Slashdot Mirror
Downloaded Music Gets More Expensive
Reverberant writes "Just as the online music market is starting to gain traction, what to music execs want to do? Why, raise prices, of course! Under consideration is raising the price of online singles up to $1.25 to $2.49, or bundling less desirable tracks with hot singles."
Most albums have 0-1 decent songs on them. I wouldn't mine paying for single songs from albums like that. If the album is decent all the way through, I am going to jsut buy the CD.
Geez louise! That's exactly the problem with CD distribution in the first place! They still want me to believe I need to spend over $ 16 bucks on a disc that I know damn well cost them only $ 0.40 to manufacture and distro. Even with a couple bucks to the artist and the studio, it's overpriced. Then, I have to buy 12 or more songs, of which I'm only ever going to like about 3. Which is why I want my iTunes and MP3s in the first place. I like to be able to take even my legitimately purchased music and reduce it to the set of what *I* want to listen to. Isn't that my right as a consumer? Oh, and let me pick the medium to do it, whether that's my PC, my iPod, or a CD mix I burn for the car...
(and maybe also first post?)
Ich suche die Leidenschaft, die keine Leiden schafft.
Of course the industry wants to bundle bad tracks with good, or to raise the price-- if people just buy what they want, it wrecks their whole business model of investing heavily in a few "artists" and making sure they make it-- if people just listen to the few tracks of the few artists they like, not enough money will be flowing through the system for the execs to skim the requisite off the top. CD sales would go down, and... oh wait ;)
--
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
They want to charge what the market will bear, so as participants in that market we should refuse to bear their prices.
It's holding steady at $0.00 per song, last I checked. ;-)
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA it's still free for me!
Trying to get me to buy a cd or downloaded music for anything other then $10 when DVDs are loaded with tons of extra for only $15 or so.
Daily Shenanigans
The point you missed here is, competition normally drives prices down. They know this too, thats why they want to artifically inflate prices so they can continue riding high.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Yes, I believe this is called an "album" these days.
It is just interesting that the highest turnover is done in industries claiming monopolies through copyrights and not in "productive" industries....
Something seems to be wrong here
Oh I remember it just like under Roi Louis XIV...
The idea was we only like certain songs, and don't want to pay for the extra crap the artists wrote because they didn't have enough time on the record. If they start bundling songs together, piracy will rise again.
-----
Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
Umm...Wasn't one of Apple's guidelines that you can't sell a single for more than $.99, or an album for more than the price of the singles?
I don't care if OSX IS Unix-based. He just lost MAJOR cool points with me.
(Like he REALLY listens to what I have to say anyway...)
As long as there's high demand, one keeps raising prices. Why should music be any different from anything else?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Will they ever learn? Having to buy whole albums with only a single good tune was one of the major reasons why online music became so popular, and why P2P is so useful. Downloading single songs is great, costs very little yet delivers exactly what we want.
And now they're going to "bundle" it up again? Force us to get more than what we want with the package, and obviously pay for it?
They'll never learn...
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Even though the record companies have ultimate control over their portion of the price, something inherent as an Apple users tells me that Apple would either lower their profits from each song to keep the price lower, or possibly raise incentives to purchase songs, like giving the Music Store a refreshed look, or increasing play quality as an option for high-speed users.
I truly doubt that Apple would just raise prices to $1.25 without a fight, there is nobody who is more pro-music in the technology sector than Steve Jobs himself.
Let's see: $2.49 x 10 songs = $24.90
And I sort of consider 10 songs to be a short album (unless its classical, jazz, etc..)
Brilliant ideas abound with music execs. CD's cost too much, so lets offer music online that costs even more! Hahaha, I'll enjoy seeing them squirm even more, harping to the newpapers that their sales are declining due to evil pirates.
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
Incorrigibly stupid history repeaters.
Bundling unpopular tracks? That's the beauty of single downloads, you only get what you want. Also, if we take an example cd of $19.99 with 10 tracks, that's about $2.00 per track. Again, why pay for something not on physical media at a lower bitrate for the same price? Raising prices happen, but the technology is too new to be raising the price right now.
I have no
Yes, actually paying for a product or service is against the "grout think" here. The idea that a copyright owner can charge what ever they want for the use of their property is lost on some people. For some reason, big business is dirty for wanting to profit on their IP, yet these same Slashdotters almost certainly demand a paycheck for their work...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Well, it does seem to be doing WONDERS for the CD industry in general. I know I personally have bought...oh wait...hrmm.
No, I started to steal all my music because they did this. Until all these music stores started up I didn't consider actually paying money for music unless I REALLY liked the band...after months of listening to my stolen tunes.
Looks like it's back to almost-exclusive music stealing...
"Why, raise prices, of course! Under consideration is raising the price of online singles up to $1.25 to $2.49, or bundling less desirable tracks with hot singles.""
So less desirable to buy, or to P2P download?
This will be great move to counter their alleged revenue loss from p2p. 128bit downloads at $2.49 a pop? Yep, thats the way to satisfy your customers and not have them run off to other entertainement products. Go RIAA!
Magnatune experimented with what I would term "tipware". Here, you pay a certain amount in excess of a minimum (like at a restaurant) as opposed to donationware where the minimum is $0. Data is available from this, and it might surprise you.
-I am an elective eunuch.
I love iTunes and the iTMS but if prices are raised on singles to anything more than 99 cents or if I'm forced to buy bundles then I'll be going back to Kazaa Lite.
A strategy like this will only serve to discourage legit online music purchases, and throw fuel onto the fire of P2P illegal file sharing.
From the article, it's stated that only one album is at $16.99. Sure, it's a popular album, but it's only one album. And although another handful or so are at the more expensive cost of twelve or thirteen dollars, the vast majority of the albums are at the ten dollar mark. The chances that consumers are going to like an increase in the price of singles is highly doubtful. If we have to, we would only grudgingly.
As for me, I continue to use my Pepsi caps to score free music. Pepsi, not Apple, has gotten my money for music.
Yes, you read that right - online stores just selling downloads are charging *more* than Amazon does for the CD itself (and Amazon typically has free shipping if you get at least $25 worth of stuff). That's seriously ridiculous: while I'm looking at this new "revolution" of pay-for-download music optimistically, I must admit that having the hard copy is still just better. Much better audio quality if you're an audiophile, ability to rip it and do what you want with it, and while the jewel cases suck the little inserted booklets are often pretty handy. Stick the CD and the booklet into your 288 CD binder and you're good to go. Unless they start packaging downloads with nicely designed info files with picures and lyrics and such, I'm not interested.
So finally people are beginning to purchase music online instead of pirating it, and now they want to make lossy music files cost as much as the CDs whose prices were the reason folks were downloading music in the first place?
These record companies are getting absolutely sickening. I mean, the legitimate file sharing companies are making next to no profit thanks to the already high licensing fees from the RIAA. Prices for legitimate songs off these networks is close to the same as buying the CD even though the overhead for distribution is much less, and now they want to raise prices. Keep it up RIAA, can't wait to see your sales go down by another 7% next year.
Birds still fly, fish still swim, and Record Executives^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h wolves still hunt and kill prey.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
"...bundling less desirable tracks with hot singles..."
Dammit, why are marketing/business people so dense? One of the things that's appealing about buying music online is that you only get the songs you want, and none of the songs you don't want. I've spent about $100 at iTMS, but that's only because I can buy one track here and one track there. If they take that away and force me to pay more and/or get extra shitty songs that I don't fscking want, I'll be annoyed as hell and probably just stop buying tracks individually.
The reason I buy singles and individual tracks from online music stores is because I don't want the rest of the garbage.
:)
Artists that produce it may call it art and argue that it's their art and it should be sold in a bundle, just like a painting is sold as a whole. To me it's like a gallery, you don't buy the whole show, you buy a single painting you like.
Who wants to listen to "Bumper to Bumper" when there's "Wannabe" out there? Let me see a show of hands
Is there ANYONE at the top of the music industry who has a clue? Consumers get a chance to get choices and pay half-decent prices. So what does the industry do? Take away the choices (the whole reason why people we're moving to online music) and raise the prices! They want to take away every reason to buy things online. They act like jerks to customers, customers demand something better, something better comes, the industry tries to change it to treat customers like jerks.
What a winning business strategy. QUICK! Call Donald Trump and tell him the great idea!.
Does anyone else get the feeling that music industry execs don't listen to any music? How else could they be so radically out of touch with what they are doing to consumers?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I wish that the RIAA would "get it". Their sibling organization, the MPAA, has at least realised that if the merchandise is inexpensive enough, people will buy it, despite their objections on DRM (region codes) and forced things like the startup commercials. I don't like what the MPAA did to try to get DeCSS, but their products are cheap enough that I feel that I'm getting my money's worth by buying them.
The RIAA charges as much for a CD as the MPAA for a movie. I don't feel that this is worthwhile, and thus I don't buy music, while I'll buy a DVD once a month. There's no reason to charge more than $10 for a regular CD. $17.99 is just ridiculous to expect from someone for twelve songs, with only two of those being particularly memorable.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If the tracks that people actually want are to only be sold alongside the other undesired ones, how is purchasing music online then any better than buying those little pieces of plastic that cost $15?
I assume the primary reason peple like to buy songs online is because they get to choose individula tracks. If they are forced to buy an albumsworth, then they'll probably just decide to download illegal copies instead.
Do they think the slow moving songs have stacks of bytes laying around they have to "move out"? What is the value of getting something you don't want along with something you do? I think this shows the records execs are clueless about 'net distribution.
This just totally makes me sick. As soon as I feel that the two sides have made some headway in the deal, the music execs are trying to get their grubby paws on the rest of the deal.
;)
This is a slap in the face to Apple and everyone else who joined the online music store business because they feel they were just trying to make a good fair deal (Napster doesn't count because they are sell-outs and Microsoft just wanted to "enforce a standard" of WMV) to both the consumer and industry.
The music industry doesn't need regulation, the music EXECS need regulation. Who wants to regulate?
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
Why should any one of them have to raise?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The industry is flailing around like a drowning man looking for a new market solution to pay for their old market infrastructure. If Company A wants to much for their stuff people will get it from Company B instead. Company A has to have something noone else has that people are willing to pay more for to make it work. Generic pop punk acts, vapid r&b + drum machine acts, redneck dipshit of the week, etc. don't captivate an audience like they use to because they have access to a lot more stuff.
It just won't work.
Whats next for the RIAA, demanding any device that plays music (or sound of any kind), to charge your credit card per second of output? Heh that way theyd force everyone to pay. U dont own your player, u just lease its use heh.
Well, it that doesn't inspire and promote piracy, I don't know what will.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
... just like CDs did.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Not crap attached to it.
Not stuff that'll cost more than it's worth.
I thought they had got this right, and now they come up with this crap.
If they had half a brain they would've realized by now that songs should be sold like domains are now.
Remember when domains cost $35? Now that they've opened it up, everyone and their grandma is selling domains, most of the time very cheaply. And you're not stuck having to buy hosting or other crap like what the music execs want to do now.
Imagine when (if) this will happen for music! Everyone and their grandma sellings songs, for cheap! And unlike domains, you can sell any song more than once!
But, for now, we're stuck with this BS. Oh well...
