I want to pay $0.99 when I can already burn songs for free?
Please God!
Please don't let them get Alf and Terry Bradshaw to do thier commercials.
I can't take that anymore Lord.
Metallica S&M would run over $20 on this.
Metallica's S&M CD is a 2 CD set. It retails for $25.
$ .99 * 21 songs = $20.79
You save $4.21!
neurostarI have two problems with this new service:
Their client, Rhapsody, is Windows only, and you can only burn
10 songs per month. Nice try, but lame.
EMusic, for that same price, lets you download fully unlocked standard MP3 files.
$9.95 a month gets you unlimited downloads - not an additional 99 cents per song. You can burn 'em and do anything you want with 'em.
Emusic a very underrated site, now that their big-advertising VC stuff has gone. Really wonderful. (NO I'm not affiliated.)
Also, you can apparently only burn 10 tracks a month (or about one CD per month).
Finding God in a Dog
i'm not the only person to make these points, but...
I've been waiting for this day. I will use this service.
Could the cold, dark days of crappy album filler finally be over?
yay!
RTFM; please, I beg you.
So I'm confused how this works. Is a customer to look at their catalog, decide which songs they want to purchase, select those songs, and then a cd is sent to them that have those custom-selected songs burned on them already (at $.99 / song)? Or is this a situation where if you purchase the songs you get some sort of portable file sent to you over the net? If it is the latter, I wonder what encoding scheme they are using...mp3, wma, ogg? The article was a little low on details.
These aren't exactly the best prices I've ever seen on tracks, but it is nice that one can have the opportunity to only get the tracks they want. I think this is definitely a step in the right direction.
I drink to prepare for a fight; tonight I'm very prepared. -Soda Popinksi
At $20 bucks a cd its still more than a lot of people are willing to pay. I'd be willing to pay $5 cdn for a cd. Even before the mp3 revolution i rarely bought anything.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Do you need to subscribe to one of their monthly plans first? This could cost you an additional 9.95/mo or 4.95/mo depending on the package they make you buy. $0.99 per track doesn't seem like such a good price anymore...
Need a website host? Try out http://WebQualityHost.net
run a cable from the out of one sound card to the in of another and then record and you can record all day if you want to.
There is nothing that they can do to stop it.
And if you're going to argue with me, you have to own up to at least two CDs you bought "with only one or two good songs"...so that we can make fun of you. :)
it won't be necessary to pay for songs that are just "album filler".
Wohoo... A free for all on backstreet boys and westlife.
Maybe they should just say "you wont have to pay for any bands that routinely wear sweaters, match their shoes with their hats, and / or have 3 or more members that don't actually play an instrument."
This requires Windows. So, when Version 2.0 comes out and requires a Palladium-enabled version of Windows, how exactly will this be a good thing? Not to mention they've replaced standardized components with their own. What will happen when this software starts burning special copy-protected CDs only and your CD-R reaches the end of its lifespan?
I'd better not hear one peep out of the Slashdot crowd on this one. All anyone ever says on here is "well, I would buy the songs if they were cheap and by the track so I didn't have to buy a whole album". Put up or shut time, /. Most of the posts I've seen so far have been either "they had better let indie artists do it too" or "they don't have anything I want".
Personally, it's nice to own the music I listen to, and if this makes it so I get the songs I want for $15 on one cd rather than for $225 on 15 cds, great. Now, the article seems rather slim on the facts in this case, but I would hope that (a.) the music is in a machine readable format (not copy-protected), or (b.) available in MP3 or some other open format as well.
"What we elect to call imagination is mere combination of things not heretofore combined." - Frank Norris
I doubt it. Likely, there are a clever people at Listen.com that marketed this out of Warner Bros and friends, but will have no effect on the RIAA and MPAA's attempts to take over the world Pinky!
They dropped the price down to something really cheap. $0.20/track or so would be enough to make me stop downloading MP3s, since I'd be paying for the convienience of getting a song I *know* is high quality without having to scour the filesharing networks for a good copy. They may argue $0.20/track is way too cheap, but they need to realize they're actually selling digital media that can be copied numerous times. They're not losing much at all. If anything, they'd be tapping into a market they've not had very much luck with in the past.
However, I must say the $0.99/track thing is a step in the right direction regardless.
If I pay $.99 per track on a 13 song Nsync CD, that is still kinda steep. Furthermore, I would want to know what kind of Nsync coverart/sleeve I will be receiving.
Why $0.99 per song? That seems excessively high to me. I mean, most new CDs here with, say, ten songs on them sell for $14 Canadian (around $8.50 U.S.) while even non-new CDs rarely retail over $17 (about $10.50). It seems to me that this company doesn't provide the same nice CD inserts and the like so really, shouldn't they be charging less? Also, I am assuming they provide you with the uncompressed music burnt onto a custom CD for you. If it is MP3 and/or you download it yourself, $0.20 or so seems more reasonable. And yes, I would pay that. Perhaps a little more, say $0.25 or $0.30, for uncompressed music burnt or pressed onto a CD and sent to you.
Secondly, how much of this money goes to the artist? On the assumption that $1.00 of each regular CD goes to the artist, I would expect to see about $0.10 from each track be paid directly to the artist. Yes, that's while I'm paying approximately $0.20 per track. I don't want to pay per track if the artist simply will not see any revenue whatsoever from this. At least if I buy a CD, there's a chance the artist will see some profit from me.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
It sounds so good, then I see the details.
A dollar per track is a bit high, but I would certainly be interested in buying some tracks for that price. However, that price is "in addition to paying a monthly subscription fee of $9.95." I can't imagine buying more than ten songs per month. Once that's worked in we're up to two dollars per track. Two dollars? Too much.
Furthermore, I expect that this new functionality will be available through their proprietary software. I don't want to deal with your unknown software (even if it did run under my primary operating system: Linux). I want to open a account with some money, then download songs off your web site until my account is empty. Nice and simple. Do it for one dollar per song and I'll very occasionally use it for catchy tunes. Do it for fifty cents and I'll regularly use it. Do it for twenty five cents and I'll make heavy use it, regularly buying music on a whim.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Here's the upside: say ~$14.00 for 14 tracks of stuff you like as opposed to ~$18.00 for 2 tracks you like and 12 you don't. So that's a greater than 11-fold increase of ROI.
This sounds like a step in the right direction. It is the kind of music pricing/distribution paradigm that makes the most sense to me. I only hope that this can also lower the barrior for new artists. If they will give new artists a chance on their web site it could decrease the power of the record companies.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
yep. i just downloaded another gig from emusic today.
at emusic you truely get what you pay for. unlimited downloads for a flat monthly fee. they are all in 128kbit/sec mp3 format. ie: not really CD quality but plenty for most uses. (and if i want full quality on anything i can always bend over and get the CD)
How can they possibly control what I burn? Do they come into my house and install a coin slot on my CD-R drive?
The company also plans on introducing a service allowing you to brew coffee for only 30 cents a cup.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Nice concept... but may not fly outside of the US. Say, 15 tracks would cost $30.00 NZD (New Zealand). You can buy the whole CD for cheaper than that.
