Slashdot Mirror
Universal Music To Cut CD Prices
phlack writes "CNN Money has an article about Universal Music Group's plans to slash their CD prices to $12.98 SRP, in an effort to combat piracy and bring consumers back into stores. It makes me hope the other giants will follow suit, and wonder if the music industry is finally listening to some of the consumer's complaints."
So they are finally going to match their competitors (Best Buy, etc.) in CD prices? I still don't understand how those big chain stores, who charge $17.95 for a CD, stay in business. Maybe they should take a survey from their consumers, about what they're actually willing to pay for a CD. $12 is about the tops for me, and it better be darn good for that much money.
Most slashbots are probably familiar with price wars in computer hardware....perhaps we'll see some with regard to CD prices.
Would be an interesting situation where one could get an artist's release from two different labels, so there would be real competition between them.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Quality = good, price = high, result = Some people willing to pay.
Quality = bad, price = high, result = far fewer people willing to pay.
Quality = bad, price = low, result = Some people willing to pay.
Quality = good, price = low, result = maximum number of people willing to pay.
Simple economics. Price of normal goods go up, demand for inferrior goods goes up. Substitute CD's for "normal goods" and MP3's for "inferrior goods".
I hope this is amazing because they're willing to actually do it, not because they think it's a revolutionary idea.
~Will
sig?
You have already proven you wish to screw your customers at any given moment. You have been hostile to me, you know the guy that paid for your wares, for far too long.
I left and am not coming back.
The business model has already changed - now the businesses need to catch up. People don't want to buy albums, they want to buy a cut or two from an album.
I think given a flexible less restrictive model, one that allows the purchase and even copying of a song say to a CD with other songs from other albums. People want to know that they can play their music in the car, on their bikes, wherever they want to.
The record industry must loosen its control a bit and I think they can win their customers back. Right now people feel ripped off by the record companies and that is why so many have taken to p2p.
(Manufacturer's) Suggested Retail Price. It reflects the price point that the manufacturer suggests the retailer offer to the end consumer, and includes the margin for that retailer.
The MSRP values are based on various fudges and calculations, with a good bit of over-the-thumb thrown in for good measure. In this age of Internet comparison shopping, I can't remember the last time I paid MSRP for any consumer goods (except software like PS2 games, where Sony has a very tight rein on the supply chain).
Come play at the only online poker room with a Mac-native client
It's not all the way. It *is* however a step in the right direction. A lot of people, myself included, would prefer to buy our music legitimatly. Buying a CD is still the easiest way to get high quality, consistant MP3s onto my iPod.
I'm thinking that the studios will absorb a lot of the difference and artists won't be too affected.
Cheers Koz
It could be - or it could be that consumers are willing to spend more money for the convenience of random access to music vs. sequential access. When was the last time you saw a cassette player with a "random" feature?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I've been building my Classical and Jazz collections over the past couple years. (Let's hear it for Van Cliburn playing Tchaikovsky!Jazz at Massey Hall anyone?)I buy online, mostly at Amazon.
It's very rare I pay more than $12 a CD. Even two disc albums rarely cost more than $20.
When I do pick up a popular CD I haven't paid more than $14 that I can remember. (Can't wait for the new Seal album!)
I don't know where people are buying their popular music. In brick 'n' mortar stores? In the year 2003?
I mean, look at Amazon's top sellers list. Most albums are between $12 and $13 already. Shipping is free if you buy $25 worth of stuff. You only pay taxes if you live in Washington or North Dakota. Why would you not buy your music there?
If you do go to a physical store, Target has many chart topping albums for $10. Last time I browsed the racks there I didn't see anything over $14. No shipping charges, obviously, but state and local sales taxes apply.
If you have a job I don't know how you can seriously complain about the price of CDs. I really don't get what the story is here.
[Note: Say what you will, Amazon does everything right when it comes to buying stuff on the web.]
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
My ideal price for a cd is 7 bucks. That's as high as I'll go. A CD is 20 year old technology. Why haven't lower prices kicked in? The cost of a movie ticket is between 7 - 10 bucks. Have to make the price of a CD competitive with that if you want me to buy more CDs.
I wonder what the artists think of this?
Artists almost totally (with very few exceptions, as a percentage) support the studios which direct the RIAA in its campaign against music sharing
Very few artists leave the studio system, and new ones are signing up daily by the ton. If you look at the music press, there are very few dissenting voices, nothing that you could call a major movement against the old system.
