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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?"
The main problem dogging the Recording industry is price. Price is what the main issue is for most of us. 99 cents or under is a good place to start.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Might be the option to have cd quality files (different format maybe?), maybe for a slightly higher price.
Especially if it's something like ambient music, where hearing everything is important.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
The format itself does not really matter (to me). I would prefer AAC, but MP3 is fine. What really matters is that the encoding is at a high enough bit rate and was done well. Correct id3 tags and artwork help too. If format is so important to people you might think about offering multiple formats in the downloads (I'm sure a lot of people around here want ogg).
but I would have the option of having a CD shipped with the tracks burned on it in either Audio or mp3 format.
Print out the artwork and insert that too.
Just for the techno-cripples out there.
It would be interesting to see how the cost of such a CD stacked up against the price of a standard, retail CD in the stores.
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').
So now instead of buying an album which includes artwork, booklet, blah blah blah... You have to download the damn things, print them yourself, etc. I'm sorry, but that's too much damn work for me. Plus, the result would look so unprofessional which makes it feel cheap, and I hate cheap.
This is so not the way to go. CD is a fine format. I like having the physical CD, I like having the physical artwork, I like CDs. I don't like the idea of paying money for bits and bytes that represent music.
They should find a way of distributing physical media at lower prices. This is just like books vs "electronic books". You can't beat holding the thing in your hands, placing it in your shelf, looking at your massive collection... But whatever, I guess.
1. Easy payment by VISA, no paypal.
2. Allow for some freebies so you can check out the band before you buy.
3. High quality files (more than 128kbit mp3), and allow the option of selecting either ogg or mp3. Although you might be eligble for paying royalities if you go with mp3.
4. Fast downloads.
=-kiOwA-> EOF
You wont make alot of money trying to sell mp3s, however if your mp3s are 40-50 cents each, it will work. I'll buy a few mp3s if you dsell them for 50 cents each, price is the issue.
I suggest you make your mp3s cheap, and make them high quality 360. Let us pay via paypal.
Another way to handle it, if you dont want to go this route, is to let fans subscribe through paypal for say $1 a month. For $1 a month they recieve access to a site you setup which has mp3s on it, comments from the band like a band blog,pictures of concerts, and a list of when the concerts will be in the area etc.
Sell your services, dont sell your mp3s, people want to pay for services not for music. Do what AOL does, dont sell the websites, sell the service, set it up so we have to pay to access the blog, the mp3s, the pictures, and anything else a fan may like, make them pay to access the forum, and use MP3s are just part of the whole package.
give away a few mp3s so new people can listen and see if your band is actually good, but keep everything else for subscribers.
Video clips, Mp3s, Forum, Blog, Pictures, if your band is good, fans will pay for this.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
consider coffee a lubricant that helps one penetrate the coding zone
I would not. I'm a big music fan and collector, and there are several problems for "us" :)
- lossy compression and other problems with MP3
- CD-Rs are inferior to silver discs which will last me a lifetime and not fall apart in 5 years
- there is no cheap & quality way that I could print out an album booklet and inserts
- I consider an artist's album (cd, booklet, packing) a complete piece of art and that can't be substituted with getting a bunch of files.
As a business model, selling digital files online seems like a great thing. You can reach a world wide audience, you don't have to pay for shipping, packaging, and like you said, distribution is the cost of bandwidth which these days is about $20 a month at most web hosts (unlimited bandwidth).
As a DJ, the one thing that I notice is that it is better to get a physical product into the hands of as many retailers on the web as possible and use MP3s for promotion. As a format, i don't think that I would ever pay for MP3s, there just not worth it. I equate it to radio. I check out songs that I have heard about to see if they are any good. If they are than I buy them on VINYL!!!!! But that is just my personal preference.
If you find that you are actually selling mp3s, all the power to you, but I think you would be better off investing some money in real product and getting it into as many online and real stores as possible. Follow that up with promotion online and off.