Since the cost of a major label making an entire CD is only 80 cents, it's a deal!
Yeah, slightly sarcastic. Now I can have people explain the costs of actually making and marketing a record. And the costs of distribution. Then someone can say the record only costs a major label 79 cents, and then someone can say, "No, it's 72 cents", and then an arguement over that...
Nevermind. Pretend I didn't hit submit.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
$.99 a song? That's great! For a CD with 15 songs, why that's only ... $15 ...
Hey, wait a minute!
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
Add cost of the two CDs, and the box... and remember you do not get book. It is same price than in the shop, maybe more, if you count quality issues.
In order to register for Rhapsody, you must use one of the following browsers:
* Internet Explorer 5.0, or newer
* Netscape 6.0, or newer
(Please note: In order to use Rhapsody, you will need Internet Explorer 5.0 or newer.)
Oh well.
As a few people have already mentioned this; when is the record industry going to realize that the product they are trying to sell isn't worth the money when compared to other items you can buy.
...
For example, on Amazon.com you can buy Mariah Carey's Glitter cd for 13.28
Even if you're a die hard Mariah fan, there are really only one or two tracks that made it onto the charts. Not to mention that two of the songs on the CD are the same, where one is just a remix.
Compare this to the The Lord of the Rings for 17.97.
Hrm.. a cd that probably was thrown together in a month [free nervous break down included] compared to a movie, like LOTR, which I won't even begin to comment on how magnificiently it was created.
Add in the fact that it would take about 10 minutes to download and create your own glitter cd for free. Unless you're buying this as a gift, most people would just download the one or two popular songs and be done with it. Currently, it's a huge pain in the ass to download avi files. It's easier just to buy the dvd.
Anyways, the worst part about this post is now Amazon is reminding me on the left hand side that I looked at the Glitter cd. If it starts recommending
Live web cams
[trying to sign up for trial] "Please upgrade your browser. In order to register for Rhapsody, you must use one of the following browsers: Internet Explorer 5.0, or newer Netscape 6.0, or newer (Please note: In order to use Rhapsody, you will need Internet Explorer 5.0 or newer.) Get the latest version of Internet Explorer Get the latest version of Netscape"
According to their website, these guys are distributing music from .MP3 format -- they use lossy compression, which devastates the quality of the audio.
If you want to see how bad the loss is, load up CoolEdit or Audacity and view your mp3s under "Spectrum View" with a range up to 22050 -- I promise that just everything above 16000 will be missing and black, though the original CD audio will have all that quality intact. It's what gives MP3s their "flat" sound on any decent equipment.
I know CDNow uses the original data for their custom CDs, so just buy it from them.
Can I pay $.99 per track to burn a cd-r and then sell it on ebay?
...because they don't want you to be able to make standard CDs. Then people would share subscriptions and just rip off the standardized CDs they made. They're waiting for the copy-protected CD burning component to be ready.
The upside of this, of course, is that it won't be necessary to pay for songs that are just "album filler".
The down side is that $8 punk album I just bought would cost $29.69 online.
They still don't get it
How is this going forward? I can walk to the record store and purchase a CD with 16 tracks for about $12 - cool case, cool cover, lyrics, everything.
Or, I can spend my time searching for the tracks I want, pay for my own blank CD, bandwidth, wear on my burner, and end up with a crappy copy (marked with a Sharpie, of course) and a few more files in my playlist for a few dollars MORE!
$10 for the month's subscription, plus $12 for 12 songs.. $22 for a 12-track mix tape, seems to me like not a *great* deal, but that's really not bad either since i get to pick what the 12 songs are. I'd almost be inclined to say they "get" it. In fact, i'd be inclined to say, "yeah, i'll pay for that."
Except, oops, it looks like you have to have windows in order to do any of this stuff. I don't own windows, just this macintosh. My college does have some WindowsXP labs with CD-Rs drives, but the since the user-permissions policies here are currently in the process of changing i'm not sure if i'll actually be able to use their client there. And i do not feel like badgering one of my friends to let me take over their computer for a few hours each month so that i can compose and make for myself mix cds.
Looks like listen.com just lost a customer. Too bad they chose to tether their downloads to DRM technology.. then they wouldn't have to limit themselves to customers who use one software platform.
In the meantime, this emusic thingy that i found linked on this same slashdot forum looks *great*. Looks like i'll be taking my $9.99 over there instead..
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
It's just more for less. A step in the right direction, but still somewhat disappointing.
What do I mean?
It's simple. $0.99 for each song. That's in American dollars so for me that comes to around $2.00 each. Add it up and I'm paying the same as I would if I purchased a new release at the local retailer. This is based on the fact that if I look through my CD collection, they average around $25 - $30 each (new release), with an average of 10-15 songs.
If it's an old release, I'm paying more.
At the same time, the pressing and distribution costs for the distributor have substantially decreased. So it adds up to more profits for their bottom line.
Will that in turn mean more money for the artist? Somehow, I doubt it.
Not having to pay for the album fillers is about the ONLY benefit here I can see. Thing is, for most of the music that I buy, I really don't find to many of them.
Am I being pessimistic?
Its too bad all those P2P kids don't have credit cards, otherwise this would be a good idea.
this is bad. not good. for one simple reason - you are still getting hosed. $.99 is a rip off when you have to pay for the bandwidth, and the materials (blank cd) to make a single track usefull.
.... .99 .30 (guessing)
not to mention the only reason i use p2p is to find non-mainstream non-commercial stuff. if i wanted to listen to some friggin skinny blonde chick sing about her teenage crush i would go buy her CD ! i want indie artists and sampling.
if you dont own the CD how are you supposed to know what you want to download ? pay $.99 per track off the album plus for your bandwidth and the blank CD ? so
15 songs 15 x
1 blank cd 1 x 1.00 (guessing)
bandwidth
= $ 16.15 per CD.
wow that sounds like its STILL A FRIGGIN RIPOFF !
ill give them credit when they come up with a better soulution for ME ! the CUSTOMER. NOT THEM the EVIL MEGA-CORP.
although i will give them credit for trying. albiet a shitty attempt.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
I will never pay a single dime for crippled formats.
314-15-9265
Read the FAQs. This is horrible. You can't even burn one average-sized album onto a CD. Not to mention the proprietary CD burning component isn't available yet.
...but I will lament the lower circulation of "other" tracks. In my experience, there is usually a track or two on every album that are grossly underestimated by The Recording Industry(tm) and thus don't receive the advertising, airplay, or circulation that they deserve.
It used to be, once I got that album home to listen to, these provided a pleasant surprise, and often became some of my favorite tracks.
Now I (and I presume everyone else) will be significantly less likely to hear those tracks (because we'd have to pay for them before receiving, and are unlikely to have heard them through 'regular' channels) and even more excellent music may be lost to the common consciousness.
How do we know whether a song is "filler" or "underappreciated gem" until we hear it?
How do we hear it before we pay for it?
This is definitely a step in the right direction. The business model is going to need a few tweaks, however. There should be a "per album" price ($10?) that is never higher than the retail price. Some albums contain filler tracks (jokes, skits, etc.) that aren't worth a dollar each. Regardless, I would like to buy - some - entire albums without having to filter this stuff out beforehand.