That's where the problem lies. The vast majority of artists couldn't care less about the legal persecution of their fans, not enough to complain actively anyway, and many actively encourage that persecution. The few anti-studio activists are nice to see, but represent a drop in the ocean, and are not making significant headway among other artists.
So in many ways the wrong party is being blamed when people see the RIAA and studios as evil. The root cause of this problem is the artists.
Concerts are an experience. They're usually *different* from the recorded/packaged music, which I used to think was a bad thing.
However, the true human aspect of the music comes out, and I don't just mean errors - I mean improvisation, expansion, performance.
The true value is not the *music*, it's the *artist*. And you're never going to truly appreciate that if you only listen to one expression of the talent, that is, a single CD.
I recommend checking out smaller concerts first. a) they're cheaper, and b) sometimes you get the CD to relive the concert (though it's never quite the same). When you play that CD you always end up expounding to all within earshot about "how much better they were live"
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
I'd look at it a different way:
The fact that they can imperiously cut their prices by 30% pretty much proves that they've using onopoly pricing to begin with.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I've never been to a concert in my life and don't understand why I should care to
Let me help you. You may want to see a concert if you think you'd enjoy:
- the feeling of 'never stepping in the same stream twice' -- go see artist X every year for 5 years, and each performance of any given song will 1) be different than the CD version, 2) be different than the previous year, 3) be different than the previous night!
- hearing unscripted improvisation between artists -- many musicians claim that the set they're most proud of playing was NOT the one recorded in the studio for the CD
- the little live mistakes and recoveries of talented artists -- you'll rarely get that on a CD
- experiencing the energy of dozens or hundreds or thousands of like-minded people simultaneously grooving or interpreting or dancing or just chilling to the same music you love
- to experience the artist -- 16 bit stereo samples @ 44.1kHz captures audio quite well -- but it doesn't capture dance, facial expressions, stage antics, synchronized light/lasers/visual effects, costumes, etc.
Recorded music is here to stay, obviously, but live performance is different. It's not necessarily better. If you like any given artist though, it's enriching. More times than not, if I've appreciated an artist before going to see them live, the live experience made me respect them even more.
Some (not all) artists are multidimensional. CD is great for the car or bus or office, but CD doesn't do many artists the justice that live performance can. And of course, some artists suck live. Explore.
Damn, dude, I have been buying CDs for $10-$13 for years. Are prices really that bad now at the chain record stores?
I'm talking about the majority here .. there will always be people who steal, but ....
In post-capitalist 17th century UK, people couldn't afford bread. Rather than storm the bakeries and steal the bread, they stormed the bakeries and demanded a fair price.
People are happy to pay a fair price. Thats the very definition of fair value. A value people will pay.
Between overpriced and free, people choose free. But when they sense that a fair price can be obtained, ie, when the bakers (ie, the RIAA) are actually willing to come to the table and discuss the price, people will choose fair price over free because we require our socialeconomic systems to exist in order to benifit from them.
If we can't benifit at all, we might as well get for free. When we can benifit, we're smart enough to support that system rather than torpedo it.
Its the survivalist instinct that makes us choose between not and all and illegally free, and the same instinct that makes us choose fair price over damaging suppliers by aquiring their goods in a way that will put them out of business.
"Old man yells at systemd"
OK, I admit it - I go into music stores once in a while. There's this song I like, and I don't really mind supporting the artist & other people who technically support the artist.
I've been buying CDs for the past 15 years or so. And before that I bought a whole bunch of LPs.
And there was always the $18 and the $12. I can say, with confidence, that I've never bought an $18 CD.
I'd always retract from the $18 CDs. Why does album XYZ deserve $6 a pop? It certainly isn't quality.
In contrast, I've never had a problem buying a $12 CD. Sometimes I buy a $12 CD on a whim. But $18? Never. No freakin' way. I'll just wait for radio airplay.
The only exception to my rule would be a multi-CD set. I can see paying $18 for a couple quality CDs.
And there we have it. From my sample of one person, $18 CDs simply don't sell. On the other hand, people readily buy $12 CDs, and they'll even buy them even if they're not 100% sure if it's something they'd like.
