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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".
"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."
You know, a couple of years ago when this started to heat up, I would have been the first customer in line to use this service in order to prove that I'm willing to be legit about music. When they started doing things like proposing the SSSCA and accusing Apple of promoting piracy, they made me mad. So now my attitude is 'screw them'.
Am I being rational? Not really. Consider this my way of saying "I want the RIAA to apologize to Apple for their accusations, and to all of us legit consumers who were never given a chance to show their good will." I doubt that'll happen. Hopefully I'll grow up one day. heh.
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.
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
except now you're paying $1 a track, and a full cd will run you about $15-$20, so about the same it costs now... but you're providing the media, and doing the replication yourself. hmm now the price is the same, but now there's no packaging, no shipping, no reproduction costs, no nice art on the CD or case. Sounds to me like they've just figured out how to keep the cost the same and totally cut their overhead resulting in larger profits for RIAA. If it's costing that much less, why isn't that saving passed on to the consumer? It's not worth the price if you ask me! should be closer to $.25.
Good things never end "eum" they end in "MANIA" or "teria"
Yes, it's a model that adapts to modern times... But that's not why Warner and Universal have signed on. With CDRW drives all but standard with new computers and CD burning so popular, offering this (which is priced to compete with CDs, not CDRs) won't put an end to home CD burning. And they know it.
To me, it looks like these two giants are making a small investment now so that if and when Palladium and trusted security prevents the average non-techie home Windows user from burning his or her own CDs, Warner and Universal will have ready a business model and the associated infrastructure capable of filling the ensuing vacuum. Then it's just sit back and reap the rewards.
The angel in the oatmeal.
If the music industry wants my money, here's what they need to do. I want an online/kiosk service where I can choose from every song ever recorded, arrange them in the order I'd like them to appear on my CD, and pay 25-50 cents per track. The CD would either be burned on the spot at the kiosk, or delivered to me in the mail at home, complete with liner notes with all the lyrics for each song, and the option of including MPEGs of the applicable music videos so that I could watch them on my computer. There is not a single technological reason today why this couldn't be done, and I think most people would agree that it's a pretty reasonable business model. Heck, go one step farther, and 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. Let's also do away with the traditional album format of 3-4 good songs, and 10 songs of crap, let me mix and burn my own music without the need of my own PC, and give me something (liner notes, lyrics, videos, & cover art) that I can't easily produce on my own. And, while we're on the subject, why does a CD cost more than a cassette, though cassettes cost more for the record labels to produce? And why does a CD with one hour of audio (which cost thousands of dollars to produce) cost as much as a DVD, filled with several hours of video AND audio that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce? If the record companies and artists can't make a profit at the price I'm proposing, then they deserve to fail.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
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!
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.