Also, tracks for burning should be available a la carte. I should not have to pay $10 a month for the RIGHT to buy tracks at 99 cents each.
The CD burning implementation needs to be flexible and work well. Ideally, they should write a plugin for Nero, Easy CD Creator and whatever you Linux guys use to burn CDs. You would download the track in some protected format and then burn it from your local machine. You cannot stream a track over the Internet while burning it. It just won't work.
i guess it works if i happen to be a fan of brittney spears, shakira, blink-182 or what other crapstar of the moment the RIAA happens to be hawking. too bad.
it sure would be nice to put together a frontline assembly mix without all those damned remixes! (damn you bill leeb, and your little sequencer too!!!)
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
After reading the title of this story, my first thought was that RIAA was actually gonna pay us to burn music (as in fire), and pay us 1 dollar to do it! Now wont that be cool?
From your comment, "most new CDs here...sell for $14 Canadian (around $8.50 U.S.) while even non-new CDs rarely retail over $17 (about $10.50)"
In the States, we call non-new stuff...ummm...used, and it's usually cheaper than new stuff. Have I been confused all these years? Or are you talking that new release CDs are cheaper than the older releases?
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
The upside of this, of course, is that it won't be necessary to pay for songs that are just "album filler".
Man I really wish that they had this option when I made the mistake of buying a Deadeye Dick album (you know, the one with Mary Moon from the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack). That album sucked. It was a novelty song followed by 12 horrible, rip your ears off, puke on you cat, smack your balls "album filler".
Long story short, Listen.com could have saved me from ripping my ears off, puking on my cat and smacking my balls!
Where were you then you bastards?
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sure you get to cut the worthless songs but even then the prices match the store prices
The price matches, but the quality I can get for a given price increases dramatically. When I go to Best Buy and plunk down my hard-earned 13 USD for an album with 13 songs on it, I want 13 songs I like, not three. The way I see it, these CDs will be four times cheaper than[1] the CDs I can buy at Best Buy.
[1] Pedants: "Cheapness" here refers to the number of discs I can afford with a given amount of money. Thus, "Four times cheaper than" means "one-fourth as expensive as".
This is not far enough a benefit to make it a sustainable venture.
How can you be sure that four times cheaper for the average fan of oldies singles isn't enough of a benefit?
Will I retire or break 10K?
My gut instinct was to say "nonsense, still way too expensive," but I think this is a step in the right direction (but still nonsense).
...true, this will allow users to eliminate filler content but -- and here is the problem -- it still won't encourage musical exploration. In other words, I can dive right into all the genres I want via [insert your favorite p2p program here] and dig a bit deeper for those I decide I like. A buck per song doesn't even come close to the impulse buying pricepoint that is the pivot for a lot of people.
...again, too little too late, but who knows. Maybe, just MAYBE they're getting a clue.
The problem is
Give me a mechanism to download all the music I want for free and make tracks I keep longer than 48 hours cost 20-40 cents and I'd probably never touch Kazaa again.
By and large this is pure gravy for the artists and labels since it is very, very likely that even without any p2p client available to me, I'd never have purchased that album. No packaging, no distribution, less marketing. Pure profit.
So
My
Limekiller
For $0.99, I want .wav files. That way I can burn or format in whatever format I please. And, I don't have a Windows box.... Guess that's a problem?
And, they can take that to the bank.
After checking out listen.com and the article the into is very deceptive. You can't just pop off $0.99 and download an mp3. You have to sign up for a $9.95 /mo plan and *use their "rhapsody" software* which looks to be windows only and *then* pay $0.99 on top of that for every track you want. Hardly worth it.
-- iCEBaLM
allows CD burning you can burn UP TO 10 tracks a month !!! This is no better than any of the other offers. There is no further understanding of the medium or compromise, just more of the same crap with a different description.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
> The upside of this, of course,
:)
> is that it won't be necessary to pay for songs
> that are just "album filler".
Seriously, any fan wants the whole album,
*IF* that fan is a fan of some decent band
and not some lame album filler band.
A proper album has no "fillers".
It looks like MS has the full DRM module ready.
Sigs are bad for your health.
I'm wondering what stops someone from doing this exact same thing for 1/5th of the price from a country that does not respect the United States intellectual properties laws.
My
Limekiller
I did some figuring out of curiosity ....
From a price point of view that's about $120/yr so you can burn songs for 99 cents a piece.
The average list price for a CD is US$18.98 including the tracks you want and don't want. Let's say about 10 songs per CD, then I'm paying $1.90 per song off the shelf. From the subscription service, if I purchase 10 songs per month then I will be paying $19.85 for that month (close to the same cost of a retail CD).
Consider that Amazon often discounts CDs. On average an Amazon CD will cost about $14.99 ($1.50 per song based on 10 songs). In this case you only have to burn 5 songs per month to make up the equivalent off-the-shelf Amazon price. Not bad.
Of course the more you burn per month (beyond these numbers) the more money you save compared to shelf prices.
And you can't beat the listenting pleasure of hand-picked music. That's worth a whole lot more.
As of Monday, more than 75,000 tracks will be available for burning for 99 cents per track...
Perhaps we should wait and see how the website gets updated then - I would hope that the 10 songs per month limit is removed in place of a per-per-download. Plus I would only use it if you could do a proper download - none of this burn straight to CD nonsense.
Maybe the somebody will kindly duplicate this post on Monday (surely not) and we can all take another look.
Sorry if this has already been posted, but with the /. search function being bust , it makes it tricky to check!
Sure, less than a buck a song sounds good...UNTIL...
:
You realise it'll take you 20 bucks to burn one CD's worth - ie. 20 Mp3s, which won't fill up a CD - so now, for one Mp3 CD which can hold, say 100 songs at a conservative estimate, you're paying 100 bucks! Think about that.
The idea, however, is good. It gives the customer a little more choice. The price, however, is NOT. This is not an example of businesses meeting the customer...it's an example of businesses MILKING the customer. Wait, don't flame me yet - I have justification
The recording studios are already charging say...between $14 and $18 for an audio CD - we're talking uncompressed, high-quality music.
Now, they want me to shell out more for something that is of lower quality? I'm sorry, but this sucks. Also, what about copyright information embedded in the Mp3? I bet there'll be some. Or even water-marking perhaps. Do I, as a customer, have control of that? I don't think so.
Give me the same thing for about 50 cents a song with the choice of what format i want it and I might consider it. After all, this is lower quality audio that won't sound better no matter what i do since it is lossy compression in the first place.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
I *still* like my nice packaging and nice looking CDs, rather than a CDR with "Bob the Box - I Like Potatoes" or whatever written on it with a Sharpie.
;) )
Also, as other people have commented, the whole "album filler" thing seems a bit off to me. In general, my CDs have one or two songs I don't like, or even songs that suck, but those are the minority.. I don't get the "one song rocks, everything else sucks" thing.