Universal has learned this. Maybe some others in the industry will learn this too. And do you know what? If the others don't go along, that's fine with me - I just won't be their customer.
At $18, I won't buy.
I don't pirate music.
So I won't listen.
The only real loss is to the aritst and the label.
Is there anything wrong with that?
They're still a large evil media monopoly.
I'm sure glad I don't have any interest in the crack they're pushing.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
-Ansel.
G=C800:5
Well, at least it's a step in the right direction. What they really need to do is offer free downloads of either full length, lower bit (less than 96kbit) MP3's or high quality, 30sec samples of every track in their catalog. Free downloads because good stuff can then be passed to friends. This is the past, present and future of advertising. Nothing works better than a suggestion by a friend or family member. This would be the ultimate way to get "Word of Mouth". What the "common Joe/Jane" want is to sample music. They usually buy stuff they like. The problem is there is so much music out there and the radio stations are all homogenous. People don't know what to buy. Given the cost of even these reduced priced CD's, it's still a tad expensive to experiment.
Hardcore file traders don't do much to the "content" producers' bottom lines. Some would never spend the money. Others may still buy some CD's from some new bands they found. Basically harcore file traders are zero sum since they provide some advertising (and therefore, new sales), while satisfying some people (loss of sales). Basically balances out.
So, we have the homogenization of the "free" classic media, an economic downturn, and a lack of major label backed new, innovative, interesting content. File trading is just a scape goat.
I don't download music as the quality is too low for me. I might buy more if there was a better way to sample music (like http://www.apple.com/music/store).
I would only buy from iTMS if there were less than 2 tracks on an album that I wanted because AAC quality is too low for me. I would buy if there weren't any CD-singles available. I rip my CD's into FLAC (http://flac.sourceforge.net/)
I don't download movies as the quality is too low for me. I have, however, sent trailers that I could download to people. At least the movie peole have their heads on straight by allowing people to download their trailers.
I download anime that is fansubbed and not available in the states, or to demo a series. I have bought entire series ($$$$ of dollars) because I was able to download and watch enough to get into it. I buy them because I want the higher quality video and audio. The fansubbers' subs destroy what can be done by the CC subbing built into set-top DVD players.
The music, movie, and software industries are idiots for funding the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA, respectively. These *A's are just trying to keep themselves relevant. They are cartels. They should be illegal as they form oligopolies (price fixing, collusion). They are hurting their respective industries by not allowing it to slowly evolve. M/G/S studios can do their own advertising directly to the people and save some $$$$$$$$. All they need is to allow downloading of samples from their catalogs and people will spend their own bandwidth advertising stuff they like.
Anthony
Some CDs have bonus tracks not available on cassette
How can this be?
The limit on a CD is there and abouts of 74min.
There is a limit on cassettes, store bought ones are sold sizes of 60min / 90 min / 120min with a few odd sizes inbetween. It's generally agreed that 120min cassettes are too thin to be reliable, 90 are common place. It's more practical to offer bonus tracks on cassette cause you can fit more stuff on them. I remember that "kiss me kiss me kiss me" from the cure for example included a bonus track that was not included on the cd because there just wasn't room on the CD. I think it was "hot hot hot" as I don't happen to have it handy at the moment.
The only reason to include bonus tracks on CDs and not cassettes is to encourage you to buy the CD rather then the cassette.
Artwork and notes CAN be included in a cassette with ease, though there usually is a reduction in size.
---
In computer world, legacy media *ususaly* costs MORE then modern media. While most people still have floppy drives, the release media of choice is still CD, even for data that would fit on a floppy. The demand is less there for less is produced. It would make more sence if cassettes cost more, acording to many they are after all more costly to reproduce. Cassettes are still popular with people who haven't bothered to upgrade their car decks, runners who find the cassettes don't skip, and a few others who haven't bothered to get a CD player. The market I believe to be small, so it makes little sence for them to flood the market with cassettes resulting in a need to lower their price in order to actually sell them.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Here's the reason.
Hypothetical: you purchase a popular mainstream CD at a store such as Best Buy.
You would pay about $12.99-$14.99 for this CD.
This CD almost certainly retails for either $17.98, $17.99, $18.98, $18.99, or $19.99.
Incidentally, Best Buy tends to make less that $0.75 per popular CD sold, and frequently less than $0.50 on the ones in their ad. They sell only items they believe they can make huge volume on, with the hopes of drawing you into their store so that they will buy their other products which have sane profit margins.