AC comments get piped to
don't buy the garbage that major record labels force feed the american public. 99% of it is putrid, recycled shite that won't be worth the plastic it's burned on six months from now. Support local bands and independent record labels (although beware of them, many major labels buy indie labels now to hawk their bullshit). Stop lining the pockets of record exec wankers and put the money back into the hard working musicians pocket.
Man: Well, what've you got?
Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam;
Waitress:
Waitress:
Wife: Have you got anything without spam?
Waitress: Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Wife: I don't want ANY spam!
Man: Why can't she have egg bacon spam and sausage?
Wife: THAT'S got spam in it!
Man: Hasn't got as much spam in it as spam egg sausage and spam, has it?
Wife: Could you do the egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam then?
Waitress: Urgghh!
I remmeber a while back, when itunes was relatively new, there was an article that detailed a good many of the restrictions places on people who wanted to publish on itunes. two of those were $1 a song and, more importantly, no picking and choosing which songs were available for download. the whole shebang, or nothing.
:)
w a/ viewAlbum?playlistId=1324726
I now see a lot of albums with only a few songs available for download, and some saying "album only". go look up shakira's new one (if only to see shakira, she's a hottie
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
1. Jump from the airplane without opening a parachute. When falling, sue the ground for being hard and the air for being soft, but refuse to do the sensible thing everyone is suggesting.
2. When just seconds from hitting the rocks, finally open a parachute in desperation
3. As soon as they slow the fall to survivable speed, start thinking about folding the parachute again and toughing it out.
4. ???
5. PROFIT!!!
...or bundling less desirable tracks with hot singles.
Sheesh, don't they get it? I can't speak for everyone of course, but this is the very reason I have stopped buying CDs by pretty much every artist out there.. There are only a few bands now that I even buy the CD for, because most of it is one or two good songs, and the rest is just filler. Just when I thought they were starting to catch on, they go and do something stupid again.
Well, maybe the MPAA will get it right, and offer paid downloads without commercials and extra crap that a lot of people simply don't want. Once bandwidth and (good) video capture equipment gets cheaper, they may have a chance to do things that are good for the customer and still profitable. I guess I just don't get it, the *AA industries (and most companies) always seem to see customer satisfaction and profitablity as mutually exclusive. What's known about the guy that is taking Valenti's place, Congressman Billy Tauzin?
Segfault
I signed up to iTunes a while ago, but just really started using it in the last few weeks. What I've found is that the music I like is there in the form of "partial" albums. Today I was ready to fork out 9.99 for Johnny Cash's Live at Folsom Prison, only to find out that it's missing two tracks and it'd be cheaper to buy the cd than download it.
Another thing I noticed is Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon can only be purchased as an album, and it's around 17 bucks! While that's still a fair price, it defeats the purpose of this.
Noone saw this coming? The industry will never learn, greedy bastards. Too bad most commercial music sucks, so they don't get a dime from me.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
Tin-foil comment: What a thoroughly ridiculous idea. I'd almost think they fear the piracy might go down and their pro-legislation arguments might lose weight.
Article:
Downloading music gets more expensive
Ethan Smith
Wall Street Journal
Apr. 7, 2004 11:00 AM
To see the future of online music prices, look no further than "Fly or Die," the new album by rock-meets-hip-hop trio N.E.R.D.
For months, digital-music services have been touting albums for $9.99 to entice more people to buy online. But Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store has been charging $16.99 for "Fly or Die," while Roxio Inc.'s Napster service sells the 12-song collection for $13.99. Both prices are higher than the $13.49 that Amazon.com charges for the CD itself. The same pricing shifts are showing up on albums by a growing slate of artists, from Shakira to Bob Dylan.
Unburdened by manufacturing and distribution costs, online music was supposed to usher in a new era of inexpensive, easy-to-access music for consumers. In many cases, buying music online is still cheaper than shopping for CDs at retail outlets. But just a year after iTunes debuted with its 99-cent songs and mostly $9.99 albums, that affordable and straightforward pricing structure is already under pressure.
All five of the major music companies are discussing ways to boost the price of single-song downloads on hot releases - to anywhere from $1.25 to as much as $2.49. It isn't clear how or when such a price hike would take place, and it could still be months away. Sales of such singles - prices have remained at 99 cents - still account for the majority of online music sales.
The industry is also mulling other ways to charge more for online singles. One option under consideration is bundling hit songs with less-desirable tracks. Another possibility is charging more for a single track if it is available online before the broader release of the entire album from which it is taken. There is also talk of lowering the price on some individual tracks from older albums.
Several record-company executives acknowledged that pricing changes are being discussed at all five major companies.
The new pricing developments come as digital-music sales are growing steadily. Some 25 million digital tracks were sold in the first three months of this year, versus 19.2 million for all of the second half of last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
That growth is why some in the industry are uncomfortable with the talk of price increases. Most music-company executives believe that the download market is still in a critical early-growth stage, which could be disrupted by raising prices. "For us right now the issue is not, 'Do we make another $300,000 by raising the price five cents?"' says a music company executive. "It's making sure the market grows."
Revenues in the music industry have been dragging in recent years, in part because of the rise of illegal downloading services. Raising digital-music prices could spur additional illicit downloading. Weaning people off those illegal services by giving them an alternative that they consider viable is critical to the industry's future profitability.
N.E.R.D's "Fly or Die" is far from the only album that now costs significantly more to download from iTunes than to buy on CD. And many high-profile albums from two of the big five music companies, Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Group PLC, are now priced on iTunes and its competitors well above the $9.99 norm. Sony artist Pete Yorn's "Musicforthemorningafter," for example, costs $13.99 on iTunes and $10.88 on average in retail stores, according to the NPD Group. Albums by EMI artists from Kylie Minogue to Blur also cost more in digital than physical form. (EMI also distributes N.E.R.D.)
The reason this disparity is so pronounced at EMI and Sony is that both companies routinely set wholesale prices for online albums higher than their competitors, according to people familiar with the matter.
If you average the price of a CD to $18 and with 13 tracks that comes out to $1.38 per track. Until they offer 44.1Khz+ CD-quality tracks, you won't catch me paying for any of that stuff. Why should I pay up to twice as much for a track with limited playability and a fraction of the quality found on a CD?
Granted, a lot of CDs are padded with bad songs, but that's not my problem.
I don't buy songs-per-track and won't until it's CD-quality. I might consider what the industry is offering IF the quality were there, but it isn't. It's a joke. Then again, maybe I'm the oddball that hasn't blown his earing by having a pair of bazookas mounted in the back seat?
What's most interesting about the online music sales is that it says a lot about the state of the music industry. We buy SONGS now. We are less interested in artists as we are "hits". The band has taken a back seat to the packaging of individual songs. That probably explains why half the bands these days all sound the same.. they might as well because it's all about the track, not the music, not the message, not the group.
Video killed the radio star. The Internet will kill the concept of a band/album.
Music industry expects us to pay just as much for downloadable music (with lesser quality and no package) as we pay for the already overpriced CD's...? Prices need to be significantly lower for regular CD's, and especially for online music!!
...Usenet?
Have their prices gone up? They used to have a really good deal on singles, as well as complete albums. I haven't shopped there in a while.
Virgin Megastores recently offered 6 CD's for 30, basically working out at a fiver a go. I bought my first Cd's for years during this deal, because music once again became affordable for me.
Similarly, a lot of people don't object to legally purchusaing music from iTunes etc. If they're going to push the prices up again, the same thing will happen, more and more people will turn to downloading it for free P2P. Untill the record companies wise up to these simple facts, we're just going to keep going round in circles.
lets give more money to the RIAA so that they can sue people. Now I know artists need to be reimbursed and all, but this is exactly why I won't buy any music online unless it's directly from the artist.
JtK
AllOfMP3.com
Da Blog
RIAA Exec #2: Yes. Brilliant!!
RIAA Exec #1: Well, I've devised a new way to get even more money from them.
RIAA Exec #2: More you say? But how?
RIAA Exec #1: We'll charge them more and take it all anyway!
RIAA Exec #2: Brilliant!!
RIAA Exec #1: And you know how we can't seem to sell all this other crap?
(Points to rotting pile of Shakira singles)
RIAA Exec #1: Well I thought of a way to get rid of that too.
(Staples a worthless single to a Top-40 single and doubles the price)
RIAA Exec #2: Brilliant!!
(Both strip off their clothes and have sex with pigs on a huge pile of cash.)
--FIN--
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
I buy CDs because I like to get whole albums, rather than picking individual singles. Why is that? I really enjoy albums that are a complete whole - concept albums, themed albums, whatever you care to call it. That is, I don't suffer from the "Buy a CD to get 1 or 2 popular songs, and get a whole bunch of crap" problem because I just don't buy those albums. My problem is thus: The amount of stuff out there is getting thinner and thinner.
In days gone by you could get Animals, or The Wall, and even albums that weren't that tightly bound often tended to be designed to at least have the tracks sit together as a collective whle - to have some sort of theme and order to the m aterial presented on an album. In the last 10 years or so we've The Downward Spiral, another fine concept album, and the likes of Aphex Twin, and Autechre still put together albums as if all the tracks were designed to sit next to one another, plus myriads more doing similar things. But mainstream? Anything even approaching mainstream? It's harder and harder to find anything but a random collection of singles that bear no relation to one another, that fail to hang together in any way shape or form. I have an attention span that runs longer than 5 minutes. I'd like to listen to music that is more thna just a single. I'd like to listen to an hour or so of music that has theme and progression. Why is that getting so increasingly hard to find?
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Oh wait, they do . . .
`which fortune`
Soon, we'll be seeing stories in the media bout how p2p is hurting downloaded album sales!
Yeah, I should expect this from them. But it's still disgusting to read about nonetheless.
I used to download music way back. but after awhile, I guess I finally started to do what I thought was right by not cheating the artists. Which meant not downloading any music illegally, but I stopped buying music too (partly also cuz I'm poor). I still think it's unethical to download knowing the artists aren't being compensated, but articles like this sure doesn't make me feel bad when others pirate (except for the fact that they get to listen to music they want, while I don't). Living by your principles ain't easy... And when I read articles where the execs want to raise prices some more to gouge prices, I start to wonder whether it's worth it and whether they unethical behavior for so long relinquishes their rights (in my eye) to the music and whether it's okay for me to download again...
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
If this is not price fixing, then I don't know what is... FTC, where are you ?
The Raven
Whats up with "less desirable tracks" in the first place? Why release them if you know people won't like them?
This is like raising the price of a pizza and then adding a side order of maggots.
Someday a Slashdot ID of 177180 will mean something.
Why would I want to pay more for an album from the Apple music store than a copy from Amazon when Apple places restrictions on how I can use the music?
Bullsh*t. Really, how idiodic are these people? Hiking up the price to $1.50/$2.50 a track is not going to increase your market share!! Do they think teenagers are loaded? When I was a teenager, I only had money in the summer from working. I certainly coudn't afford >$20 a week on CDs throughout the rest of the year. If they raise the price to be more than $1 a track I expect usage to decline quite rapidly. Personally, if a CD is only $1 more than how much it would cost to download the tracks, I'd rather have the high quality CD over the (slightly) greater convenience (I order most of my CDs online anyway).