I think there is great potential for digitally distributed content, but as musician, you must be creative and try to get your music out as many ways as possible. See how much money you make selling mp3s. If it isn't much, than make them free to promote your album on CD, cassette, vinyl, minidisc, or 8-track
Just so we're clear, you've secured an MP3 distribution deal BUT YOU DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW HOW YOU'RE GOING TO DO IT?
Geez. Better hope your Indie Band doesn't read Slashdot.
Im that kind of person, that when I buy software always order the hardcopy.. harddrives to go to hell, I know, it has happend, and more then twise. I dont want only files. I want files archived on CD. (this goes for music to)
I have very few albums that have any filler at all.
But then, I don't buy the album just to listen to the popular songs (i.e. the songs that the record companies are promoting).
IMHO the basic concept to audible success is interacting and mixing with your audience. Your audience wants to interact with you. Let them - they'll love you for it.
Selling CD's is just physical mode/layer 1 broadcasting. That's why the business model is flawed.
The GNU culture is to interact - not to consume
Why not have an option to buy an iso file for the people with the bandwidth?
I used CDUCTIVE back in 1999 (it was later purchased by some other company), but it addressed some of these problems by:
1 - letting you pick all the tracks you wanted, regardless of artist/album (you paid per track plus a small flat fee for the CD)
2 - having previews available (but they were just short clips, not a very low quality version - I found that a turnoff after I picked tracks based on the preview clip and then was disappointed because there was only 30 seconds of interesting music in said track)
3 - they were mastered to a CD that was then shipped to you. In theory, that audio CD had as good audio quality you can get.
I don't mind paying for a CD (even current pop CD prices!) if I get to pick the tracks that go on it myself. We have the technology. We have had the technology for a few years, even!!
BTW, the website didn't make it totally obvious how to buy an album (the "home" page and the "shop" page look very similar - maybe a little "buy" icon would help?)..
High quality vbr mp3s
Let me emphasize this: HIGH QUALITY!! This is BY FAR the most important issue for me. I swear if I hear another 128k MP3 labelled "CD-Quality" I'm going to scream and kick and kill my all of my fish.
When talking MP3, 128kbps is NOT CD quality, no matter what encoder you use. Downloads in Ogg format would also be very nice. A lossless codec would be even better. Anything not lossless that calls itself "CD-Quality" is flat-out bogus.
So, put HIGH QUALITY files up, open formats like Ogg, and FLAC, as well as mp3, lossless files if you have the bandwidth/disk capacity, and as others have mentioned, LOTS of pictures, videos, and things like that. Extra stuff. People that like a band enough to buy a CD are usually VERY interested in just about everything and everyone surrounding the band. I am, anyway. Foo Fighters had it right when they included the bonus DVD with their "All For One" release. Take that idea and triple it.
Also, let people re-download their music freely if they've paid. Put that info in their account details so if their computer crashes they don't have to email you and cause everyone a big headache to get their music back. oversights like this can ruin the legitimate online music download market, so DON'T skip it.
Here are two ideas I would like, and would certainly pay for:
(1) A radio like service where I can listen at any time and choose preferences about music type. Then, when I heard something I like, I can save it at high bitrate (higher than the streaming radio, or perhaps even CD quality) for a fixed price with a "one-click" kind of interface. Maybe it could cost a fixed price per month ($5-$10) and then maybe $0.50 - $1.00 per song that I keep. This is obviously the more complicated system, but I think it's just about ideal.
(2) A website where I can sample songs (maybe a part at low bitrate) and get intelligent recommendations. Then I just buy what I want. I would prefer to not have a monthly cost, since sometimes I tire of a service and I don't like to have to go through a cancellation. But, I would be willing to pay up-front (like 5 or 10 songs) and then choose the ones I want later (I know that saves on transaction costs for the merchant).
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
There's one big problem in buying music from the net: reselling. After I get bored with my cd, I just sell it away. With mp3s, I'm not able to do that. Printable covers make this problem even worse: I probably shouldn't be able to sell a self-burned cd? There will be tons more of illegal cds in second hand. Don't get me wrong: I don't work for RIAA, but there's real problems in distributing music in electronic format.
Really, those extra songs that aren't as good as your favourite songs on an album are not filler. Bands spend time and effort on those songs and want you to hear them, and just because they're not instantly catchy pop songs doesn't mean they're not good.