MSRP of $12.98 means a Best Buy price around $8.99 -$10.49
Additionally: cost is not $0.02/CD.
Cost works something like this:
Production: $0.03
Royalties to Musicians: $0.05
Royalties to Songwriter: $0.08
Retained by retail store (covers costs like distribution, plus profits) $3.00 - $4.00
And this does not include the cost of producing the very first CD, generally on the order of $10,000 - $100,000 (varies greatly depending on artist and what all is going on) Amortizing this across all copies sold (lets assume 500,000 -- a pretty good amount for one disc) means that cost is between $0.02 and $0.20
Note that the numbers for royalty per album sold were real numbers I got from folks inside the music industry, but that they are about a decade old. IIRC, they have increased slightly lately, so it might be $0.10 / $0.16 instead of $0.05 / $0.08.
Anyhow, the total minimum cost per disc is on the order of
$3.36 / disc.
I have left out many of the costs involved in the production, distribution, and marketing of music because I don't have any decent numbers, so I'd just be guessing.
Even if the other costs are forgotten, $3.36 / disc cost vs. $12.98 MSRP means a profit of:
286%
instead of:
435% for a $17.98 CD
In short, yes the music industry can afford this cut, and it was a good idea, but IT IS SIGNIFICANT
Like I said, expect to spend on the order of $8.99 - $10.49 per new CD you buy at the discount stores (from Universal anyway)
Expect others to follow suit.
In my opinion the "Best Price for an Album" -- as in, the price the CDs should retail for to maximize record label profits is $9.99.
This is because this allows price ranges in discount stores to be on the order of $7.00 - $7.99 and I think that this is the highest price that most people will be willing to spend and still buy every CD from most of the artists they like.
That's just my opinion though. I want to know, really, what do you all think the "Best Price for an Album is" remember, the idea for this number is to maximize RECORD LABEL profit (NOT sell the most music or decrease piracy the most, just make the label the most money)
What ever happened to the $9.99 sale price for new CD releases? I remember back in 1994 I could walk into a Circuit City (on a Friday in Tallahassee, FL) and get a new release for only $9.99 on sale.
And why is it that back in the 80's I could buy an album on cassette for around $7.99, but today I have to pay $18 for the same ammount of content on a CD? CDs are cheeper to manufacture than cassettes!
I'm sorry, but Universal is going to have to do better than $12.98 to get my hard earned money.
Funny. I would consider myself better off with $1.00 for someone buying my CD than I would be with $0.00 for somebody downloading it of Kazaa. (I would also probably be righteously annoyed if that somebody then had the gall to claim that he was helping me out.)
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
4.95 may be hard to compare with 0.00, but I bet a lot of people would go back to CD's. P2P is cheap, but it takes time and bandwith. If you can find what you're looking for quickly, then it'll take you a LONG time to finally get the entire CD. For most people, the $5 wouldn't be too much, would be faster, and then you get the warm fuzzy feeling of being 100% legal.
Of course, ripping and then reselling the CD is a copyright violation.
Which we do care about, don't we?
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
too many musicians think that they are artists. The reality is that the vast majority of popular music is performed by those that would be more aptly called artisans than artists. Picasso was an artist, the guy down the street painting lettering and cartoons on a billboard is an artisan.
How do you prevent one of your friends from bringing along one of the artist's CDs and playing it over and over again in the car? By the time you get to the concert, you're sick of hearing them.
Why do people do that?
And no, "get new friends" is not an option. It took way too long to get friends in the first place.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
That reminds me of the boss who, in declining to give an employee a raise, says "Well, most of it would have been taken up by taxes anyway."
Of course, that's a poor excuse for declining a raise -- the employee would have seen some increase, after all. By the same token, even if artists aren't making as much as the labels per-CD, they're still making some amount.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
That's the silliest thing I've ever read.
Buying CDs + going to concerts = profits for artists.
Not buying CDs because you downloaded them + going to concerts = less profits for artists.
Not buying CDs + not going to concerts because you downloaded a live concert bootleg = no profits for artists.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Sure, most pop stuff is like this; but you've not looked -nearly- hard enough if you believe that. And, with a name containing "punk", you'd think you'd know about some of those indie bands (Or indie-bands-gone-mainstream) that are damn good. AFI, Stutterfly, System of a Down, or Millencolin anyone? How about Dashboard Confessional? Or how about The Offspring? Bright Eyes? Thursday? Glassjaw?