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
It's this kind of attitude that causes businesses to lose market share. If they raise their price a couple bucks but lose a quarter of their market, they break even, but leave a bad taste in the customer's mouth. Then, rather than having them look around for more stuff to buy, they just avoid buying things.
I really think the music industry is shooting itself in the foot by charging so much money and taking legal action against file swappers. The majority of my friends still bought CD's after Napster came into use, but now they've started boycotting the RIAA because they are leading an assault against our personal freedom. Personally, I buy used, and don't hesitate to get anything off the Internet that I wouldn't ask a friend to let me borrow and make a copy of. I don't think it's right to get new music for free if you like the band, but I don't think it's right to feed the RIAA at this point, hence the used CDs.
And once I get some free time, I'll look into the indie bands. There are a few I like now, but I haven't been able to afford tickets or CDs for quite some time now.
FUCK YOU you greedy bastards.
Do that and I am SURE AS HELL won't buy online.
LESS Product for MORE money? You guys really must think the end user is stupid!
Yes, bad language choice, but they piss me off to no end. Whiners.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
I think that most people don't mind spending $16 for an album that will provide much enjoyment. Lots of things cost next to nothing to make (soda, for example), but people decide that they want it anyway for a super inflated price. Ever notice how much clothing is marked up? That's why so many stores can get away with 25-50% off sales and still profit.
The issue with music is that people pay $16 for CDs that only have one decent track on them. Online music stores, however, destroy this business model because now people can pay $1.25 for a song. This price is what the song should actually cost on a respectable album. The "problem" that the music industry sees is that people aren't willing to pay for all of the filler tracks any more. Maybe if they wouldn't focus on one hit wonders so much, the industry wouldn't have these problems.
Last time I checked most open source projects don't pay well. ;)
Fuck'm all. allofmp3.com So cheap, and lots of choices. And besided, them ruskies need the money.
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
The music companies are reluctant to talk openly about their wholesale-pricing strategies, but they are quick to blame the retailers for higher prices. A spokeswoman for EMI, for instance, stresses that the retailers, not record companies, ultimately set the prices consumers pay.
I call bullshit. Retail price is directly related to inventory cost. Any retail outlet must meet operating costs by marking prices up. While I do feel some retailers are enjoying rather healthy margins, I know what it takes to run a brick-and-morter shop in direct competition with an online market. Which brings up another point- in the article it's mentioned many albums are now more expensive when downloaded online than actually paying for the physical CD.
Looks to me like record companies are starting to recognize that the problem is not piracy, but a crappy product. Even in legit download sites like iTunes, people are going right for the songs they like, and ignoring the crap they don't. What does the recording industry do? Raise prices on good songs, and bundle crap via the label "Also included!"
It's all about control- they want you to hear only what they feed you. They want you to pay for what they produce, whether or not you like it. Instead of buying the 3 or 4 songs off an album you like, they make it cheaper to buy the CD in a store, or if you still download- you get the other 4 or 5 crappy tracks along with it, "as an added bonus" (paid for by the price increase).
It's complete crap. What will it take for these overpaid execs to see what their market wants?
A borderline relevant monty python quote is ALWAYS on topic!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Really... The music industry (specifically the RIAA) still does not get it! They're obviously still working under the old school sales book of "find something consumers want, and as soon as they show they're willing to pay for it, raise the price".
Their business model is probably a slight variation of the typical "Underwear Gnomes" theory, and goes something like this...
1. Introduce new music/artists which sound and look very similar to other acts you've succesfully promoted
2. Drop newly signed artists if their debut record sales don't top the sales of existing signed acts
3. As soon as the listening audience shows interest in anything being promoted, immediately mass-market it to the point where they're all sick of it (Thus insuring that 90% of the signed acts out there never release a succesfull sophmore album due to the over-saturation of their 1st)
4. As people begin to get sick of the oversaturation, begin to crank up prices to try and suck as much as possible from the remaining buyers
5. As sales continue to dwindle off, spend enormous amounts of money tying to find a scape goat to point the finger at, rather than
a. spend that money on R&D to improve the company's operations
b. spend it on signing better, more original acts.
c. Trying to figure out what consumers really want
6. Sue, and threaten to sue anyone who markets or trades music in any way outside of the usual channels established by said music industry. Above all, DO NOT let the established monopoly change
7. Continue to charge more to those who are honest and continue to pay for their music. Blame the increase on the scape goats established in step 5
8. Repeat
As the saying goes, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
There were practical reasons to justify the existence of b-sides, the most prominent one being that vinyl in fact had a b-side, something might as well by pressed there, and the person buying the single mostly just wanted the single.
And people bought singles. IIRC, singles were of a higher quality than LPs. Also, people often wanted, and only had enough money, for the single. Many were willing to wait for the LP to go on the used rack
The interesting thing is that in the pre p2p days, there was much talk that singles were the cause of the declining record sales. The labels claimed that people were buying singles instead of albums, which was likely true, but in that case we were actually paying money for music. The labels did not like that money and began to try to limit the availability of singles.
Which bring us to today and the current evil of p2p. One reason we do not legally license music(as we no longer are allowed to purchase it) is that the music is just not there. There are many tunes for which I have to download album for 10 bucks. I often buy the used cd for 7 or 8 bucks. Often the desired track is widely available. Just as often I can run off a copy from a friend. The labels need to just let Apple sell tracks for a buck. People are buying them. It solves a bunch of problems. All this other crap is just unneccesary jacking with market.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The record companies are so desperate for a one quarter increase in revenue that they're willing to screw up long term growth.
And next time, people won't come back.
They might as well fold now, because they certain appear to have *no concept* of how to run a sucessful business.
I'll bet they think those lawsuits against consumers are actually working.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Ok, so first of all we're paying to download music in a lossy format, so no matter what it will never sound as good as a CD. Fine, I don't usually notice and most others don't either. But to be honest $.99/track is still too expensive to make me bite. At this point I can still dl songs or simply borrow 50 CDs from my friends and rip them all in one afternoon. So when they should be lowering the price they raise it? Greedy and short-sighted, which is to say business as usual.
BTW, does the fact that *all* of these online stores are using almost the exact pricing strike anyone as suspicious? Considering that the RIAA got popped for price fixing already I don't trust them at all.
Choice quotes from the article:
"The music companies are reluctant to talk openly about their wholesale-pricing strategies, but they are quick to blame the retailers for higher prices (in online stores)."
So the record companies basically blame the retail outlets for setting their prices too low. Thnx!
"Some executives, for example, believe they should be charging a premium for the online versions of older tracks because consumers may be willing to pay more for harder-to-find material."
Blech. So much for music being an art form. I'm gonna go sit in a dark closet for an hour now and try to forget these scumbags exist.
Reminds me of a quote by Thomas Jefferson:
"When popular censorship decries freedom, the unpopular practice of opining will be the victim of freedom to censor the populace."
First of all, I generally agree with most folks sentiments - I've got quite a few albums, where I like 2-3 tracks and the rest is rubbish.
However, I also have albums where I would never had listened to the "non-singles" unless I had bought the album, and I would have missed out on some of my favorite songs...
As one of the "scum of the earth" (I'm a marketing engineer, but not in the music industry), I can see the value of bundling a couple of tracks in with the "feature" track - but ONLY IF THE PRICE REMAINS THE SAME - that way, you get to listen to some of the artists other stuff and if you really don't like it, delete it. You'll have lost nothing (apart from a bit of bandwidth/time in the download) and the artist/record label will have had the chance to "market" the other tracks by the best/cheapest medium - word of mouth...
I'd be interested to know what you guys think of bundled tracks at no extra cost?
This sig is in Spanish when you're not looking....
The idea that a copyright owner can charge what ever they want for the use of their property is lost on some people.
With all due respect, I think you miss the point a little. I do not think most people here saying free as free beer, but free as liberty.
For some reason, big business is dirty for wanting to profit on their IP
There is no problem that big companies make big money if they do it on the field of fair competition. However, what constitudes property ?
Property is either a constitutional or natural right, or it is granted by society for the benefit of society. In case of IP, there is no natural right for IP. Until the Gutenberg press nobody ever calim copyright on anything. And because of the Gutenberg press the English crown first introduced a copyright law. Interestingly not to protect the IP of somebody, but to protect the crown from libale as they saw it.
Therefore why is IP protected and how should it be ?
In the US contitution Congress is authorized to make law to protect inventions and writings if it help for progress of sciences and useful arts. This is the only reason to grant such monopolies as copyrights and patents.
Most IP today would never mustard that test. However, what does this test mean. It asks the question if innovation is raised or society benefits in other ways by the grant of such a monopoly. While one can probably discuss forever if strict IP control is good or bad, or free IP is better or worse, nobody has a natural right to IP. If somebody has this right than it was granted by society in the form of laws, and it should be to the benefit of society and not only to a few like in a feudal system in the medieval ages...
The interesting question starts now, how can this be achieved. And btw. it has nothing to do with socialism v. capitalism. Both models fight who serves the people in a better way. At the end the question for me is over control v. freedom
Well, capitalism ( not competition ) is intrinsically designed to drive prices down, simply because of economies of scale ( ie. costs less per widget when a million widgets are made as opposed to when a hundred are made )
Competition can drive prices up or down -eg. In his classic book, Professor & psychologist Robert Cialdini talks about one common tactic to get customers to buy your product - RAISE prices!
Customers have this mistaken perception that price equals value, so higher price translates in their mind to valuable, lower prices to inferior/cheap goods ( this actually goes waaaay back, to Karl Marx's Labor Theory of Value )
The masses might actually buy a $5 song in the mistaken assumption that it is somehow more valuable than a song for $0.99.
What if instead of bundling two songs from the same artist and raising the price, keep the price the same and bundle a track from a newer artist of similar sound? Give the user full "rights" as if they had purchased both songs. Now you have cheap targeted advertising to someone who is inclined to listen to the new group anyway, but otherwise might not ever find out about them.
I like my idea. I should write a letter to somebody.
Rumour has it that we Europeans will get access to the iTunes Music Store within a year
I'll say it now... If we are expected to pay more than the Americans for downloaded music, I'll keep on using file-sharing clients instead.
We get gouged on CDs, on computer parts, on iPods.. but digital music is one place we can draw the line. I will only buy music at US prices.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
It's all that P2P "shoplifting" going on...right? :-)
If we stop "stealing", the price will go down to 10 cents a song...right?
They WILL drop the prices...right?
You don't fool me.
Everyone knows there's no sanity clause
What?
I'm sorry but even at the current buck or so per song it's TOO expensive. I'm not paying $17.99 for a CD and I'm not paying a dollar for a shitty song.
When I can grab a CD for about $8-9 or a song for about 40 cents THEN I'm in, until then it's Amazon.com's used CD marketplace and certain russian websites for me (mp3search.ru if you care).
I don't want to deprive the "artists" of their due but goddamn man $18 for a fucking CD is just too damned much, and $1 a song is borderline too much and $2.50 a song? Get fucking real, that's insane.
They need to look at the succes of iTunes and think to themselves "whoa look at that, wonder how many people would buy songs if they were a little bit CHEAPER", if Itunes could hit about 40-60 cents per track, I'd probably spend a wad there that's just my personal "price point" where I feel online music downloads is priced reasonable, and CD's need to get below about $12 each and I'll be buying a helluva lot more new CD's as well.