That's not quite accurate. The band cares less about whether I hear them and more about whether I buy them. Seriously - if all they cared about was people listening to their music, they'd just give it away. Some artists do that, but they are a minority. Now, say on Album X, I like songs 1-5, 7 and 9, and another fan likes 2-5, and 7-10, we can both buy the same album and be more-or-less happy. But that's a limitation of the format... very few bands make integrated albums, i.e. unified pieces of work that are an hour long. The vast majority make self-contained individual songs. There's no inherent reason, other than the limitations of the technology used for the delivery mechanism, for most albums to exist as they do.
getting the artwork would impress me a lot - it connects you to the band to see their photos, artwork etc. it makes the cdr/rw you burn less anonymous, more of a product. but:
1) make versions of the artwork look good in black and white - not everyone has a colour printer
2) make the artwork easy to print using a standard printer set up for the usual a4/letter size paper as well as special cd labels. for example, i can print out at uni but only onto the a4 paper the I.T. guys load up, not onto cd labels.
3) mark where the print outs need to be folded/trimmed etc, and give instructions so that anyone can do it easily first time.
in short. It should be a simple, open format (even ogg if you like ;), should be about 1$/song (or less, if you like), and it should be possible to copy the file as often as one would want to - for personal use, of course.
...a few albums off your site, the price is acceptable to me. But when I clicked on the Shopping FAQ, it seems that you only accept payments via PayPal.
Give me an alternative to purchase via a merchant with a properly implemented online payment scheme which doesn't require me to:
a) Live in the US/Canada/EU countries (or some other form of geographical bias).
b) Pass to them my current/savings account info.
c) Fax paperwork to them.
And there are lots of them out there on the net... Try to resist the "easiest way out" method by using (only) PayPal.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I'm just randomly tossing this onto someone's topic:
OGG files are royalty free, aren't they?
To sell MP3s, don't you have to pay Frauenhoffer or somebody money?
i worked in the digital music industry for a number of years, including what ended up becoming rhapsody. Here are a few of the things i picked up:
* people will buy mp3's, but not very many people will. Use this knowledge when planning, consider not spending much or any money on putting it together, at least at first, to gauge interest.
* The band's hardest core fans will end up being the ones most likely to buy something from you. However they already own the albums. They may very well be convinced to buy the albums again if you include enough extras. Great extras being unreleased material, live tracks, stuff that didn't make the album, rough tracks from the upcomming album, remixes, instrumental tracks etc.
* This is important: People are (rightly) afraid of losing the mp3's they buy and being SOL. Make sure people who bought the album are allowed to download it again whenever they need it. Some folks may end up overusing this feature in your mind but the good will will go a long way into making people comfortable buying the medium.
* When you buy a cd you get the chance to rip at various bitrates. Make sure you provide a high enough bitrate for high fidelity listening (160k or 192k) but also consider providing a 96kbit or 128kbit set for portable players or other uses. Let them download either or both for one price. (and come back later to get the other one when they need it for free like the last point)
* Provide at least one sample mp3 encoded at the high fidelity bitrate so that people considering a purchase will know exactly what the quality of the encoding is (many bands only provide lower bitrate samples and people may assume the purchased music will sound the same)
* Consider watermarking if you want to be able to tell if the purchased mp3's are being made available on newsgroups/p2p etc or if it is people ripping the album themselves. This can be helpful if a band discovers their music on kazaa and is upset and makes a logical leap to blame the online mp3 sales... Likely they will have ripped it themselves and you'd be able to prove that rather than just speculating.
* (point #1 again) Remember, not many people buy mp3's online. Don't plan to order new computers, bandwidth, software services, spend a ton of time programming, doing art, adding extrasm or marketing until you get a chance to get your feet wet and gauge people's interest.
Obviously you know nothing about how quickly people get tired of their musican friends and relatives parasiting off of them when they actually start bringing in money.
;)
;)
Actually, I do, but the exact opposite. I was the one making money, and also the musician. You're forgetting the distinction between WORKING musician and LAZY BASTARD musician.
