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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."
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)
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.
Explain why Cassette is still going to be cheaper. No, really. I want to hear it.
Could it possibly be that CDs are way, way overpriced, even at $13?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
(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
What's so good about concerts? I like to own music, so that I can play it whenever it is convenient. I hear this talk all the time about how artists should make money through concerts, but I've never been to a concert in my life and don't understand why I should care to. Micropayments are probably a better idea.
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.
I'm actually rather shocked that CD prices are that high in the US. In Canada CD prices range from ~$14.99 - $21.99 ($21.99 being those rare expensive collectors or double CD's). I thought that those prices were high.
I'd be *pissed* if I had to pay $26.20 ($18.98 USD) for a crummy CD.
Dropping the price to $12.98 is still ~$17.90 CAD, which is just brutal.
Now the question is, will they drop the prices in Canada as well? or have they just decided that they can afford to bring the prices down in the US to reflect the same prices in Canada and still gouge us at the register?
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
I generally can't stand Courtney Love but she had a pretty good speech and quote about this whole thing: "How can pirates steal money from artists when the record companies have already stolen it all?"
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
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?
It is ironic that the top echelon of recording artists could not exist without an industry to support them. Strip away the managers and agents, stylists and coaches, from someone like Justin Timberlake and ask is it possible that he could still make a living from music? Probably not. Ani di Franco, on the other hand, has been making a comfortable income for years without the support of the business she's supposed to be in.
As Douglas Adams pointed out, many companies aren't in the business you think they're in. Fox News is, despite a million conspiracy theories to the contrary, simply in the business of delivering an audience to its advertisers. The ethics and actions of the "Big 5" corporations who control 90% of record sales make rather more sense if they are viewed, not as separate companies, but as one distributed bank.
As anyone with any experience of dealing with banks will know, they are monolithically slow to react to changes in the environment, and are populated with highly intelligent, but narrow-minded, solipsists. They're doing now what every one of us was warning them that they should be doing the instant MP3 was rolled out.
By way of related tangent, here is an article by Steve Albini about his experiences with one of the majors, and his advice to anyone thinking of getting involved. At the bottom of the page is a detailed breakdown of a typical deal in which the "industry" made $973,000 and each of the four band members made $4,031.25.
When the entire system is that fucked, the price of a CD is moot.
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?
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.
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.
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.