Doesn't really affect me much the music I like is lotsa times available cheap or free straight from the artist website (underground metal and hardcore music). But I don't mind the occasional Godsmack or Disturbed or other 'mainstream' metal either.
--- www.f-theocean.com
Is there a Darwin Award for business and companies?
If not - Why not?
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
If ignorance is bliss, Slashdot must be nirvana.
So CmdrTaco really is Kurt Cobain!
Where'd you get that internal memo? That was for execs' eyes only!
Disclaimer: This comment was generated by a Flock of Trained Microsoft Programmers for Aqua_Geek.
"While that's still a fair price,"
8 2/ qid=1081463479/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/103-4414021-79838 27
No, not really. Look here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002U
(the lameness filter will kill this, so I'll save you the trouble)
The NEW version of DSOTM is $14, you can buy it used from Amazon for $7.25
And you get the full version, not a compressed version.
So tell me again how $17 is a good price? Maybe for the record company, but certainly not for the consumer!
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
This proves that P2P isnt a problem and all the RIAA is doing is trying to keep it self around. I mean if piracy isnt a problem why do we need the RIAA wouldnt the member companies stop tithing money to them and they would dry up? If p2p file shareing or other forms of so called 'piracy' was a real problem how could the music industry afford to raise prices or pull other marketing tricks to screw consumers? If p2p was a real choice and real competition then the labels would be cutting prices and trying to do everything they could to stop it via market forces. Instead we have the situtation where they are trying to milk extra fees.
Birds still fly, fish still swim, and Record Executives^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h wolves still hunt and kill prey.
You misspelled "instestinal parasites"...
You can't take the sky from me...
Seriously now, an industry only works if they offer products at prices that customers are willing to spend. It's the "customer is always right" principle.
An industry that refuses to "get it" more or less gets what they deserve.
99 cents is already too high. If the music industry continues to insist on outlandish price fixing, I'll continue to just download. The $13 settlement check I got is not going to turn around and go back in their pockets, that's for damned sure.
"considering they have to pay for advertising, marketing, distribution, renting the studios, etc."
How much marketing do the record companies do for Elvis, The Eagles, Frank Sinatra, The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles these days?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I can't be the only one here who couldn't care less what the major labels want to do. Maybe it was also just my age, as I hit 30, but the RIAA's stupid behavior really turned me off to the mainstream music. I buy maybe a half dozen albums per year now, where I used to be good for around 20-30 albums per year.
The few albums I buy now are all through iTMS. The rest of the stuff I listen to is either my large CD collection - all saved onto my iPod, or I'm increasingly trying to find independent music online.
I hope iTMS does more to promote indies, and clearly labels them as such, like with their own branch off the main music store menu.
Of course, there are other factors beyond just the RIAA antics.. Like the clearchannelling of radio, and all the garbage it has produced. Then, there are the prices. Other than the new releases, CD's are becoming ridiculously expensive. Almost $20 for many/most albums at my local Tower Records.
If you buy a couple of singles off an album, you might as well buy the whole damned thing.
Its just a marketing ploy to get people to buy albums again.. to get them away from the attitude of just getting mp3's...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The RIAA Fu$&s it up!
This news is depressing, but not unexpected. As usual, the beneficiaries will be, not the artists, but the record companies who are milking as much cash from the product as possible.
The problem here lies in the amount of control that the recording companies have over the distribution channel. So long as they monopolise or control distribution, then they can dictate terms and conditions and prices.
It's the same story with CDs. What's needed is a way for artists to strike deals with on-line distributors independent of the major lables. That way, the profits go to the artists, the distributors get paid and the product costs less at the point of sale to the consumer.
Unfourtanately, I can't see this ever happening, because (as is pointed out elsewhere in this discussion) the music industry is an industry and as such, they have a business model which is unquestioned by the majority of artists (product producers) out there.
Speak to any young aspiring musician and I'll bet that most of them want to be a "rock star" and are dreaming of "signing" to a "label" and have produced a "demo" which their "agent" has shipped around a few "A&R" people, but their "lawyer" didn't like the "contract"s that they've been seeing.
At the end of the day, if artists and consumers are able to exercise more control over the distribution channel, everyone who matters in the music production process (artists and consumers) should benefit.
That's the theory. I can't imagine how to make it practical, so until then it's a case of either continuing to be ripped off, or hitting the P2P networks. I think I know which option I prefer...
Agreed. Radio kills otherwise good albums. Several years ago (1998), there was a song called "Ava Adore" by the Smashing Pumpkins being overplayed on the radio. I didn't care for the song, and after hearing it far too many times, I began to despise it. I never bothered checking out the album (known as "Adore") that the song was from, because nothing else from it was played. About a year and a half ago I finally downloaded the album, and it's become one of my favorites. Every track is good except for the one that was played on the radio.
AEIOU: open-source anonymous internet currency
Since we are on music, /. wishes it were Nirvana!
What makes you think that Apple fought this?
Okay - other than your pro-Apple zealotry?
Yea, Apple can do no wrong.
Pirate his stuff. He doesn't need the money anymore.
(The technicians have long since been paid, and you're not taking any physical product from the record companies, so why not??)
Hands in my pocket
According to the AZ Central: "Some executives, for example, believe they should be charging a premium for the online versions of older tracks because consumers may be willing to pay more for harder-to-find material."
Hmm. Material out of print makes the record companies zero income. Selling it online therefore represents a significant new source of revenue with none of the marketing and physical distribution costs that accompany new releases. Profits therefore are considerably enhanced for these products. Traditionally new markets are developed initially at a loss to build volume and recognition. Therefore price the product at a loss leader to build sales^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h higher then new downloadable releases or scarce physical media to grub the most money possible.
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
They didn't release single songs because there was no competition - because the record companies colluded to raise prices and control their supply chain. The only reason they started releasing single songs is because if they didn't, their market would download what they wanted for free. Most people would rather get their music legitimately than not, but they aren't willing to swallow crap to do so. So now, the music industry has a model that allows customers to get what they want legally, thus negating many of the reasons why people use P2P to get music.
The problem is that the music industry got rich by giving people what the music industry wanted them to have, charging what they could for it, and colluding to prevent others from undercutting them. The music industry didn't have to listen to its customers because they had nowhere else to go. Now, customers want music how they want it, because if they don't get it, they can go online and copy it for free - a few would have done this anyway, but now the widespread frustration with the music industry and their pricing drove many more to do so. If the music industry moves to restore the album model to online music, they will simply succeed at driving people back to copying music via Kazaa, etc.., with the consequent improvement in technology making infringers harder to catch.
You're correct - they don't get it, because they colluded, and so never had to listen to the people to whom they sold music. Now they have no choice but to listen to their market, otherwise they'll get robbed blind. The music industry wants to go back to the days of blissful ignorance when they could do what they want and their customers would buy whatever they sold; they're hoping that "trusted computing" and upload restrictions by Internet providers will bring it back for them. The problem is, people are angry, and now they know it, and they know that they can do something about it. The music industry can't unring the bell, no matter how hard they try. Once people know that they have power, they won't go back to being consumers without a fight. The record companies are closing their eyes and hoping that their problems go away, when all that's going to go away is their market.
...because it just flat doesn't matter at all how they price it because I'm still not going to buy any of it because all this commercial music sounds like crap and is a waste of my money. I support my local musicians and prefer to hear live performances. If I want to barf, I'll turn on a radio and listen to commercial (sic)music for free until I feel compelled to hurl, which only takes about a minute of exposure to such ear pollution.
and it costs 79 cents for a single song.
Activists United
"When you buy a cd, you pay for not just the production of the plastic disk, but the artists paychecks, studio time, artwork on the disk, etc etc etc."
In this scenario, shouldn't a popular old disk, such as The Beatles "Abbey Road", be really cheap then?
Or is the art work still being paid for?
Have you heard this new technology that lets you find out about albums before you purchase them? I hear tell that they're called MUSIC REVIEWS.
The record companys would be trying to drag us back into the past, where ya buy a 45 RPM Record with the single song ya want on side A, and something crappy on the otherside. Online B-Sides.
I'd say for 99 cents, you still aren't getting any value for your money for mainstream music.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Link Found (no soul sucking reg required)
[RANT]It just makes me want to scream at Valenti & co. for being assholes. I bet they would have enjoyed Soviet Russia, because there they would have been able to run their own little secret police force dedicated to enforcing their 'exclusive' model & stern penalties.[/RANT]Reading this makes me realize what bastards the MPAA leaders are.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
So far a majority of the comments seem to deal with the fact that it doesn't cost the manufacturers squat to produce the cds, therefore we're all being ripped off. That would be true, but its not the manufacturers that are jacking the prices up.
Then some say that the artists and the producers and all myriads of other people that worked on the cd need to be paid, so the prices are jacked up. True, but in a limited sense. The artists make more money from their tours and shows than they do off cds, which suggests to me that they aren't paid heavily from CD sales.
How about the equipment used in the production of the music from start to finish? That could all very well be paid for with one smash hit album.
Where is all this money going then? To the executives of course! Where does money always go in big business? To the fat cats at the top, and then it trickles down from there. So the reason why cds are so expensive is because the executives were merely giving themselves pay raises according to the work they've accomplished over the ages. These businesses have been around longer than many of us by several years. Thus the prices rise and rise.
So why wouldn't they just lower the prices and take a pay cut? Would you? If you were making millions a year, gaining more and more power and prestige by the day, hour, minute, and second, wouldn't you want it even moreso? Would you ever want to cut it back for the good of everyone else? Much less anyone else? Of course not.
So now that the big question of why do we have to pay so much for cds has been answered, the next question is what are we going to do? My answer is that people will continue to do what they've been doing for the past 6 years until it can no longer be done; steal the music.
After we can no longer do so? Perhaps there will be a large movement in the arts? One can only hope. We should be so lucky to have the opportunity to lift the cover from our eyes that the mass media so cleverly put there in our sleep. Perhaps they just pushed a little too far in their greed.
The above comment is purely opinion. Any mistakes for facts or otherwise are the responsibility of the reader.
You're nothing; like me.
To quote the article "Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store has been charging $16.99 for "Fly or Die," while Roxio Inc.'s Napster service sells the 12-song collection for $13.99. Both prices are higher than the $13.49 that Amazon.com charges for the CD itself. "
Asking the RIAA to "get it" is alot like getting the sun to quit fusing hydrogen into helium...
I haven't bought a CD in years, I guess this will have to extend to download purchases...
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Copyright is a limited time (ha!) license by the government that they will enforce your ability to limit distribution.
Copyright is not equal to property or ownership.
Really, try to think a bit before you post.
Let them go ahead and raise on line music prices. Let them charge me more, and "bundle" songs I don't want at he same time.
Then let them try to justify to Congress why they get to keep their copyrights when they abused their monopoly power to protect them. (price increase + bundle = monopoly practice. When used to promote copyrighted material may result in loss of copyright protection - Napster had the opportunity to challenge the industry on this, but chose not to)
If a new CD costs about $15 and has 10-15 tracks on it then that's $1-$1.50 a track. If you buy the same tracks if bought online would cost $1 each (99 cents). That's not much of a savings. That's still about $1 a track and there is a huge savings to them, they don't have to buy, produce or distribute the CDs. That takes time, and time is money. By doing it online they are saving piles of money and not passing the savings along to us. I will not be using the online music stores until they actually start charging proper prices.
these execs really don't understand it, do they?