And even if you could weed out the songs that suck, how would you know which ones suck and which ones don't, unless you already know them? Many times the best songs are the ones that hit me suddenly after weeks or months or years of having the album, and never really noticing it before, and suddenly, bam, wow, that song rocks, why didn't I notice it before?
well, that's just my 2 lire (I don't presume to think that my opinions are worth as much as $0.02..
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
If they didn't charge a monthly fee and just let you throw $20 into an account and let you download until you ran out of money and only charged $0.10 a track and you could download mp3s and politicians started telling the truth and if I could walk outside my house or turn on the tv and not get bombarded with advertising and if greed wasn't everyone's sole motivator and if the US (my homeland) stopped pissing on everyone else in the world then I would use their service.
If they accomplished everything before I started ranting and raving about stupid shit that no one really cares about, I would use their service.
LoRider
Can someone provide a breakdown of that 99 cents, and what goes where? I'd rather use a service that interfaces directly with the artists, so that the artists get to keep 80 of those 99 cents. If a few major musicians band together and create something like that, many more will follow. Janis Ian are you listening? The catch is that the artists who have already signed their rights away to the labels in perpetuity will never have this option. The most often heard piece of advice for new artists negotiating contracts is "get a lawyer!"
--Mike
I thought this was a great idea at first but they lost me with the PC-only thing, and as for proprietary software - I'd really prefer to have a choice about that.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
...the files aren't archived as MP3s on the production side. That would blow. Or suck.
The primary reason I buy CDs is because most MP3s sound like crap because 1) the idiot ripping them doesn't know what settings to use or 2) data corruption somehow got into the bitstream (manifesting itself as the dreaded hiccup.) Last thing I want to do is shell out $10 for a CD with a swishy sound that sounds like it's drunk.
Has anyone used these services? Do they encode at 128kbps or something higher? I'm hoping it's at least 256kbps or the quality just isn't close enough to a CD. Of course, for portable MP3 players, it might be nice to be able to lower the bit rate if you feel like it, to keep the file size reasonable. Do these services allow that?
Until the record companies get serious about on-line music and begin to understand what people really want to do with music, this won't work. Where did this $1 per song come from? It's not even competitive with a CD with more songs, cool artwork, built in convenience, etc. The problem is that the record companies don't want to hurt their current channels of distribution - which they have a strangle hold on. There is plenty of room to drop prices for on-line music. Consider a $20 CD. It's likely been through two tiers of distribution, each making a keystone markup. This would mean that the distributor price is about $5. This is what the record company would have to stream the CD for, with everything else being equal, to make the same wild profits that it makes now. I would bet that the transaction costs and bandwidth costs could easily be lower than the production and distribution costs of CDs. So why don't they want to make this happen? Because they already own the current market. Because someone else could easily undercut them at this game. Because they haven't figured out a way to guarantee their dominance in this market...Plus the CD retailers would throw a fit.
if and when Palladium and trusted security prevents the average non-techie home Windows user from burning his or her own CDs
And that's a big if, to which the answer is "probably not." Microsoft has repeatedly stated that Palladium will not interfere with any applications that don't know anything about Palladium, such as CDex or CDRDAO. The only way your scenario will play out is if a future version of Windows places CD audio extraction and recording into a Palladium vault, which I don't see as likely to happen given the big stink that users raised about CD writing software not working with Windows XP. Microsoft doesn't want another black eye.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm happily pay for music (or movies or tv shows or books) I might download, but the details have to be acceptable.
These aren't difficult requirements to meet it seems to me, except by panicy and sluggish business entities that can't read the writing on the wall.
--
bachiatari na torisetsu o yome!
Wrong!
There's no information on Listen's site about Rhapsody 2.0, which will feature burning. The FAQ you list applies to their current service, specifically the Naxos Classical subscription.
The new service will have no DRM, and you will be able to buy as many tracks as you want at 99 cents each. The interesting thing is that they are going to stream PCM audio directly to the burner. So, DRM won't be the issue, buffer underruns will be when their streaming servers can't keep up with your CD player!
It's my belief that sites like Listen.com are set up to fail, not succeed. The Record Companies don't want them to become popular and profitable. They want to see the use of P2P outlast them. Why?
This way they can cry, "We tried offering a way for people to get music online, but they STILL don't want to pay! Please help us out with more restrictive legislation to punish these evil pirates!" Their real goal is to get complete control over their product, and destroy any fair use rights that you have left.
Remember how to boil a frog.
Finally the artist will get their royalites and users will get inexpensive music. It's a win-win situation.
One "set charge per track" will break in a lot of ways.
Yeah, but it's the law. In the USA, a songwriter gets a fixed 8 cent cut per song five minutes or less in duration. (The royalty increases with the duration of the composition.) The songwriter typically splits the royalties 50/50 with a publisher, meaning that on a typical album with twelve songs, the songwriter gets just under half a buck a disc.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Is it just me, or are there devious motives behind this? I can just see it now...
RIAA "well, your honor, the defendents' primary argument for the use of illegal programs such as kazaa was that it was more convenient to download than to buy CD's. But look, we've provided them with an option to pay for the songs, and suddenly, no one seems so willing to pay for them. This PROVES Kazaa et al are helping criminals thrive!"
As you say. They are cutting their costs of distribution dramatically, eliminating the cost of manufacturing, and offering a marginally less useful product (you have to invest time and a blank if you want it on disc)... all for the same price as before!
It would probably be more profitable in pure economics to offer a lower price, but my guess is that they want to limit as much as possible the tendancy for the net to allow people to download lots of music from a wide variety of artists. They'd prefer to encourage the consumer habit of buying few higher-priced tracks rather than sampling everything including their competition.
I'll stay away. Their competition is already offering a much better deal (ie emusic.com).
Or the music industry could stop pushing 1-hit-wonders at us, and make a killing by signing *real* professional musicians (like the Dave Matthews Band for instance) who make far more money by touring than selling albums; these instead of Miss Britany, who in reality can't sing to save her life.
Until then, I'll just continue to D/L and burn that one catchy song that from an album that cost RIAA members a fortune to engineer and produce, and they'll make no money from me.
I think it's going to be the latter for a good long time, though I look forward to the day it's the former.
Is this for real? I'm sorry I have trouble believing it! Are record companies actually acting smart and reasonable? What next? MTV playing GOOD music?
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Oh boy, I can see it now. They'll disable the songs that people actually want to hear and let you burn the CD fillers. Yay!
This is so confusing, how does it work. Do they charge you when you download? They said burn.
.99 on my credit card. Why not just get it for free on one of the music sharing networks, who would ever pay for a service like this.
.99?
I would hate to have so many little charges of
Althought if the song was not availible I could download a bunch, and then put them online myself. How do they prevent me from doing that.
Or, I could rip a CD and sell access to a password protected sight with all of the MP3's do you think this would work?
Do the artists get paid a percentage of the
Just Curious
1) the FAQ is OLD. We're launching on Monday with what we call "a la carte" CD burning. This means you can burn as many CDs as you want. No monthly restrictions, no restrictions at all.
