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How Much Does it Cost to Produce a Recording?
An anonymous reader writes "How much does the average new album cost to produce? I have seen this cost estimated between $500,000 and $1,000,000, but some quick figuring does not support a cost this high. According to various sources (Ok, Slashdot stories...), somewhere around 27,000 albums are produced each year and 906.6 million albums are shipped. I would guess that the album retail (about $15 per album) is based on a 100% markup, so that these 906.6 million albums are sold at wholesale for about $7.50 apiece, which means that the revenue from wholesale sales is about $6.8 billion. This means that the actual production cost has to be less than $250,000 per album, otherwise the record industry is losing money. I have left out the cost of actually printing and copying the albums as I think that the average cost is probably less than $0.25 per copy."
It's only inevitable that Apple will own most, if not all, of the good production tools. They'll figure out a way to make them easier to use and who knows, maybe they'll eventually build custom boards for PowerMacs that can turn them into a MIDI controller.
On that note, the group most likely to keep Microsoft from dropping MacOffice is its stockholders. They don't see Apple as a threat, they see its userbase as a great source of revenue for a major stock in their portfolio. Unless revenues on MacOffice collapse, MS execs will be roasted if they drop it. All the while, Apple quietly builds up its portfolio of music/movie production tools.....
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I just wanted to say something about your sig... I don't know the context, so maybe I am misunderstanding it. It also grieves me to say it because I think the general public is clueless and I don't trust the opinions of other people until they have proven themselves, but public opinion should be the basis of law.
Public opinion, especially in the short term, is not a good basis for running a society. The Romans knew thisThat's (in theory at least) why there is a Constitution: no matter how expedient it might be, you can't vote to revoke a right given in the Constitution, those things aren't up for debate. Would revoking the "right to silence" make the War On Terrorism easier? Yes, probably, but in the grand scheme of things, it's too high a price to pay. The flaw at the heart of democracy is that you are free to vote in someone who then revokes the right to vote (this has happened many times in history, particularly in Latin America). Or, 51% of the population are able to vote to enslave the other 49%. Public opinion on September 12th would have had nukes raining on Kabul, but fortunately wiser heads prevailed.
Even in non-democratic societies, the problem exists. The Taliban came to power on a wave of popular support - the people loved them because they fought the Sovients but by the time they were in power it was too late.