And bundling less attractive songs with hotpicks? Why not sell the whole damn cd on the net? Oh wait, they already do that!
what's then the point of buying online music if you can only get the same crap you can get at your local cd-store?
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
I'm a big fan of purchasing the song I want to hear, and not wasting my time with the rest. If I'm required to purchase a "less desirable track" with the desirable track I will cease to purchase music online. If they now a track isn't "desirable" why do they bother recording it, and why would they force it down my ear canal???
Dozings.com -- Its kinda funny... If you're as crazy as me.
Geez louise! That's exactly the problem with CD distribution in the first place! They still want me to believe I need to spend over $ 16 bucks on a disc that I know damn well cost them only $ 0.40 to manufacture and distro.
The cost of an album isn't just the cost to press a CD.
Everything from the studios you rent, the mixers you hire, their assistants, the mastering studio, their employees, the tools you buy, the gear, the software, the marketing, the music videos, the airfare to interviews and so forth, etc. I could go on and on. There are a LOT of people involved in the making of a successful album.
100 or so years ago there was no recording industry because the technology wasn't there. I figure about 10 to 20 years from now there will again be no recording industry (at least not one resembling anything we've had to suffer through these last 30 years) because the technology is here. We're close to a complete music industry meltdown, not because of illegal filesharing, but simply because the means of production (more acurrately re-production) are available to just about everyone now at little cost. Advertising/promotion is also losing its barriers to entry for similar reasons. Certainly sound engineering and recording will last a bit longer until home studio type software and equipment comes down in price - although I doubt some "pro" equipment will ever become cheap enough for ubiquitous adoption by everyone who wants it. In short the "services" once provided by the music industry (and the printing industry, etc. etc.) will by and large no longer be required - the party is just about over for these clowns.
Looking inevitable extinction right in the face what do the geniuses pulling down seven or eight figure salaries to run things do? Take advantage of the current opportunity to sell their copies at virtually no cost to themselves and make an obscene amount of profit by making it easy and cheap for everyone with access to a computer to be able to pay them for their product? Heck no - lets jack up the price, make using the "product" a pain in the butt, and prosecute would be consumers for sampling what should be viewed as free advertising for their product. Its truly pathetic that these clowns can't reign in their greed just a smidge in order to give a new lease on life to their out of touch business model. Instead they're shoveling dirt on the industry's grave faster than a couple thousand college kids can download the latest NippleExposureTastic garbage fest from talent bereft plasticine pop whores like Janet Jackson.
Thanks record execs, you just brought the future a few years closer to happening, and though you won't have a place in it in your current capacities I'm sure you'll figure out how to leach off the next big thing, whatever that is. So I suppose we'll see you next when you're trying to put DRM on virtual reality cyber sex parlor "content" - at least that may give Brittney a new job.
I don't really have a point here, other than to lift a cold one in celebration of the impending conflagration of an industry so blindingly corrupt, greedy and parasitical that it can't see it's killing itself. Who's with me?
HA HA HA HA HO HO HE HE HE HOO HOO HA HA HA TEE HEE hardee har har snort chortle wheeze guffaw HA HA HA har snort chortle wheeze HA HO HO HE HE HA HA HA HO HO HE HE HE HOO HOO HA har har ...
Uh, no. No, no, no. In online music, 'hard to find' = 'obscure old crap', not 'hard to find' = 'rare and valuable'! It might be hard to find a copy of Baltimora's 'Tarzan Boy' in the shops. It doesn't mean I'm willing to spend 2.5 times more to get hold of it than a brand-new track just because I have a vague hankering to hear the song again as it reminds me of a fun night I had during the 80s!
You must think in Russian.
Like many of you, I went out and purchased an iPod, and it changed the way that I listened to music. I finally ripped all the CD's that I owned. All 326 of them. It was a little alarming to see how many CD's I had that I only felt that I needed to rip one or two songs from.
In the past 12 months leading up to my iPod purchase, I had purchased 4 CD's. In the past two months since I have had the iPod, I have purchased 122 songs from iTunes. (for the slow folks at the RIAA, that is $64 retail, fully burdened gross cost, without tax, vs. $120.78, digital distro cost, without tax... you can figure out which one nets you more profit)
I find it perfectly reasonable, and worth my time, to pay $0.99USD for a song that I like on iTunes. For that price, it is not worth my time to find the song on a peer to peer service, and deal with the issues of "gee, is this song of any quality.. or... what the heck, this is not the song that I wanted".
Jack up the prices, and I will stick to my radio and XM. Keep the prices where they are, and you get more money out of me.
Record labels would LOVE if everyone just bought most of everything. As it is, do you realize how many unsuccessful bands put out unsuccessful records? The industry loses millions of dollars on music that they decided to give a shot.
Apparently, you think record labels for some reason want you to buy only certain artists. They would love if you were buying all the other stuff they're putting out as well--IT'S CALLED MAKING MONEY. But you want to put forth some sort of conspiracy theory that just makes you look hair-brained.
CDs and DVDs are artificially priced. If you disagree, explain how record labels have been able to make obscene profits even in the face of declining cd sales (numbers not $$). Basic economics will tell you that there's a price level which covers (A) costs, (B) 'normal' profits, and (C) which is whatever the market will bear. consumers want (A), economists like (B), and the RIAA likes (C).
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
My parents bought me a $200 iTunes gift certificate for a present. This was supposed to be either 200 songs or 20 albums, which makes it a damn good present, one that I can apply gradually as I purchase music throughout a period of a year or more. However, if the price of a song or album goes up, my balance is worth less. Since I am effectively having value taken away from my account, it feels an aweful lot like I'm being stolen from.
Now I suppose that this situation is akin to any gift certificate, when prices are raised. However, because the record industry is doing this en masse, in what is clearly a price-fixing fashion (as has been pointed out by other posters), it feels a lot worse. What the RIAA should understand is that, while their business must ultimately be about their bottom line, this has an extremely negative impact on the customer, and does nothing to help their already-dubious reputation. I can guarentee that I would be far less likely to buy someone, say, a $200 gift certificate, if the songs cost $2.50 rather than $0.99. In the long run, this is therefore a poor decision, on both a customer-service and a business level.
For what it's worth, I am a Napster/KaZaA user-turned-iTunes customer. Essentially, I am willing to pay $0.99 for the convenience of guarenteed quality and easy searching. But it is stupidity - bordering on insanity - to think that customers like myself won't again seek out free alternatives when the convenience no longer justifies the cost... Oh, and to anticipate the criticism that customers pay for music to "support the artist," let me just say that if I wish do so, I'll go to a concert. If the artist is no longer touring, they're probably either already rich, broken up, or washed up. In any case, I have no desire to be supporting them.
I heard of this Russian-based mp3 online store called allofmp3.com (You can go to the English version by selecting the link in the upper left-hand corner). It seems pretty cool and it's licensed under ROMS, which is Russia's equivilent of the RIAA. It looks really cheap since you pay by the megabyte. It's $5 for 500 megs of CD-quality music. I don't know how legit it is, but the reviews I've seen have been pretty positive. It almost seems to good to be true, but if the recording industry here doesn't give people what they want, then why not go elsewhere and get the goods? Afterall, what's wrong with shopping for the best price? I feel like the RIAA is like the designer department store that charges too much for products you can find elswhere for a lot cheaper. They can't get upset when people refuse to shop at their stores if there are other legit stores selling the same products for much less. Now the question is, is allofmp3.com a legit outfit? Does anyone use it and want to comment?
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
I agree that music reviews have their worth, but one mans trash is another mans treasure. I don't want to trust someone else's opinion of a CD and use that opinion to base my purchasing habits. I want to listen to the entire CD, as I do when I buy a new CD, and then decide if I want to pay for it.
Downloading mp3's allows me to do this, and I will most definately purchase a CD that I feel is good enough to buy. If it turns out that I only like 1 song, I'll just keep the copy I downloaded and delete the others.
Hopefully the music industry will realize that putting out 1 good song and 11 other crappy songs just doesn't work. I refuse to buy all that fodder to get one song.
I didn't *miss* that point at all. I spelled out the fact that they can and will raise prices to suit their desire, since competition will cause their profits to go down.
Believe it or not, businesses losing market share and profit is a normal process of capitalism. Just like death is a normal part of life.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
This comes as no huge shock to me. The big label execs have never figured out that this is about how easy to manage and maintain a digital collection of music is, not about it being free, for the vast majority of people. That's why they refuse to make an actually usability equivalent, legal alternative to what's already available. They don't get it, and they won't until it's to late.
Instead, they want to make this market into an exact clone of what they see the cd market being, and continue wading in the money they make, and spread around to all of the middlemen, corp shills and various greedy bastards that line the entire music industry.
However, just because they can, doesn't mean that everyone has to follow suit. They are going to see an increasing number of smaller artists being able to directly market themselves, and completely free of any fair use limiting tech (IE, pure format compressed audio, ala mp3, aac, ogg, whatever). These people will see that, while they get less sales overall (less huge piles of marketing clout, etc etc), if they can market themselves well (or hook up with a good, small, dedicated marketing company), then they get a much larger cut of their smaller sales, and in the end, more profit for their hard work. Less babying, less huge rockstar lifestyle, most likely, though.
Anyway, just this strange monkey's 2c.
Meanwhile, I'm sure the artists who rented the studio and spent a month recording the music don't find the joke so funny. If Slashdot was made up of musicians instead of programmers, the opinion of this whole website would be completely different.
As it is, everyone thinks they're fighting for artists when they don't know any and have never asked them if they wanted the "help."
They're talking about raising the prices, but they don't mention anything about the artists getting a bigger share of the take. Except for a select few, it looks like the majority of the musicians will still get peanuts, whether it's from traditional CD's or online downloads. That's why I have no qualms about downloading massive amounts of music.
I archive it, listen to it at my leisure, and when I find music worth listening to on a regular basis, I might buy it, or better yet, go see the band when it comes to town. I can think of quite a few bands that have made more money from me because of this and I can't think of any bands that have suffered because I download music.
I didn't miss that point at all. Just because I don't agree with their profit motives doesn't mean I'm a dumb socialist.
Believe it or not, losing market share and dwindling profit is a normal part of capitalism too. Just like death is part of life.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
RIAA should catch on that the on-demand world is the way of the future. Software providers realize this, the internet is on-demand, we have movies-on demand over our cable and internet. If they would catch on with the rest of reality perhaps illegal downloads would diminish and they might actually start showing a profit on their product. As consumers, we hold the ultimate power. However, that power is distributed amongst millions of people. If somehow a movement could be coordinated to flat out stop buying music then perhaps our voices would be heard! The music industry is lucky that the 'free music business model (p2p)' hasn't made it's way back into the picture. It seems that if the RIAA have their way there will be two options: Pay an arm and a leg for music and get more stuff you don't want, or download it illegally and gamble with the consequences. Personally, I either listen to the radio or Rhapsody's streaming audio. The world on-demand is the way of the future.
"Have you heard this new technology that lets you find out about albums before you purchase them? I hear tell that they're called MUSIC REVIEWS."
How does a "MUSIC REVIEWS" help me?