See above. I'd do a fan site for nothing. Once it's asking for money, I want a cut.
Agreed. For example, I'm a guitar tech by day. All my friends and bandmates get their shit worked on for free, under the stipulation that if they ever need a touring tech that I'm the guy.
What's a band that's gigging regularly going to put on their fan site that'll attract people who weren't at their gigs? If you're gigging, you're not working on new material. If you're not putting new material on your site, who's going to subscribe?
Ah, the $50,000 question. Frankly, I have no clue what you could offer. But you're thinking we gig 24/7 and don't have time to write. It doesn't work like that. No, you're not working on new material during the gig. Directly before and after going on and coming off stage you do have time to work on new material. Hell, if you're in a jazz band or something like that your whole gig may be made up on the spot.
I take the point that for small bands, this might - might - provide some extra income, but I suspect that it will be beer and guitar strings money, not apartment rent or healthcare money. Heck, go ahead and prove me wrong.
And with this statement, you hit the nail on the head. Any income from a website would be supplemental, an addition to whatever I make at my day job. It would in fact be string money but you have to remember that strings, heads, sticks, cables, and other things that wear out aren't exactly cheap. Every little bit helps when you're trying to hold down a job and have you band fund itself.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
As an older (40+) music lover, I would pay for recordings that are "out of print", or otherwise unavailable. Anyone who could distribute that kind of material could have my $5 per CD worth anyday.
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?
The first consideration is quality.
That said, price is more important.
Huh? Since I don't know the artistic quality of the MP3s in question, I need a (very) low price to get me to risk buying what I may never listen to.
This is why emusic.com has been so useful for me: there's no (additional, beyond the monthly subscription) risk to trying something -- and so no regret if that something isn't what I was looking for.
As far as value-added products: I have no intention of burning any of the music I (all legally) download; MP3s for me mean the convenience of not changing CDs, and the convenience of carray around 60 GB of music in my pocket. So CD cover art doesn't move me -- and how much CD cover art is that great anyway.
What does add value for me is complete and accurate ID3v2.4 tags. Also valuable would be lyrics included in the ID3 tags, and even better would be synchronized lyrics (another tag).
And of course, the MP3 techical quality matters: give me something on the order of -r3mix (joint stereo, varaiable bit rate at ~192 kbps average) at a relatively constant volume over the whole album, etc. Without the buzzwords, high quality encodings, and you'll probably want lower quality versions too for the guys who complain that anything over 128 kpbs is wasted on their ears.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Or, as with Eddie From Ohio you do all these things and remain fully independent because you don't want to be part of a RIAA label.
They have a huge fan-base, allow board-taping (and distribution of the mp3s from said board-taping) at their shows, have a very active email list/group and offer RA (for better or worse) downloads from their website.
They are, in their own words "fiercely independent" and want nothing to do with the mess that is a major label.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
The worth of an object is relative to each person. The shops charge $X, enough people are willing to pay that for the store to be profitable. Shoplifters have nothing to do with it, they simply don't think it's worth the money but worth the risk instead.
If a musician charges $Y for a bunch of MP3s and nobody pays, it's the musician's fault, it has nothing to do with everyone not understanding the "true value of a work of art". If nobody pays for MP3s then you can't act like you understand the profession of artist because you do. Everyone else doesn't think it's worth the money, so it's not to them. If it's worth it to you, fine, but artists have to understand the majority of the world doesn't think what they offer is worth paying for simply to listen to. Get over it.
Also, you just proved my previous point. You're not paying for the file, but the music. Music is a service, not a product. Growing up in a "Copyright by default" society has clouded the wording of the issue to make it look like it is a product. Would you pay for these if it weren't run by Apple, but had someone else's DRM embedded in the file? Even with the same restrictions on the file, but MS or Real ran the show. Do you trust them to let you listen to your music forever? Apple's DRM is a service, that you pay for because you trust them. Same thing with quality, ease of use or any other reason you pay to download it from Apple.