2) The audio format on the CD is regular redbook audio. No DRMs, no restrictions. They're yours after you pay the $.99
3) If you want to check out Rhapsody without paying, just register and download it if you want to see the artist list. You can listen to 30 second clips and a selection of radio stations without paying us.
(remember that this is not released yet. wait 'til next week. ok, back to QA...gotta burn me some CDs ;)
I checked the site out... I couldn't actually find a search function. Sure I can browse... but not my idea of fun. -- I'm sure you get the search feature after you register... but requiring people to register to even see what content is offered is not a good idea.
I'm very lazy... I'm also the common man on the internet.
I am Jack's HTTP Server
make it a dollar per track, but I'm licensed to use that track for my entire lifetime, in whatever current music format is popular, that way I don't have to re-buy the song for my 8-track, cassette, LP and MP3 players.
That's what the current model does. A 10-track disc costs $10, and under the Betamax precedent, you can copy it to whatever writable medium is popular at any time.
let me mix and burn my own music without the need of my own PC
Mix your own music without a PC? How are you supposed to do beat-matched crossfaded transitions between songs? Yes, I do that on my own mix discs, even of rock music.
And why does a CD with one hour of audio (which cost thousands of dollars to produce) cost as much as a DVD
A soundtrack album (or any other CD for that matter) is as expensive as the movie because unlike the movie, you can play an CD in your car, in the kitchen, in your pocket player while jogging. Unlike a movie, a recording doesn't demand your full attention. Thus, you play it more often.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why would one want to use this service when you can get mp3's and burn'em for free within minutes?
I give up!!!
You kids are killing me. For ages you have been complaining about not beeing able to do this or not beeing able to do that. Finally when the industry puts out a model where you can actually buy the music YOU like, for a given price (we can ofcourse discuss if it should be 99 cents or 90 cents or 80...), you all start screaming "Bloody Murder!"
What will the industry have to do to satisfy you whiners? Pay you to download and burn a track to CD?
I'm getting sick and tired of your downright stupid comments. Give the industry a chance, give them feed-back. Say that 99 cents is too much, but don't expect them to give away the music for free. They are not in the P2P busines, but in the music business to MAKE money, not for charity.
If you can't afford to buy music by paying 99 cents a track, get an education, then get a job that pays you enough to download the music. Personally, I have no problems paying the charge, $20 is less than what I make an hour after taxes and other deductions.
Get a life, get a jobe! Pay for the stuff you enjoy, don't steal!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Incite and insight are two different words
Grandparent AC knew this. The word "Inciteful" is supposed to mean "likely to incite a hot argument", that is, flamebait.
See also my analysis of Slashdot's comment moderation adjectives.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Welcome to the future. They aren't even selling you the music anymore. They're selling you a proprietary DRM format that can only play on a computer--with the option of paying extra to burn 10 tracks (per Month!!) to a CD. (I wonder if it will even be a normal mp3 or audio CD. Maybe they'll just stick their proprietary format and player on the CD.)
A couple of years from now, the new plan will be to only let you listen to it 3 times before you have to buy it again or some such.
Goddamn, doesn't anyone realize that a system that sold tracks for 25 cents a piece in whatever format you wanted would make a ton of money? The worries about piracy in that sort of system are completely irrational. But then anybody could do it...and no control for the big boys is just intolerable I guess.
How this got modded to a 5 is a mystery to me. Modern music naturally comes in song form, not album. Am I to understand that you deliberately ignore songs that you like unless they're accompanied by 10-15 others that are of equal quality? Good luck with that. Some of my favorite songs come from one hit wonders, and I think they deserve some remuneration for their contribution to my happiness.
If they supported my iPod, and I was even forced to download directly to the iPod and not even keep a copy of it on the computer, I'd be very happy.
Don't they realize that the people who will sign up for this service are the cutting edge music-listeners, the ones that will probably own an mp3 player and not a discman for their portable music needs?
This sounds like a step in the right direction, but we still have the middleman (the record company). I'm still waiting for a system that pays the artists, not the buisness folk who want every last penny they can squeeze out of me.
...is something that I would pay for. The idea of being able to pay for music that I would enjoy is very appealing to me. My main reason for not buying a CD is that I have to pay for one or two songs that I would actually enjoy listening to as well as eighteen or nineteen that I would never listen to in my life.
Some people have commented that $0.99 per song is too much to pay, but I think that's preopsterous! Compare $0.99 per enjoyable song to $10.00 per enjoyable song (assuming that you like two songs on the disc you purchase).
Although I'm sorry to say it, however, I don't think I would pay even for this, good idea though it is. The reason for that is simply that I have very fickle taste in music... my $10 or $20 investment might, in as little time as a month, seem completely foolish to me.
What strikes me as most interesting is that the record labels were willing to work with this site on this issue. They must be getting rather desperate for any money they can get. Food for thought, eh?
A separate 9.95 buys you unlimited listening of the entire Naxos library of classical recordings plus the ability to burn 10 of them per month onto CDs (is that where the 99 cents number comes from 9.95/10?). Anyway once you are talking about classical 10 per month is a lot (would the entire 70 minute 9th symphony of Beethoven count as one song? If so it is a steal)
Anyhow from some of the posts here it is clear that some folks just want something for nothing and are able to go to some twisted rationalizations to justify it.
but the monthly subscription fees as well, of 9.95. This according to the PR Guy from Listen.Com (Matt Graves) on the Pho List..
First, you must be subscribed to the Rhapsody "All Access" plan ($9.95/month) to purchase and burn tracks; people that aren't subscribed will not be able to purchase & burn tracks.
There is unlimited burning allowed at 99 cents per...but the catalog is quite limited, only 75,000 tracks..
Put up or shut time, /.
OK, so each disc costs $10, but because of the platform limitations of the client software, the first one you buy costs at least $299 + $10.
Will I retire or break 10K?
They may argue $0.20/track is way too cheap
Because it is. In the United States, the songwriter is guaranteed at least 8 cents per track. That's 40 percent of your target price point right there.
Will I retire or break 10K?
$0.99 is at least three or four times too much, and proprietary windows-only client software is inexcusably stupid.
Who is that "you" you're addressing? You're personifying a rather diverse group of people as this stereotypical whining mp3-downloading geek. Do you work in marketing or something?
I too could afford to pay $20 per album... but since it'd be idiotic to pay that much, I won't make a habit of it. Certainly not when they expect me to burn the discs myself. And certainly not when emusic.com has already shown us that this sort of thing CAN be done well, and for a much lower price.
The maximum price I will pay is 25 cents and I want the songs in OGG or MP3 format.... no DRM bullshit (ie: Windows Media format).
do about it?
And the baby ain't f***n white, either! I f***ed the lead singer of POD's huge black c**k till my c**t nearly fell out, and he c***ed inside me with no f***in' condom!
Papa don't preach, cause I'm keeping my baby!
I've found for my type of music they tend to detect the BPM at half the value it should
Which, for the record, does not affect the beat matching, as matching one beat of one song to two beats of the next song (e.g. a 90 bpm slow rock song to a 180 bpm speed-metal song) can be made to sound quite nice. But anyway, misdetection of tempo isn't much of a problem in kiosks, as the xml file that holds artist, title, price, etc. can also hold time-signature and tempo terms.