No wonder people download. There are shallow thinkers like you who are closing their eyes to the reality of the situation. If music is available free for the download, you can't raise prices, and you've got to offer better *SERVICE*.
Oh wait, just pass a law. That will stop downloading! Great plan. You ought to work for the RIAA.
The record companies, after bleating on and on about how much they are trying to protect music and musicians, reveal themselves for the profiteering bastards they are.
4. Change the laws (of physics)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Everything from the studios you rent, the mixers you hire, their assistants, the mastering studio, their employees, the tools you buy, the gear, the software, the marketing, the music videos, the airfare to interviews and so forth, etc. I could go on and on. There are a LOT of people involved in the making of a successful album."
Right. So what's the excuse for a "classic" Elvis album not being $1? After all, the mixers, the assistants, the mastering studio, etc etc were paid for before you were born.
No, admit it. The price of a CD has nothing to do with production costs (and I mean "production" in an economic sense, not a musical sense).
Stop trying to justify the unjustifiable. If you'd think about this you'd understand the costs you describe are real, but they are one time, and cannot affect CD prices after these costs are paid for.
Really. THINK.
"then you have no "right" to demand you only get one song."
Not in a legal sense. But in an economic sense, a company either gives into consumer demand or goes out of business.
If cars were only big enough to hold 2 people and costs $50K, consumers would demand bigger cars. They would do this by not buying what they didn't want, and if another competitor offered the car they really wanted, they'd buy it from him.
So move this to the CD debate. People want (a) lower prices (b) the ability to pick and choose their songs (c) The ability to loan songs to their friends to listen
Now with CD's copyrights would give the RIAA members a perfect *legal* weapon against competition. So *illegal* competition arises... file sharing.
The economic pressure is there either way. You can't change consumer demand simply by legislative fiat no matter how hard you try.
The record companies will either learn this or fold. But consumer demand is irresistable.
This seems like as good a place as any to throw this out... though I doubt it'll get modded up.
I will go on record as saying I am perfectly fine with record companies charging as much - or as little - as they like for their content, regardles of form. I am also perfectly fine with them negotiating with "the people" to expand their control of "their precious" with DRM, provided that the people get something out of it, too. The sword must cut both ways. Here is my proposal...
1.) Record companies may build in as many DRM restrictions as they wish to their material, mandate hardware and software support, and protect those with the full weight of the law. However, this system must note the date of copyright on the material (see below) and allow full, unfettered access to any material after the expiration of copyright. Material without such a copyright date must be defined by law to be immediately released into the public domain.
2.) In consideration for this, the term of copyright is abbreviated to 7 years, renewable once for another 7 years for a flat fee of $1000 USD per work, to be paid IN ADVANCE of creation of the work.
3.) All recording devices, word processors, etc. including all hardware and software must also be engineered to record the exact date and time that a creative work is first made, subject to the same strict restrictions against hacking, changing dates, et al. When pressing the "record" button, the decision must be immediately made as to whether to get the "standard" 7 years, or extend the duration to 14 years by paying $1000 (perhaps through a software challenge system). This choice remains active until the "record button" stops or 12 hours elapses, whichever comes first. Yes, this means something like mixing a song with multiple playbacks costs you $1000 for every track you lay down. Yes, it means a movie becomes prohibitively expensive to secure a 14-year copyright on unless you run all the cameras continuously. Tough sh!t.
4.) Hardware/software must be made so that when "digitally splicing" files into a single track, combining tracks onto a CD, or editing multiple takes into a single movie, the "finished product" bears the EARLIEST copyright expiry date on any of the individual files. IOW, if you combine a 14-year and a 7-year file, the aggregate file gets 7 years. If any of these "spliced pieces" is without this encoded copyright datestamp, the entire compilation is stripped of its copyright datestamp, and thus instantly placed into the public domain.
I have no problem giving people whatever control they desire over their content provided it passes out of their hands in a reasonably brief period of time. And by reasonably brief period of time, I mean that the material must pass into the public domain, have that new public domain material available for derivative works, and have those derivative works pass into the public domain, then have second-generation derivative works, and have the second-generation derivative works pass into the public domain within the average human lifetime. In otherwords, maximum copyright term must be less than 1/3 of human life expectancy... which means "free" copyright term must be less than 1/6 of human life expectancy. 7 years seems like a nice number to me.
Thoughts? Gripes? Please pick this proposal apart (other than "RIAA/MPAA would NEVER accept this" - I need solid, well-reasoned arguments from a philosophical "rational man" point of view).
--AC
I'm going to reply to that other "Labor Theory of Value" post of your's you linked to.
The statue that the man built behind his house is not necessarily the result of "labor". It could have been (and sounds like, of course it is just made up) artisan craft. However, you treat it for it's mere use-(or something detached that you think is use-)value, it's true value is in the symbolic. To claim that all "work" is wage labor is completely neglectful of the symbolic. You seem to have reversed the socio-historic of wage labor. Whereas originally those who worked as wage laborers were the alienated, you treat those who are NOT wage laborers as the alienated: "Nobody wants your straw statue", "deal with it."
I haven't bought a new CD in almost 2 years.
Nothing on the radio is worth spending that much
money on a CD. I bought a satellite radio receiver
over a year ago, and I can't tell you the last time
I even listened to the CD's I have. with over 60 commercial free music channels, talk, news etc, there is always something on to listen to. For me, it is definately worth ten bucks a month. If for anything else, NOT having to listen to those annoying automobile commercials LOL
>Care to elucidate on where you're hearing the rest?
I am extremely fortunate to live in range of one of the last, good, independent AOR stations in the known universe, KHUM (home of the "Little Feat Radio Hour") You can listen to KHUM online, and they have a new release show where they play most or all of new cd releases. These guys and gals are right out of Petty's "Last DJ." Give a listen.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I just checked the price of "Fly or Die" on the iTunes Music Store and the entire album was $13.99 and most tracks were
So I think the article may be incorrect. Though to me the disturbing thing is that lots of new albums with more than 10 tracks are NOT $9.99. Old stuff with 10 or more tracks are $9.99, but it seems that almost all the new stuff is more expensive.
I wouldn't mind paying 2.50 if you owned the music. No I don't mean download it legally, But that I own the rights to transfer said music to whatever medium I chose. I own that music and I always will until I sell it. In the old days people bought records, tapes, 8 tracks and these degraded over time. Now we have the new fangled CDs (not to mention Audio DVDs) and I have to re-buy the collection - ugh. I would like to start a company that sells rights to music that you purchase; therefore, once you buy the music you can listen, it, transfer whatever legally.
I absolutely think they "get it". They know with certainty they can completely screw the consumer in as many possible ways they can think of and completely get away with it.
they have congress in their pockets, they have the "major media" carrying their water for them, why would they not demand we all bend over?
just look at the price fixing "deal". I got $13....by rough calculation, they stole a few hundred from me minimum and only hada to give >5% of it back.
they get it just fine.
These people must be really, really, really stupid. If you jack up the price of music downloads, people are simply going to stop paying for the downloads and go back to the glory days of Napster 1.0. As my subject says, they're a bunch of greedy bastards. The kiddies on gnutella and limewire aren't gonna be the ones responsible for destroying the music industry, it'll be the moron execs (although the downloaders will be blamed for it in the history books, because that's the spin the RIAA Beast has given it).
According to the article, "Fly or Die" costs $16.99 on iTunes, but iTunes is in fact selling it at $13.99. Maybe iTunes was charging $16.99 before.
This may be higher than what some retailers are charging for the CD, but you can still buy the songs individually for $0.99 on iTunes. Only two songs are bundled with the album, but they are both over 7 minutes long, which if I remember correctly, is the threshold iTunes imposes for songs purchasable only as part of an album.
-B
Price differentiation could be a good thing for music. If Shakira is selling songs at $2.50 each, and a no-name band someone said was good is selling for .75c, which are you more likely to buy? Or, put another way, would you like have the new album by Limp Bizkit, or would you rather have a copy of The Bad Plus AND Ween AND The Gotan Project?
One of the problems with both music and movies today is that the amount of money invested into a project is not reflected in the price of the album or the ticket. This tends to encourage purchasing of content with the highest overall investment and the highest budget. What happens when that 100 million dollar action blockbuster is 10 dollars to watch, and that 50 million dollar action blockbuster is only 5 dollars? More people will watch the 5 dollar film, and the development cost of movies would go down. The same can be said of albums, where the cost of the Video, television promotions, magazine ads, billboards, and radio airplay, not to mention mixing, studio time, and producer costs are not factored into the cost of the end product.
I'm sure the RIAA would be just as happy with a solid revenue strem utilizing a broader cadre of acts, just so long as they were making more money that way than the old one. And graduated pricing is one step in that direction. Even they have to realize that more than 1 in 10 bands would make back their initial investment if cheaper production was encouraged.
The ______ Agenda
The writer has several articles related to the music industry. Most, if not all, are written from a pro-RIAA slant. Tell him what you think and wake him up to the facts. Email him.
People are only buying the good singles off albums because the price is cheap ($.99) relative to the price of the album ($9.99+), at least for how many tracks they actually want. So the first thing they do in response is raise the price of some albums to $13.99 (or 16.99)!??? That's backwards!
Seems to me they should be pricing the album based on how good/desiable it is, which should roughly correlate to how many good tracks there are, and try to make a price point less than total_number_ of_tracks * $.99, but more than average_purchased_single_tracks * $.99, in order to maximize the amount of profit off the shitty tracks. So the price of the full album should drop until (enough) people are buying the whole album instead of just one or two tracks... For each album there should be a ratio of singles/full downloads to maximize profit. Done right should easily overcome alleged 7.5% decline in made up numbers.
Same tactic. Move in, offer cheap crap at very low prices. Drive competetors out of business, then when there is no competition, raise prices.
After bleeding the town dry and destroying any hope of mom & pop stores ever making a comeback, shut down and leave town, off to slay another sleepy suburban town.
Behold, Walmart, slayer of towns...
...Get taken out of the income for the album BEFORE the artist gets a cut.
That's why some albums NEVER make any money...
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
I also recommend DT's Scenes from a Memory.
Wonderful album!
Why do people try to equate movie DVDs to music CDs this way? It's such a flawed comparison. Here are two big reasons why (and I'm sure there are others):
1. A movie will have made money at the box office; DVD sales are just gravy on top of that. Music isn't sold to you twice this way, you buy it on CD and that's it.
2. You'll get far more use out of a CD than you will a DVD. Think how many times you've listened to your favourite albums. Now think how many times you've watched your favourite films. Unless you're the sort of fool who wastes half his/her life watching Star Wars, Titanic or Grease every week then there's no comparision. With music, you get far more bang for your buck.
Please, stop trying to compare two totally different forms of entertainment in such a crude way. Just because they both come on a shiny 5.25 in. disc and they're sold in the same stores that doesn't mean they are equal.
