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Evaluating a System for Selling and Delivering MP3s?
Dredd2Kad asks: "I'd really like Slashdot's opinion on this. I recently secured an MP3 distribution deal with an indie record label, and negotiations with other indie labels and artists are in the works. The music will be distributed through my internet radio station's website. As you know, if you can sell music in a format such as MP3 you eliminate the costs of packaging, shipping, handling. You do have to contend with bandwidth charges though. Most indie labels and artists seem happy to pass along the savings to customers and stimulate sales. What I have built is simple and functional. We are trying to add value to the MP3 albums we sell by including quality artwork that can be printed onto CD labels and jewel case inserts (so you aren't just getting a 'bunch of files'). What would make you want to buy music in this way? What types things would turn you away? What are the positives and negatives of selling music in this manner? Do you think this is a viable alternative to someone who doesn't want to pay $10 or $15 for a physical CD? Does the format the music is in or on have an impact on how serious you take it?"
One thing you really need is some publicity.
A good trick is to cleverly craft and advert for your site and then cunningly present it as an "ask slashdot" question, thereby getting free advertising to huge numbers of people.
I would do something like that if I were you.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
>5000 people paying $12 a year, is decent money
That's enough to pay for hosting and bandwidth plus two salaries, if they like eating Ramin noodles 3 meals a day. That's Web Guy, who'll we'll charitably assume does the recording and editing, plus a drummer. You'd better hope that you can find 5000 people that like drum solos.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The label could take the highest quality digital version of the music and create analog presses that have near the same quality as the file. In each press, hot vinyl would be pressed to form a high quality analog reproduction of the music (patent-pending). Now, these vinyl *discs* could be packaged in a carboard envelope with printing, lyrics, and etc. Then they are sold. Certain *disc* players would read the music off of these *discs* by dragging a needle across the surface (patent pending) and reading the resulting vibrations.
High fidelity buffs would be impressed with the quality, yet it's still analog which would prevent some piracy since people would prefer the *best* analog reproduction to some digital copy of that analog reproduction. Packaging would turn on people who want something a little extra with their music. Finally, and this is the ingenious part, since this *disc* is read by dragging a needle across the surface, the quality would degrade over time, preventing resale value from gnawing at new *disc* profits (patent-pending).
The ultimate effect of my new music distribution model, is that piracy would come to an end, since the best copy is analog. At most, piracy would be used to sample the music of a particular *disc* prior to purchase. I could revolutionize a piracy filled industry. Recording Labels would grow since they longer have to worry about piracy and digital CDs being reproduced. They could tightly control the distribution of these vinyl *discs* thus controlling their profit.
Music might become thought of as a tangible piece of property with a physical existance rather than some digital idea that is freely copied and shared. (patent-pending)
-vax computer, vi, lynx. 'nuf said
100,000 people download a few million files and suddenly Itunes is a success?
Yep. Pretty easy wasn't it? Fucking genius. Pure and simple right fucking genius. Wow! How could we all have missed it? Maybe we were too busy worrying about Johnny Warez and his flimsy-ass 14.4 kpbs house-o-uploads?
Billions of files are traded over P2P file sharing networks by hundreds of millions of people.
And NOBODY FUCKING CARES!!! They're STILL MAKING MONEY BY THE FUCKLOAD!!! It's absolute GENIUS!!
Itunes is about as much of a success as some of the micropayment sites are
Yeah? Where's the $5 million micropayment site since April?
Its MAC USERS!
Now multiply by 35 and you get the revenues when this thing makes it to Windows. It's FUCKING GENIUS!!!!!!!!!!!
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
"that strange section of the computer using world where people pay for stuff that they value"
What a strange fucking concept! Actually paying for that which you value.
Unlike the Windows Camp where it is expected that 90% of your hard drive is pirated crap and is entirely covered with way too much copy protection and user tracking (where as on the Mac, a copy of M$ Office is just a drag to the hard drive to your iPod away from a CompUSA Kiosk). Or unlike the Linux Camp where its expected that you are be treated as a fucking sleeze if you don't give away the entirety of your work where others with better marketting skills are free to take what you've done and sell your work as if it were their own (its all about the service, BUT if you are an inept geek with no social skills, do you REALLY think you are going to know how to service your users -- or are you just good enough to write a damn good program that a million other geeks find useful).
Yeah, the Mac side of things is very strange. Last I heard, 80% of its users were the creative kinds. Unlike most of these napster babies, we know what it costs to produce items that have no physical value, but more aestetic or personal value. Crazy I tells you. We don't measure our worth by how many hamburgers we can flip in a single day, but I think thats mainly because the last Gartner report claimed 97.5% of all Mac users are Vegitarians upon learning Steve Gods...Err...Jobs is one. Ok, we don't base our value on how many Boca Burgers we flip in a day either.
I just bought 3 songs off of iTunes last night because there were worth it. New Annie Lennox tune, Dido's White Flag, and a Rob Dugan instrumental. A lot of artists will probably ping Apple for the singles, BUT I look at this as a way to evaluate the album before I walk into the store to pick up the real deal. And quite a few things I've picked up were exclusives that I've looked at as additions to the album I've already purchased.
Yeah, we are wierd...
>Instead of worrying about the number, focus on the model. People who want to use numbers to discredit models, are wasting time. The model works.
My god, you've been frozen in a block of ice since 1998! Wake up man, it's 2003! The .com boom is over! You actually have to have revenue to make profit these days.
Once again, show us five examples of this model working. That's five non-RIAA bands that make living money off of electronic fan clubs. Show us five.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Funny. When I used Google's regular Web search, that Seattle Times article was the first one to come up. Maybe that's why the logo in the corner of the News search page has "BETA" in it. Sorry. No grand conspiracy, just pre-release software.
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