There's no reason [that digital beat matching] technology can't be integrated into a kiosk.
Other than that the record labels aren't smart enough to want to provide that functionality for those who demand more from their mix discs. <roleplay role="record label executive">If catering to the "three second gap between songs" crowd is enough to turn a decent profit, why add more features?</roleplay>
I can [space- and format-shift the music on] a DVD.
But can you do it for songs for which the band has not released a music video? And, for movie soundtracks, can you remove the dialogue when the actors speak over the soundtrack?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm not sure about buying tracks yet, but I've been using listen.com's streaming service for a while now. It's really handy to find nearly any song you want and stream it instantly or an entire album without worrying about the quality, the P2P search hassles, etc. Along with that you can build custom radio stations from your own artist selections (and it adds in ones it thinks you'll like) and pre-built streaming stations. Better than listening to the radio IMHO.
You are absolutely right in saying that the record companies are not in the charity business. But, they aren't in the music business either. They are dead weight. Outlived. Dinosaurs. They are trying their damndest to carve out a job for themselves.
But, the truth is that we (the listeners and creators) of music don't need them any more. They are just trying real hard to be the middleman. I won't support their hair-brained schemes.
Some guy in the 1890's used to have the market cornered for buggy-whips. But, he was no longer needed and his source of income disappeared. The record companies (as they exist now) will be gone before you know it!
I buy music. I support local bands. And, I support artists who allow me to sample their music in non-proprietary formats (like OGG or MP3). And, I buy music from artists who sell directly. There is no need for me to give my money to the RIAA.
Okay, that song you've been toying with a bit gets recorded. Its ok, not ideal. But if you spend another week in the studio, you're paying even MORE for the time and your contract says this will be ready to be mastered by next week.
You're not proud of it, but it's good enough to slide in between tracks 6 and 8.
It happens. Really.
Bad is when you have 4 - 6 songs like that.
The grateful dead cut side two of an album up into several tracks to meet warner brothers contracts requiring "n tracks" per album.
Music and law meld as well as music and big business.
Don't know why anybody should get excited about this. Unless, of course you want to beat them over
the head to support "the rest of us".
Nuff said.
Why?
Cause there was something like 1 CD burning plant in the hemisphere. Costs were high. Understood.
Since then (1984?) costs have plunged. The entire cost of the CD, case, liner notes, etc. is around $0.80. Art work might be a little more, but CD's are too small to really have good art.
So record companies rake it in. Artists don't get any more money with the overhead being down, they just bend over and hope the record companies have KY.
Now the companies want to remove the case, the artwork, and everything but the raw bits from the equation. Yeah, someone pays for bandwidth. 1 cost after the master is burned.
And the prices are higher per song that most CDs.
F*ck that. Give me a decent indie band and I'll Paypal them a quarter per song and the artists will make far more money per song than they would in the "big leagues".
I'd also do the micropayment model that's been around:
Everytime I listen to a song, the artist gets 1/4 cent from me.
When my account is dry, I can't listen to the song anymore.
Hows that?
I like the concept of EMusic a lot - in fact, I was very tempted, until I noticed they only provide 128kbps MP3s.
Maybe I'm being pedantic (maybe I'm just lucky to have good ears), but 128k mp3 is _not_ "CD Quality". In fact, sometimes its not even listenable (to me - if I really want to hear something, I want to hear all of it, properly - not "most of it under 17khz, and an aliased mush on the top")
So its OK as a 'preview' service, but you're still going to have to fork out for a CD if you want quality versions of the music you like - and I think thats the way EMusic intended it.
The problem I have with this is that the record industry feels that if you buy a CD track by track, you should end up paying the same as you would if you went to the store and bought the cd.
Online distro should be and is cheaper than printing and distributing regular CDs, so consumers should see that savings also.
I mean theres no way I'd pay $1 a track for a 24 track techno cd.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
You acknowledge that Listen may issue upgraded versions ... from time to time, and may automatically electronically upgrade the version of the Application that you are using on your computer. You consent to such automatic upgrading, and agree that this Agreement (as amended from time to time) will govern all such upgraded versions.
In effect, you agree at the time of initial installation of the software to all future installations of software from them. You are also bound to any and all future EULAs by agreeing to the first one, as borne out by:
13. Modification
Listen may modify this Agreement at any time in our sole discretion. A change of terms notice will be posted at the top of this Agreement located at [URL nuked], and we may also notify you by email in some instances.
Nice. They automatcially update your EULA, but reserve the right to not directly inform you about it -- it's up to you to periodically check in.
They might be getting some of the content distribution stuff right, but they're lousy on customer service ... and rights.
Ok, I've snapped. I can't stand hearing people
bitch about "having to pay $18 for a CD with only
two or three good songs, and the rest filler."
The solution to that problem is easy : Don't buy shitty music.
If you're buying the work of artists that are only capable of two or three 'good' songs on an album, that should be a hint that they suck.
Artists that suck are not deserving of your money. Do not give it to them. Yes, that means don't buy the damned album. As for the one you already bought -- sell it to someone with bad taste, or keep it as a reminder of your own formerly-bad taste.
I'm not even making assumptions as to what's good. This isn't even a RIAA vs. independent issue. There are shitty artists on both sides.
If an artist puts out a CD full of crap, blame the artist. If you buy that CD,blame yourself.
-DoctorBadass
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
So they're offering a CD for you to download and burn yourself for $12?
What a deal!
It seems to me that the reason they require this lame-ass proprietary client software which burns your tracks to CD is so you can't trade, share, or otherwise move the files around in any lossy-compressed digital format like MP3.
Ah, but they promise no restrictions at all! It's burned to standard audio-CD format and you can encode MP3s from that, so everyone seems to be asuming.
This misses the point - you'd have to use a loss-free codec to get any decent quality, no MP3s. Maybe they'll even purposefully use a codec that will sound terrible when re-encoded. You didn't really think they'd be using anything but some lossy format to transfer the data...?
Not that it matters - nobody's going to sign up at that price anyway.
"That's what the current model does. A 10-track disc costs $10..."
No it will cost you $20, becauase you can only burn 10 tracks per month. $1 per track plus $10 per month. They also have a $5 per month service, but the previews are only 30 second clips.
Ok, I tested the current version and was extremely impressed. The radio stations are customizable and they will implement unlimited burning in the next version I'm sold.
Only problem is, according to the FAQ the service is only available in the US. I wonder if this will change with the next version, and if not, when will it be available elsewhere?
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
Very promising, but will the new version be available to customers outside the US? If not, when will it be?
this is an Audio only DVD
Currently, there are very few DVD Audio titles (MLP lossless audio, with an alternate AC-3 track for DVD Video players), and they're just as expensive as CDs.
There's no reason you can't have a soundtrack track, and a soundtrack+speaking track, etc, etc.
Other than that the movie studio doesn't want to provide them but rather to sell you the soundtrack twice.
I'm really starting to hate all these continuous mix CDs that are coming out.
Tip: With one of those, try mixing into the middle of a song.
Will I retire or break 10K?