By your rationale, all PC and console software should cost $10-20 too, but I think you're going to be seriously disappointed if you expect the price of new games to come down to that level just so that all the similar-looking shiny round things cost the same at your local mall.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Oxymoron.
theyll make more cash selling $0.25 to $0.50 than selling at $2.50 im sure its been said already in the last 300 or so comments
http://ipod.fresh27.net/
And that changes his argument how, exactly?
i stopped buying albums because of the reasons everyone knows:
1) shitty quality, mostly
2) astronomical prices
and now that we give the music industry another chance, they do the same crap again:
1) shitty quality (DRM locked WMAs in low quality); yeah, like i want to bind myself tighter to MS
2) high prices
go for it guys, buy your DRM locked files and pray that the day never comes, when you want to convert your digital music archive to the newest technology.
imagine the picture: your father, trying to get his beloved copy-protectedLP collection converted to CDs. what a waste of money.
and hey, let the industry dictate you on how many devices you may listen to your songs.
in my eyes no industry has least credibility than the music industry. and that's for a damn good reason!
these managers just never learn. they whine because they earn so less, but they have no problem to pay spears/madonna a couple millions. the worst thing is the fact that they want to enforce you how to buy/listen/use the products you buy from them, instead of selling audio files in unlimited copy-mode. i have no problem with purchasing a license, but i want to decice by myself where to listen to it and how many times i copy the track from this device to the other.
In the article Ethan writes: For months, digital-music services have been touting albums for $9.99 to entice more people to buy online. But Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store has been charging $16.99 for "Fly or Die," while Roxio Inc.'s Napster service sells the 12-song collection for $13.99. But he is getting facts wrong in his second paragraph. iTMS is selling "Fly or Die" for US$13.99 since the album was released. He goes on to suggests that purchasing a whole album will cost more than the individual tracks. Tracks on the store are US$0.99. While there are some tracks that only can be purchased with a complete album, purchasing that complete album does not make the price of the individual tracks go above $0.99. In many cases it's actually cheaper to purchased the full album that it is to purchase all of the individual songs.
But the part that *really* gets me thinking is... How much does it cost to make a movie in comparison to making a CD. That's where things get interesting.
Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions cost approximately 400 million to make (correct me if I'm wrong). It's possible to go out and get both CD's for $30, and possibly less if you shop around.
The most I've heard a CD costing to produce is Korn's Untouchables, running at 1 million (this is still ludicrous to me).
Yes, there are the music videos. Music videos are generally made for the purpose of having people buy that artist's CD. While some bands have creative direction on their music videos, most of them do not. I do NOT see it as creativity. I see it as marketing.
Marketing should *NOT* ultimately factor into how much something *should* cost. Just because a company pours $100 million into a product that costs approximately $1.00 to make, that doesn't mean that item should sell for $17.99. Especially considering that the people who made that product see so little of it coming back to them.
Then there are the bands that still don't get advertised that much. Their albums sell for the same price. WHY? I want more of my money going to the artist, rather than funding Britney Spears' next music video.
In fact, why are there even music videos? I don't care how an artist looks. And I won't buy a CD from an artist just because "they're hot".
Thank you.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Oh, it was me and most of the other anti-piracy folk, jumping from one side of the debate...
... to the other.
And now an angry voice inside my aching head is shouting words at me. Words like greed and hubris. And then nasty words that somehow form entire sentences about music execs and arrogance. No! Surely these words can't be true! They CAN'T! Can they?
If I am to pay anything - even a dime - then I want a hard copy on a fixed medium with no DRM encumbrances. Phillips Compact Disc Digital Audio® format (aka Red Book) is the only digital format for sale at major retail outlets - online and offline - that I know of which delivers what I am willing to pay for.
(MP3 delivers unencumbered access, but the quality is typically lower than I'd care to pay for, no matter what format or fixed media was used. The days when FM quality were acceptable for purchased music products are long gone).
Edith Keeler Must Die
...I thought that was just the Same-Sex bridery that was illegal..
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
I'm afraid the answer was price fixing, but thanks for playing. DVDs have much less stringent price controls, so nothing prevents a retailer from undercutting their competition. The same is unfortunately untrue of music distribution. You're also forgetting that they do sell the same music several times to you. I've seen people with the same album on vinyl, cassette and CD, and they'll probably get whatever next format comes out. There's no excuse for price fixing, and the music industry needs to get bitch-slapped by the FTC in a major way.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Stupid execs. That's the answer to everything, right? Raise prices! They think they're doing everyone a favor by offering consumers the ability to download songs, but... really, $2+ a song when the avg cd has 12 songs would make album prices, voila! $24!
*chuckle* People need to stop buying music. Seriously.
*goes back to downloading mp3s*
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I don't think anyone is missing the point, nor are people claiming it is *immoral* to raise prices on a CD (or music single), people are questioning raising the price at a time when the record companies are struggling as a result of falling demand and higher prices.
Like it or not, free downloads are the real competition to the record companies, and we can wring our hands all day about the morality of it, but the fact is that it is out there and record companies will ignore that outlet at their peril.
I think they'd be better off lowering prices, diversifying their product and offering extras that make people feel happy they bought the CD.
But raising prices seems like folly right now. I thought they might wait until electronic downloads reached a critical mass. Perhaps they want to kill off electronic distribution?
Under consideration is raising the price of online singles up to $1.25 to $2.49, or bundling less desirable tracks with hot singles.
This is exactly what lead to rampant music piracy in the first place. I am NOT going to pay $18 for a cd that has 5 songs that I like on it.
I have been reduced to buying a used cassette from a store for $2.00 and then downloading the tracks from Kazaa.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
hahaha, thats great
My tastes are wide ranging, I prefer listening to small label and local musicians. The city I live in (Oshkosh, WI) has many very good musicians and the best little coffee shop in the USA; The New Moon. Steve Smith and Buddies Buddys recently toured there. These guys are internationally known jazz musicians, Howard levy, and Avishai Cohen, are others in the same class that have performed there. They like playing there, the audience appreciates them performing, they sell CDs at thier performances. The New Moon can only hold about 70 people, the worst seat there is only 50 feet from the stage, the acoustics are great. At the break the audience are able to buy CDs and get them autographed by the musicians, and perhaps talk with them awhile, some of the local musicians discuss musical techniques with the performers. Other less known national, regional, and local musicians perform there also.
All the musicians that perform there make most of thier income by performing and selling CDs at the performances. Most make very little income from sales through store outlets like Walmart, Target, etc. Even a musicstore with a comprehensive listing would be hard pressed to have some of the excellent CDs I have acquired on inventory, or even listed.
Many musicians have CDs locally produced and sold locally, on thier own website, or on other music related websites.
I believe the BigLabels are dying, they are being disintermediated, they are struggling for survival, and will lose. What I see happening is tiers of websites, individual, regional, national, and international, that will distribute music. At the lower tiers are unknown musicians that need to be heard, at the top, well known (at least in thier genre) musicians that perform internationally. And most musicians will still make most of thier income by performing, (touring) and selling CDs at performances.
Oh yeah, I don't listen to PopTarts!
If at first you don't suceed, try RTFM or Man pages.
Examples: If you paid admission to a nightclub, some of that money goes to satisfy ASCAP / BMI. That money goes to all the members, even the musicians you hate. Hate rap? Well, too bad, you just kissed their ass. Hate Barbra Streisand? Tough. Buy ANYTHING advertised on radio, you are kissing their ass whether you like the music or not.
Bought stuff at a store that plays piped-in music? You guessed it! Some of your cash is going to gold-plated Escalades and coke, which I am sure these bastards find ways to deduct anyway at taxtime.
Many posts are talking about how the MPAA has it figured out, or at least moreso compared to the RIAA.
As some have noted, this is due to the fact that the theaters are where the money is made.
(PS - an exercise for the reader is to consider how a theater model might work for music)
But, as far as walking into the store and choosing between a DVD and a CD, many things are taken into consideration (esp. if you have piracy as an option)
Music: I could buy this CD, for about $16-20 which is a couple bucks more than this DVD, but instead I could go home and download the one song I really want (legally or otherwise) and take a hit in quality. Given the speed of my net connection and the price differential, it's far better for me to not buy this CD, and use other means.
Movies: I could buy this DVD, for about $10-15, or I could go home, get online, and pirate an approximately 700 meg version that will be of crappy quality (far worse of a quality hit compared to CD vs. MP3/Ogg/ACC), which will take me a few hours to download. Or, I could spend the money, get the sucker in a portable format (and off my HD), with immensely superior quality and all the bonuses. Yeah, that's worth the money.
If you consider that time is money, at minimum wage in CA ($6.75 an hour) you could spend 2 hours on DSL (if you're lucky) pirating a movie ($13.50) or buy it for about the same price. Meanwhile, a CD costs about 3 hours ($20.25) and is compared to about 3.5 megs for about 12 tracks, or about 42 megs, which comes in, if you're lucky, in about 30 minutes ($3.37). That includes the tracks you DON'T want. If there's only 3 that are good, it's about comparable to buy those on iTMS legally.
This isn't difficult math. It's just math the RIAA can't do.
I totally agree. In a way nothing has changed. Restricting what other people can copy has nothing to do with property rights, or even creativity rights. Because of copyrights, they were enabled to be abusive and monopolistic to begin with. Then when copyright enforcement became threatened they started to file tons of lawsuits to keep alternatives at bay while offering other download venues for cheap prices. Now that they have a market toehold they are leveraging copyrights to choke off alternetive distribution and raise prices as they do to finance it.
Moral: liberty is an is an end in itself, not pricing, not artificial markets, not unjust property rights, not distribution of profits, not creation of music, or even the artists. There are a lof of good sounding cuases that people can sell their freedoms down the river for, but only one major reason to have liberty - and that is to have more freedom in the future.
Conclusion: Anything less than the outright abolition of copyright monopolies is just going to delay the inevitable and make the situation worse.
You go on my friends list for having some freaking taste, unlike most people on Slashdot, who apparently buy mass-produced pop crap.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
What a band, until they sold out that is...
ask an mtv "reviewer" (for example,carson daily) what they think of the new joint effort of kid rock and britney spears.
beauty is in the ear of the listener.
I can only imagine what they'd think of Tinpan Alley by Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
I buy my CDs for $0.01 each! And I get 12 of them all at once! I'm sure there's no possible repercussions of this!
;-)
Surely this "Columbia House" place won't rip me off....
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
Looks to me like fishing for job justification on the part of music execs to me...
With CDs, you get a shiney little disc in a little plastic box with a pretty cover and lyrics or other crap printed inside, and that the publishers put up posters and displays in stores and so on has this psychological effect on people that makes them more comfortable justifying a $10 to $20 purchase.
With online music services, that psychological justification just isn't there. Computer users know how easy it is to download and share music--on the old Napster and Kazaa and such the direct cost was zero. There is no shiney object, no pretty cover--just bits coming in on a wire. Users cannot justify paying the same kind of prices for something that intangible.
Yes online distribution is cheaper but that is only the surface argument. Music execs are used to the pre-information age when they acually played an important role. They had to get the music produced. They had to distribute the media. They had to market it--let the public know where to go and get it. This was "real work" without the internet.
Now PCs are commonplace and the internet is a part of everyday life. The big players in the music industry are becoming obsolete in the same way typewriter makers all died off or shifted business focus. It's getting to the point where indies can record fairly good quality albums with "pro-sumer" level hardware, leverage the internet and modern media in creative and inexpensive ways and distribute music on-line without relinquishing ownership and control to a recording company.