Not paying for -good- musician's music is a crime, both morally and legally. No matter how little of the money goes to that musician, they've worked hard for it. And they deserve to be paid it if you listen to it.
If it's cheap and mass produced, don't listen to it. If it's good, and you like it, then pay for it, enjoy it, and support the artists.
Complaining that it's cheap mass-produced advertising, and then listening to it is pure hypocritical bullshit. Why, may I ask, are you listening to it if it's so bad?
Yes, but their argument is that if you bankrupt the big 5, the artists will still exist, and can get a better deal with an "indy" label.
Not saying I agree with them, but that is how they managed to come up with "An artist is better off with $0 than with $1/cd"
Basically, what it comes down to is "I care enough about you to hurt you...but not enough to hurt me." If they REALLY cared, they would make a sacrifice themselves and NOT LISTEN TO THE MUSIC, rather than ONLY imposing a sacrifice on the artists.
Optimally, what you would want to do is download the songs, and then mail the artists a nice crisp $2 bill (Or coin, or whatever) along with a letter explaining WHY you are mailing them money. That way you get the music, the record company gets boycotted, AND the band makes money...more money than they would if you bought the CD.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
I guess $5 is a fine price for CDs where the artist is signed to a RIAA label that can afford to punch out 10,000 copies of said CD at pennies per disc. But for independant artists, it's a little different.
Let's just ignore the $5,000 to $10,000 investment in a home music recording studio, the $400 mastering fees, and just look at the actual CD manufacture. It costs $2.50 a CD to have Discmakers (http://www.discmakers.com) print up 1000 CDs in shiny plastic cases with professional full color 6 panel insert graphics and on CD printing. (And if you want quality CDs in any reasonable amount of time, you don't go with Joes Bargain CD Duplication.) I mail out 100 to radio stations around the country, with press kits, at an additional cost of about $2 per kit. I give away 25 to local DJs in clubs and my indie label gives away another 25 to a distro house, all for promotion. Now I'm down to 850 CDs that can actually be sold, and I'm out $2700.
Now assuming that I sell all of these myself and get 100% of the profit (I don't, but we'll keep this simple), I now need to sell 540 CDs at your ideal price of $5 each just to break even. This leaves 310 CDs which I can sell for a net profit of $1550.
$1550 for a years work writing 12 songs, performing them, recording them, mixing them down, and making them available to people on the widely available CD format, which most non-geeks use and enjoy. Can you see why no sane person who wants to eat or pay rent would ever charge so little for a CD?
And I've never once been contacted about being paid directly for MP3 or other downloadable copies of my songs. No one has ever offered some fair price for a non-CD version of my music. But plenty of people have told me that they downloaded my music off Kazaa or WinMX and thought it was pretty cool, thanks for writing it, but no I won't buy a CD, hey, why are you getting mad at me?
The RIAA, sure, they scam the artists who sign with them. But the little guys get screwed too.
The problem is that they didn't make the price cut because of the price-fixing lawsuit, but because of piracy.
This is something that should've happened back when they were passing out twenties because they got caught - not now because people continue to steal from them.
And what happens if their possible-customers continue to steal music? Are they going to lower the price again?
I remember back in the day when LPs (aka vinyl) were common, cool stuff was included by the cool bands. The four KISS solos done in the 70's each had poster that were a part a larger one (I had all four). My "Face Dances" album had a cool poster. A band I bought a couple of LPs by called the Feederz, had full jacket sized double sided sheet with cool anarchistic cartoons and sayings. This just a few of the cool things that would come with LPS.
I don't see any of this with today's CDs. Of course I do understand the spatial problems with packaging, but the media companies need to give people an incentive to buy the CD rather than a monetary one. Entice the people into buying the CD so they can get a T-shirt, poster, or something else from the artist. Folks are going to choose free over any price if they can get the same thing.
Keep thinking you've changed something, HanzoSan. It's probably healthy to distract yourself from your long, long string of failures in life.
Wow, somebody at Universal must have taken an introductory Economics course, learned about supply and demand curves, and realized you don't maximize your profits by continuously raising your price -- especially so on non-essential items like music!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
What you are seeing is the normal life cycle of a monopoly. When the public gets mad the price goes down, for a while. Then the price goes back up. Usually even higher.