[An album] only has 3 songs
I find very few of these "singles" at Best Buy anymore, and most of them are the current Top 40. It's very difficult to track down non-pop or back-catalog singles in a brick-and-mortar store.
Will I retire or break 10K?
As others have said, if you're buying a CD that only has one or two good tracks, that the artist isn't worth investing in. What I find really funny is that every time you turn on the radio, you are bombarded with these same artists' one or two good tracks. Who needs to download them for $.99 and burn them when all you need is good ol' FM?
Or if you're really that needy, just buy the single for 3 bucks and get a B-side too.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think we all agree that a culture is defined by its arts, music, and literature. Why couldn't we come up with a system where all funding for the arts and music came from:
a) Tax dollars and/or
b) Private Donations / Sponsorships
- All movie theatres could turn into dollar shows, since the Hollywood ticket tax would be over.
- All cable/satellite channels would be FREE.
- All downloads of movies, music, and literature would be FREE
Statistics could be collected on downloads, movie theatre attendance, movie rentals, cable box feedback and then, the content providers would be paid their fair percentage quarterly based on eyeballs or earbrums. Finally, a true democratic approach to voting for content, with a socialist funding strategy. Just call me a centrist!
Think of the time, effort, and money that could be saved. The FBI wouldn't have to waste it's time on tracking down pirate distribution groups and could spend more time on real crime. Content providers would be encouraged to create both quantity and quality. The more you pumped out, the better your chances of getting a bigger piece of the pie. And lawyers, would have to go find something else to do with their time instead of threatening ISP's and P2P networks. There's always patent law.
All the useless middlemen would disappear (Bye Bye SONY), and money could go directly to content providers, except for movies which would still require a studio house. New copy protection technolgies wouldn't have to constantly be developed to protect media, and the global piracy business would be put out of business.
I am still not sure how to handle Software and Sporting events. Maybe Open Source will win out and sports will finally fade away, so NHl/NBA games will stop pre-empting "Enterprise's" time slot.
We can all see the current content delivery system is close to self self-destruction, but meanwhile we will all have to suffer with half-baked copy-protection and ill conceived laws.
We need some post-moderism in content creation, delivery, and royalty payments or it's going to be ugly for a long, long time.
More is better!
we'll forgive you.
Yaa! burn the rap!
You bend over that post tha'boy, I'll slip you some modernism...
RIAA and record execs: You want us to pay? Do this:
Make a list of everyone involved in the production. Artists, Mixers, Roadies, whatever. Estimate their costs, including cost of studio leasing, equipment. Add all this together. Add fair artist bonus for him / her to spend on bacchic pleasures, that he/she can continue to rock the Kasbah. DO NOT add any lawyering fees or your own coke habit to the tab. DO NOT add craft services, car services, gift baskets, personal assistants, psychiatrists, or groupies to the tab. Most importantly, DO NOT add promotion to the tab. I like to find my own music, through word of mouth and on the net.
Add two points above prime for your stockholders. Divide the sum by the number of expected patrons. (this is the tricky part, but you could've used the napster logs if you hadn't shut it down) THIS is your per user price. Show all your math. Make it public. Then host a pledge drive. If no one ponies up the cash, your artist is attracting an irresponsible and selfish crowd, and they can go without another studio release for a while. Put the artist on tour until he/she's got enough money to do another album, or has driven the demand of an album to such a fever pitch that the fans agree to chip in. If none of this works, you didn't have anything valuable to begin with.
emusic.com
deals with about 650 'second tier' labels.
if you like hiphop (which I do), they have lots of good shit. check it out.
I won't subscribe to any of the big label stuff until i can burn without minimums.
"Old man yells at systemd"
No wonder you posted as an AC.
The Betamax case says absolutely nothing about media-shifting, only time-shifting.
The Betamax case (Sony v. Universal) states in specific that time-shifting is not infringement. It also states in general that devices can have substantial non-infringing uses, as the Supreme Court outlined in what came to be called the "Betamax Test".
Now if you had mentioned the Diamond case, you might have a point.
Wasn't the Diamond case decided on the "Betamax Test" of substantial non-infringing use? But anyway, thanks for the pointer. Now I can use both Betamax and Diamond against those who try to argue anti-emulation and anti-homebrew positions.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's about time the recording industry pulled their archaic, collective, heads from their behinds and started looking at a money making venture for downloading instead of going after Napster clones.
Save the World! Use a Quote!
Everybody must already have a copy of their collection then. That aint shit. Most music lovers probably download that many tracks in a year or two.
And as for the "legality issue", well I don't think the majority buy that anymore and guess who makes the laws.
I'd call that incredibly doubtful. I don't think this new service is about pleasing customers as much as it's about adapting because they realize:
a) There's actually profit to made here.
b) If they don't adapt to the times right away, they're headed for serious trouble from musicians and consumers/art-lovers alike.
c) Impending financial doom.
To summarize, the record companies still don't give two ratshits about you, they're jumping onboard extremely late in the game to cover their own asses.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
Come on, what kind of music do you guys listen to? Britney Spears? There is no such thing as an
...) but you are (as always with ./) too focused on the nerd/laywer part of this. Music isn't technology or law, it's art. And don't forget that. That is still the reason while we're having this discussion.
"album filler" on serious albums. Are you forgetting that music is an art form? A very profitable art form perhaps, but still an art form. Singles, tracks that are supposed to draw our attention to an album, are often very different from the rest of the album, which often consists of music that one has to listen to a couple of times before you appreciate it, and I know for a fact that I wouldn't have discovered most of the bands I love today if I wouldn't have been forced to buy the album (today I always buy / download the entire album instead of just the song I liked).
Don't get me wrong - I don't like the music industry and it's evil sons (RIAA, DMCA,
Don't punish the artists for being successful.
Uhh, did everyone miss the fact that there's an additional charge of $9.95 for every month? 10 tracks for just under $10 doesn't sound so bad, but it actually costs me at least $19.85 for those 10 tracks. It costs me more than that, actually, if I don't find those 10 tracks I like within a single month. So this is just like Pressplay, where you have to subscribe to their service (which lets you listen to the music) before they will even sell you anything.
Methinks this is crap. 99 cents sounded good until I read about the required subscription.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
I am using myself http://www.weblisten.com/en for downloading (and burning) MP3'.s They offer +125.000 songs and you can download and burn as many songs as you can in one month time for about $25. Advantage is they offer most new albums. No, I am not working for them ;) I believe this company is located in Spain.
Regards, Ruud.
This still isn't good enough. Why? Oh, god, let me count the ways.
In conclusion, I'm sticking with the indies. Go, baby, go!
12. Is Rhapsody available outside the U.S.? Due to licensing restrictions, Rhapsody's on-demand music subscription service is available to U.S. residents only. However, anyone, regardless of his or her geographic location, can take advantage of our free radio stations, which feature professionally programmed stations. We are working on expanding our subscription service outside of the U.S. in the future.
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
Then just burn thigs like "Thick as a brick" from ethro Tull. 2 tracks giving 44 minutes of music.