And there's the issue of quality. Buying lossy-encoded music makes me feel uneasy. Even though all my music is played back from Vorbis files, in the back of my mind I know that I still have the source CDs, so if someday I were ever to upgrade my hardware to a level of quality where artifacts were perceptable (however unlikely), I can always re-encode with a higher bitrate.
I don't think I want to buy 128kbps files, even though stuff encoded at that bitrate sounds fine on the equipment that I use today. Make 'em very high bitrate Vorbis files or Flac or something. But not MP3.
Beyond that.. frankly, I can't think of any value I want added to the music. Just give me the files and assurance that the musicians got paid, and I'll be a happy customer.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I have quite the opposite viewpoint, and I dare say I'm a more your target audience since I've bought quite a bit from the Apple Music store.
I don't want to be encumbered by cd booklet, jacket art, or a physical CD. I spent quite a bit of time converting everything in my CD collection to MP3s for portability in file form. I also don't want to be tied to the album format; part of the point of Mp3s is to mix and match songs by artist. Therefore, the liner notes of a CD is uneeded for the song order. The song titles are in the file. The lyrics? If I cared that much, I'd look 'em up online. Art? I'm certainly not looking at the art when I'm listening to this stuff on an iPod...
I'd say in terms of extras you could focus on higher quality audio for people who like the tunes. And, put the lyrics online for those who want them. Lastly, I'd suggest music videos streaming on your website. Other than that, I don't think many people who are into buying Mp3s are going to be overly concerned with all these "extras". The people who are into extras are probably going to be wanting a CD anyway.
"...Let them download either or both for one price. (and come back later to get the other one when they need it for free like the last point)"
I'd watch that. This assumes you've given them a login and password. If each use is free, it will end up posted on websites.
Instead, I would charge a small fee ($0.25?) for each time they have to download the files. This will force them to keep their login confidential.
Only problem is then you have to keep their billing info...
Cheap: $1 for a song, maybe $2 for several mixes of the same song. Buy the whole album at once for 50 cents/song; $5-8 total. Offer to also ship a pressed CD with liner notes and lyrics for $3 more.
Convienence: Filesharing with MP3s is popular because you can burn a CD, transfer it between all of your MP3 playing devices, and listen to it as often as you like. Music isn't like a toilet (RIAA not withstanding). Two people should be able to use it at the same time. There should be no restrictions on my music listening when I pay for it.
High download speeds: Filesharing has a serious weakness that you are typically downloading at 1-5 KB/sec. Make sure your servers can sustain 100+ KB/sec. My time is worth money. I'll gladly pay money so I don't have to spend time rummaging through strangers' hard drives.
Previews: Offer either 64kbs streams/downloads for free to preview every song, or at least a minute of excerpts from the song so that you can get a good feel for the sound. The RIAA is already flooding Kazaa with preview files, but they upload slowly, aren't labeled clearly and are just as badly organized as the rest of the music (*sarcasm*).
I can download two minute trailers for upcoming movies. Music frequently just has art on the cover by someone other than the musician. Useful for porn, not useful for music.
Cross-reference music by popularity. Show other artists and songs that were also popular with people that liked the song I'm looking at. Clear Channel is killing music diversity in this country. I want to find and buy new music, not the crap that gets played on 4 different radio stations 10 times a day. I'd like to find artists from other countries. E-mail me when my favorite artist releases something new. Send me weekly links with music that is similar to other stuff I have bought before.
Add extras: Give free lyrics and pictures with the download. Especially with a full album. People like to be able to put a face to the artist.
Diverse selection: Indie labels are screwed in this regard. The RIAA labels should have set up their own pay-to-download site a few years ago. They should have at least set up listening stations in every store with more than 1000 CDs. Walmart has them, but they carry very few CDs, and you can only preview a limited selection. 250 gig hard drives are pretty inexpensive now. There is no excuse for not having a secure music server with 5000 albums in every Best Buy (and other major music retailer) in the nation.
Most importantly, remember that listening to music needs to be fun, easy and a good value. There are tons of entertainment forms. Music is just one of them.
But of course, to prevent piracy, when I go home and play my music on my system, he won't be able to listen to my music anymore unless he decided to buy some of it himself.