Consider the price of gas. Remember when you thought to yourself that if it went over a buck a gallon you'd stop driving and take a bus? People get upset, the price goes down, and then starts creeping up again.
If you have a capital market, ie not a monopoly, then the price stays down. There are what 7 major lables, and they cooperate on the price. It's a monopoly.
You can claim your tiny victories, but as soon as you buy one CD you've given the victory away. I buy maybe one cd a year (if that). (I don't fileshare either). Basically the whole system has turned me off, I now just play my own music, or listen to the radio.
Oddly enough, many employees think this as well, and I've known more than one person who turned down a small raise because they thought it would actually throw them "into the next tax bracket".
:)
Up here in the great cold north, higher tax brackets only apply to income ABOVE THAT BRACKET. It's not like the rest of your salary gets taxed higher because you got that $500 raise.
YMMV in other countries, of course
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Yes, but when a CD is hugely successful, who reaps most of the profits, the band, or everyone else? (Hint, it's not the band). Who ends up paying for producing the CDs, marketing, promotion, expensive videos that MTV never plays and everything else? It gets recouped from the band before they see their royalties.
The risk costs is pushed onto the band, but the record co reaps most of the reward.
I'm not shedding any tears for artists. They signed the contracts of their own free will.
You could argue that, but unfortunately in most cases the recording contract is the ultimate prize, and it's an opportunity that doesn't come along everyday, so most of them will eagerly sign the contract. If they say no, they may never get another chance.
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
Question for you, What artist do I send it to? Do I send it to the person performing the song or the real artist, the one who writes and composes the music?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
If you were actually a pro musician you wouldn't. When someone downloads your music for $nothing, you aren't getting nothing out of it. You're getting free marketing. Good exposure is priceless.
RIAA does suck but for promotion you absolutely cannot top the work done by record companies. Justin Timberlake can barely hold a note and the only instrument he can probably play is the flesh flute, but, thanks to outstanding marketing the record industry turned him and a few other pseudo singers into a bankable megastars for a time. They put together the posters, the artwork, the image, the stadium tours, the album, the promotional tie ins, everything. An Indy company might appreciate your desire to avoid writing a song that could help go with a "Happy Meal", but, then again, they'd never give you the fat check for doing it.
Most of us who are developers have no problem selling out our sense of code purity to make deadlines and cash a check, and I suspect that if we each thought that writing even the shareware version of the Office PaperClip could make us a buck, we would.
So let's at least cut the artist some slack and not be so critical of the music industry that we drive it out of existence. Support the right of the artist to sell out and cash in, and hopefully, they'll make music that recognizes our own god given right to do the same.
This is my sig.
Sales is partial pitch, partial product, and partial pricing. If one is selling CDs at a gig, if they're something convenient, like $5.00, that's easy to justify spending. Most people here probably have five dollar bills in their wallets, so it doesn't take a lot of hassle to buy something for that cost, and it's easy to deal with making change (assuming that not everyone who tries to buy a CD just got a $20 from an ATM). It's also cheap enough that many people spend more than that at lunch, so from a "is this going to impact anything?" perspective it's easy. As far as a live gig goes, the gig itself is the sales pitch, and a recent Ska gig that I was at had the $5.00 items (mostly guys' tee shirts) selling like mad. The product at a live gig is pretty obvious too. So, from that perspective, having 20 people spend $5.00 on a CD, even if it costs a whole dollar to manufacture the CD still beats out selling four CDs at $10 apiece. Trouble is, many people with something to sell don't understand market economics enough to see that a lower price could overcome buyer woes.
As for the music industry, until it as a whole understands why consumers are pirating music, which doesn't have as much to do with intentionally wanting to victimize the RIAA as it does making things more convenient for the purchaser, piracy on the small, end-user scale will continue. Once it is inexpensive enough buying a CD to offset the annoyances of attempting to pirate the music, making the time to download less worthwhile, I think that we'll see a much smaller amount of piracy. Right now, though, getting that one desirable song out of ten on a $15 CD, even if it takes 20 minutes to find it, and an hour to download, is more practical than buying the CD, and with these prices I can't blame people.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
>CDs have been overpriced for years.