Hell, Geezer Butler used to pull that one all the time. He'd tell all the chicks he wrote all the songs and made more money than all of us and that me and Tony were just his front men. Worked every time. It doesn't take much to fool someone when there zonked out on coke and Jack, now does it sweetie?
Now, what are you gonna do about it you bass-player f**king slut?
Maybe its not too late, to learn how to love, and forget how to hate.
Pardon me if I'm dumb, but how does the number of times I play a CD/DVD or the attention required to "enjoy" it affect the cost to produce it? I'm not sure I follow your logic, but would love to hear this explained.
RagManX
how does the number of times I play a CD/DVD or the attention required to "enjoy" it affect the cost to produce it?
It doesn't, but it does affect what you're willing to pay, that is, what you're willing to buy at any given price level (i.e. the "demand curve"), and that's all that matters to a monopolist. A monopolist computes the marginal revenue curve from the demand curve and then compares it against the marginal cost curve, and where they cross is the optimal price and quantity.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Good quality at an average price of 0.05$/minute.
Signatures are for stupids.
I'm not sure what you're hoping for. When I was a kid, 45's sold for $1. The hit song was on one side and a "throwaway" song was on the other side. Sometimes the "throwaway" song was good or even became a hit. Usually neither was the case.
Now, years later (more than I care to admit), they will sell you a digital copy of a song you want, delivered to your home, for $1 and that's too much money??? I really don't think so. You forget that albums used to be $5-6 simply due to quantity of songs reducing the price per song. Then they went up in price (and the format changed). Now you're back to singles. Same price (almost). That's not bad.
JimCan I burn Celine Dion for 99c? A nice big Bonfire.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I wonder if you can buy those 1-second long blank tracks they put at the end of the CD to fill up space before the secret song? Are they 99 cents too?
Why $0.99 per song? That seems excessively high to me.
.99 is about right; it follows the standard pricing rules of any other retail product.
.99.)
.99 is the starting point for music pricing. If the internet manages to break up the RIAA cartel, then that price should come down over time.
No,
Next time you go to your grocery store, take a calculator and go to the soda aisle. Notice that they have four sizes of Coke; a 3 liter bottle, a 2 liter, a 16 oz., and a 12 oz. can. With your calculator, you can see that the 2 liter costs a little more per ounce than the 3 liter; the 16 oz costs more than the 2 liter, and the 12 oz is the most expensive of all.
It's just standard pricing policy in retail that, as you break out a product into smaller units, you increase the price. Even beyond the increased packaging costs. It's not unusual for a manufacturer's smallest product units to be the most profitable.
Granted, you don't have the extra packaging and all to pay for with digital music, but consider that there is a lot of profit built into selling a whole album for $17; but if you only buy one song off an album of 10 songs, and price/profit remains constant, then the manufacturer has done the same amount of marketing for 1/10th the profit he used to get. He now needs to increase his marketing budget tenfold to get the same amount of sales he used to get. (Of course, even with this example, you're still getting a deal because 1/10th of the album should cost $1.70, and you're getting it for
Besdies,
By all means, give us the ability to make good mixed disks at home
This is what I'm concerned about. I'm afraid that such kiosks will put copy-cripple coding on any mix CDs they burn, and I won't be able to rip mix burn my own CD without going through the analog hole. But of course, if the CDs are up to spec, leaving short gaps between songs is the best policy.
Note the Traktor does BPM calculation and automatic sync'ing (if desired), a travesty according to my DJ'ing friends.
Those who consider semi-automatic synchronization of two recordings "a travesty" make buggy whips.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Macarania, Feelings, and 'Who let the dogs out?'
Bill me for the $2.97!
It's funny - laugh!
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
I have a sinking feeling this is not going to benefit the artists monetarily at all. The companies are probably going to say something like "Well, it's not the whole album, and it's not a single, it's BARC(Big-ass Record Company) sampler, so you don't really get royalties for it" or something equally lame...
Did you SEE those minimum requirements? Unknown quality levels and proprietary/rights controlled software aside, you just can't make a nice little music server out of left-overs with those minimums. I have a very nice little P133 with a AWE64 and 80gb in it. It serves and plays -r3mix quality rips quite nicely.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
But I also f***ed every single band member of Slipknot in a giant f***n gangbang orgy, so it might not be that n***er's baby... or it could have been 9 homeless guys, for all I know.
Even if the baby is a n***er, we're still going on f***n Maury Povich for some g****n paternity tests!
Papa don't preach, cause I'm keepin my baby!
As far as I can see, the service is $9.95 per month, allowing you to burn 10 songs per month. Yes, that comes to $ 0.99 (or with proper rounding $1.00) per song, but it does NOT allow me to buy/burn 100 songs this month and then buy none next month.
The only way to get 120 songs is to subscribe for a year and pay $9.95 the whole year.
Roger.
In reference to the parent:
No no no, everybody who has an MP3 is 'downloading communism'.
Don't give in to the Evil Empire, kiddies!
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
One thing people dont realize is how expensive it is to distribute *anything*. Food, books, cds. If labels only sold direct, they could sell each cd for under $9 and not lose a dime. If you don't believe me, go do some independant research (not influenced by any company of course). Or if you work in a store, you probably already know this. This is the reason why Amazon can come in and discount 30% off a book, then Buy.com can come in and discount 10% on top of that. This is why Dell can kick the crap out of HPaqs prices even as HPaq loses money. This listen.com service is unfortunately, overpriced. Should be closer to 50c a song.
This would be amusing if it's true and there's no reason to believe it's not until they prove otherwise. I bet just Warner alone --skip Universal-- can't come up with the entire archive it claims to legally represent.
e sa/Bluemoona rner Brothers Recordsa rner Music Internationaln esuch
Here's a partial list of the labels they hold.
The Atlantic Group
Atlantic Classics
Atlantic Jazz
Atlantic Nashville
Atlantic Theater
Big Beat
Blackground
Breaking
Curb
Igloo
Lava
M
Modern
1 43
Rhino Records
Elektra Entertainment Group
Elektra
EastWest
Asylum
Elektra/Sire
W
Warner Brothers
Warner Nashville
Warner Alliance
Warner Resound
Warner Sunset
Reprise
Reprise Nashville
American Recordings
Giant
Maverick
Revolution
Qwest
W
WEA Telegram
East West ZTT
Coalition
CGD East West
China
Continential
DRO East West
Erato
Fazer
Finlandia
Magneoton
MCM
No
Teldec
The assumption that all of these lables are well run operations with excellent archives is absurd if you're ever dealt with labels directly. What I'm getting at is that even if they did want to put what they claim is their legal property onto the net, they probably don't have a copy. They would need the users to fill it in for them. I know how it goes being an artist who relies on the fans to keep my archives. It's standard practice in the lazy real world despite what some computer nerd backup freak types might assume.
For what it's worth, I think copyright should be twenty years plus life if the artist keeps at least say ten percent of the profits and if they sell the rights wholely the transferred copyright should be capped at ten years max no extensions ever. And yeah I'm an artists that makes 100% of my income from selling my works to right holders, I make my living off of selling my works and a plan like this wouldn't hurt me a bit.
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