That's your opinion, which I share of course, but consider this:
They proved they could get the price point for CD's when they first came out, $15-20 in '82 that I can remember, before that there were too few titles on CD that I cared about, and I was still collecting vinyl in those days.
So it turned out the market could bear the price.
So you and I realize the price is exorbitant, but, the price was not out of line with the demand curve.
The consumer (the millions who aren't you and me... actually, just you, as I've bought hundreds of the damned things), disagrees, on the whole.
The consumer pays the price. So if you look at the equation from a suit's point of view -- the price is spot on...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Heck, I'd be happy with $7.95. You remember, the cost of Tapes - those things that cost MORE to manufacture than CD's!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
$12.98?!!
How about $3.
That is about what they are worth. Anything higher than $5 is a monopoly rent.
Who are they kidding?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
La de fucking da... if Fugazi routinely gets their CDs available at the local department store for $10 a pop and has been doing so for years, I fail to see why I should be impressed that one of the big five is "drastically" cutting prices back, whilst blaming it soley on "rampant" piracy (because the economy couldn't be a factor). Not to mention that I still haven't seen a dime in repayment for their earlier price-fixing scheme.
"Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball."
Yes, but their argument is that if you bankrupt the big 5, the artists will still exist, and can get a better deal with an "indy" label.
If that were the case, then no artist who had an independent label contract would try for a major label contract.
I know musicians on independent labels. They have to work day jobs to support their art. Musicians on major labels generally don't. Indie labels just can't generate the same kind of sales volume.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
See a pattern?
The pattern, fortunately, doesn't repeat ad infinitum from that point.
What you're describing is roughly analogous to the whole radio airplay concept. A record label (er, an artist) pays large amounts of money to stations to get a song played on the radio, then when the radio plays the song the artist (er, ASCAP) gets money back. So what is the point? Marketing. Enough people get the song stuck in their head and it makes them want to go out and see a show or buy an album.
In the mp3 world, it's the same deal but a lot more cut and dried. The end result is that 100 (or 1000 or 30,000) people have heard your song and "the seed is planted". I should note here that if your song isn't good enough for someone to seek out more of your music after hearing that one song, you have either not hit your target market or you need to start writing better songs. There is a certain darwinism about the "new music economy" that shouldn't be ignored given the amount of crap in the contemporary pop music world.
When you imply the end result of "everyone gets the music and nobody gets paid", you're forgetting some things. The first is that normal people aren't motivated or tech savvy in the same ways that geeks are. It's true that you or I can easily throw an mp3 onto a disc and then have it to play any time, but the number of people I run into weekly who don't know about this or can't be bothered to do this is astounding. "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" and all that. Make sure you include laziness in there as well.
The second is that bands aren't just selling a tune, they're also selling an act. There's a mystique involved which maybe you or I don't care about but plenty of people do. Do you think MTV would be around if a whole lot of people didn't care either way what an artist's look/story was? Britney/Justin/etc are obvious hardcore examples of this, but acts like Aimee Mann are able to do interviews and have photos on websites and so on because people are interested in more than the chorus to "Voices Carry".
The third is that this happened already with cassette tapes in the '80s. People could easily record music off of the radio with a cheap tape recorder. The end result was that they got music that didn't sound quite as good as the real thing and they didn't pay a dime for it. Just like mp3 downloaders are doing now. All it took was a little bit of work (less than it generally does now for mp3s IMO). The artists didn't starve, everyone was fine.
And this is a good thing?
Seriously, if the record companies would promote "true" artists (i.e., those that could actually write, produce and sing quality material) instead of wasting millions developing and promoting folks like Timberlake simply because they're "pretty", everyone would be happier.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
I hate this argument. The album as a whole is a work of art, and if you're only listening to a few songs on each album, then the artists you've been listening to suck. A good artist will put out a solid albums (with maybe one or two bad songs). Yes, you have your favorite songs, but the whole album is still good and worth listening to.
$13 is still a high price for a CD. I'll wait until they drop to the original cassette prices.
Zodiac Survey
Subtle use of word choice reveals how these execs really think of the consumers. He didn't say "entice" or "lure," no, he said "drive." Like you'd do to a herd of cattle.
I thought the "Good exposure is priceless" argument went out the window with the dot com crash. Even the great unknown musician who's trying to make a name for himself gets paid something by all those bars.