The technology can is open and the worms are everywhere now, and whatever legislative barriers RIAA tries to shove through or "creative price adjustments" on-line music providers try to inflict on consumers will eventually prove ineffective as consumers are more fickle than ever. ITunes and Napster overpriced? Regardless of the UI they'll switch to Wal-Mart.com or simialr cheap competitor. They'll buy used CDs. They'll turn back to tune sharing. Copy protection and DRM is too easily thwarted right now and hairbrained schemes to introduce crippled technology (DRM-enabled music files, self-destructing DVDs, limited-play devices) will be ignored by the public. **Left to its own devices**, the market will determine the value in the end, not some coporate executive.
Raise the price to download a song to be $2.49,
Produce crappy sterile corporate "art" no one wants,
Blame pirates when your business plummets from lack of sales
They haven't been able to kill downloadable music by direct means, maybe this is their method.
Price it out of the market so their business goes down, whine about "pirates destroying the music industry", and get sympathy for more draconian laws
Steve
yeah. Except Kurt took a load of buckshot in his mouth. CmdrTaco takes a load of jism.
Anyone who would buy individual tracks on Dark Side instead of the entire album is insane.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
they say "the 5 major music companies discussed"
arent they acting like a trust? monopolizing the marketing, then banding together to get the most money for themselves by abusing the consumers...
I thought that was highly illegal according to several anti-trust laws...
Since when does RIAA member companies have competition?
...of buying/downloading tracks online to get exactly what you wanted; to purchase ONLY the songs I wanted to listen to and not have to waste my money on "filler" that I don't want? Now we won't even be able do that. We're starting to do exactly what they want us to do, pay for the music we download, and now they want to ruin that too?!
;)
Who the hell is running these music companys? I'm beginning to think it's just a room full of monkeys.
Random brainwashed RIAA marketing employee: (Opens door to boardroom filled with monkeys wearing sport jackets jumping about) Look at these figures! People are finally starting to purchase music they download online instead of stealing it!
Some monkey: oooooo-AAAAAAAAAAAHH!!
Random marketing employee: What? Fix prices on internet music too? Don't you think it's a little early for that?
Same monkey: AAAAAH-AAAHH-OOOO-AAAAAH-EEEEEE!!!
RIAA Employee: And you also think we should start making them download crap with every song just like with CDs?
Some other monkey: Pulls finger from butt and sniffs it.
Marketing Employee: BRILLIANT!
It was hilarious in my head, use your imagination
... you insensitive clod!
The nearest pay-per-download service we get is probably mycokemusic (licensed from OD2) which costs 99p per track, which works out about $1.82 US.
And you think you've got it tough!
If you saw the original Wall St Journal article, it was very interesting that the table they included had examples from all but one of the majors. Universal seems to be the most liberal in terms of DRM rules and the lowest in terms of price.
First define what you think is "good", is it indie, rock, rap, country, etc.?
Then find an independent radio station that broadcasts a stream on the internet.
Listen to the station and hear artists you may have never heard before, and some ones you have.
Subscribe to that radio station's mailing list and get daily emails of the playlists.
This provides you the opportunity to listen to a variety of music in the genre you like and discover great music with out having to shell out your hard earned money for artists that don't sound so great on the albums other 12 songs as they do on the radio or MTV.
Check out KEXP(in seattle). IMHO, they are leading edge in terms of great music.
There is thematic unity, progression, variation, and transformation on a theme, different styles (baroque vs a classical symphony), structure, etc. The same piece performed by different artists added additional insights and interpretation as well.
Not to sound snobby or anything but a classical music can be both something to enjoyed simply or an intellectual exercise if you want it to be.
Lastly, I know 10, 20, 30, 40 years down the line, I can still listen the the same Mozart, Paganini, Bach pieces I enjoy today. So may my kids. Would I enjoy Coldplay or Coolio 30 years later? Not likely.
I have a solution for the "bad money" problem that comes from spending money on artists who are then not successful.
Hire people with taste to make your decisions.
If the money you make is success ratio * attempts, then it's pretty obvious that if you *have* to have a minimum number of attempts, then the way to increase your income/decrease your costs is to change your success ratio.
-- Terry
I'm so glad to be Canadian. A court judgement north o' the border makes FREE music sharing legal. Goodbye napster! Goodbye iTunes! One of many reasons why I'm happy to be Canadian. Maybe the Americans will catch up at some point...
Great artists like Mojo Nixon have abandoned the entire thing, he retired because of all the crap they force down the artists throat, the customers throat and anyone who get's in the way of the MACHINE.
Too bad we must lose our great artists, and have to keep Brittany and Kristina.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
and still we download it for free? what could we be thinking? If the price went down (all the way) we'd still download it for free. :)
Madonna single: 5.
Radiohead single: 3.50.
So, higher price = more value?!
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
The POINT is, that the music industry are a bunch of greedy hippocritical chicken littles.
Now that they see it (Internet music distribution) really DOES work, it really DOES generate revenue...they want to milk it for more.
Kind of like the RIAA milking small webcasters for revenues that don't even exist yet.
Look, I do not begrudge anyone making a reasonable profit. The music industry IS a business. However, In my short 47 years, I have never seen an industry so antagonistic towards is customer base, and then have the balls to complain music sales are down, so lets raise download prices!
In other words, they slap us in the face daily, and then expect us to pay them for it...
I for one have no intention of becoming a masochist for these low life bottom dwellers
Anyway, thanks for the forum.
Scott (not quite so anonymous coward, just too lazy to sign up)
Sounds to me like these assholes simply don't get it.
I've looked into ebooks before and most of the time the ebook costs more than the real book does. I just don't get it.
If I am deaf and download music is the RIAA going to go after me? HA!
I'll STFU now. I think. Maybe I am still talking...
Why do people always get so worked up over issues like this? We do live in America, where economics will "usually" dictate the correct price. Even though some might argue, you will NOT die from lack of music. Just think of how much money you spend on things that are ephemeral, like your morning coffee, your cable subscription, or all those lap dances at the local nudie bar. Music you pay for (or don't) will last "virtually" forever. I still have CDs that I bought in high school, back when it was cool to pay for music. I know it sucks to pay for stuff, but someday, when you create something worthwhile, you'll understand. Note to self: Create something worthwhile so I know what I'm talking about.
We're looking at effect not cause. Look around people. The huge jump in oil prices, the recent jump in interest rates. The sudden surcharges across the board for product because of higher delivery costs. This is just one more example of a new inflationary trend.
Look at the current economics. Tremendous deficits, atronomical wealth leaving our shores, and a dollar which is right on the verge of going kaboom on the international exchange. As the Fed prints more money, the dollar's valuation goes through the floor (have you noticed the value of Bonds lately?) So to save the bonds market, the prime goes up (and believe me you ain't seen nothing yet.) Of course this causes the real estate and building bubble to explode, and put's millions or workers and thousands of contracting firms in bread lines next to the unemployed tech and factory workers. All of a sudden, we begin to see that the phrase Poppa Bush used in 1980, "Voodoo Economics", is not only appropos, but virtually precogniscient. The only thing trickling down in our current economic fiasco, is any hope that this debacle won't end up in a full blown economic global catastrophe.
I'm just as offended by the "kneejerk greedy" as the next person. That, and it's almost certain that the the greediest amongst us, will raise prices first to get while the getting's good. We must however notice the larger economic landscape. The smallest education in ethics, game theory, social morality, or even basic philosophy, would point out the insanity of slash and burn mentality in the arena of economics.
If we've learned anything over the last 20 years, extreme diets lead to disaster. We have a nation of fat, sick people. These rules are just as important for economics. A conservative, stable system is called for. A system that promotes ethical behavior, and punishes the "get rich quick" mentality so prevalent today. The system used to punishes people willing to gut the system to get theirs at expense of all others, we need to return to a economic system with strong and reliable ethical and moral distinctions.
Genda
This happened to me with a double live album I wanted to buy. I checked the price on iTunes and checked the price on Amazon and they were the same. Of course, I would have had to pay shipping from Amazon. I saw that their price was just barely below retail and I decided then that I would buy it at an actual STORE, believe it or not. I hardly ever buy CDs at stores anymore, and I've bought 1.5 GB of music from iTunes.
For this one album, I decided it would be worth the inconvenience and very small additional cost to walk out with the CDs that I could then rip into whatever format I choose, with liner notes and the whole nine yards.
But this was because the online version was just a tad cheaper than the store-bought version. I'll tell you right now. If you make them more expensive, or even the same price, as the CD version, you will absolutely NOT sell albums to me. Maybe individual songs (for not much more than 99 cents, by the way), but definitely not albums. $9.99 is a very good price. Keep it there for a few years and see what happens or you'll die an ugly death.
RP
The Who release two new songs w/ their latest compilation album. The songs kinda suck, but being a life long Who fan, I was going to buy them. I went to iTunes, queued up the songs, and then decided they weren't worth $1.98. I would've paid $.50, but not $2.
They are suing the competition, remember?
Nobody, anybody, everybody, that is who the competition is - individuals have taken over the RIAA's role of distributing and promoting music, that's why they are pissed - oh and they took the profits at the same time.
That competition is a part of why they are dieing, and like a drowning person they are in such a panic they drown anyone else that comes too close to them.
I remember periodically buying 45RPM singles at Woolco in 1980 for between $1.00 and $1.50. According to the bls.gov calculator that's $2.26 to $3.39 in 2004 dollars. If a single comes without DRM, I don't see what the complaint is about. If it does come with DRM, I don't know why anyone would listen to it unless they were paid a significant amount of money, since a good song with a good hook is like a drug.
Now notice that these ARE the starving artists that those that want to crush P2P talk about. Almost all of them have other jobs to support their art. The engineers tend to be full time, but none of them are rich by any means. It pays ok for a job that requires quite a bit of skill, but not a ton. These are the ones that need money, these are the poor and struggling.
They do not benefit from the music industry as it is now. It is designed to lock people like them out from major distribution, unless the labels decide they want to sign them on, which means reliquinshing creative and monetary control, as well as being unlikely. Even if they get signed, unless they become huge, it's highly unlikely they'll profit. The record labels, not the artists, are the ones making all the money under the current system.
Well the Internet is their weapon, and they can use it to fight back. With it their music can be distributed to the world, it can get some publicity, and people can discover them. It doesn't make them money directly, but it can lead to things that can. More importantly, it lets the world hear and appreciate their work. I don't know any musicians that are in it for the money, it's just not that kind of field. They are in it because it is what they love. Part of that love (I'm a musician too) is wanting others to share it. Playing a live concert for a crowd is a powerful feeling, when the audience shares your emotion through the music you create.
So please get off your high horse about the poor, starving artists. P2P is not what is keeping them from making money (or are you so quick to forget receant emperical studies by non-biased parties), it's the record labels.
so you'll pay, and now you'll pay for their recent "sales losses" and litigation costs, and you'll pay for the added "value" of mobile flexibility, and you'll pay for the right to listen to their music, and absorb whatever their costs are/were...
just the way a king has his way in his kingdom.
If you won't pay, they don't want you as their customer *anyhow*; they are not in business to cater to you "poor people".
I am now have peace with it all. In many cases only fools, but fools with a large disposable income, will buy their overpriced products. I know someone, layed off, who burned through thousand(s) from their 401k on CDs and DVDs. I personally cannot think of a single exception why you really want their product anyway; often noticibly poorly engineered and mastered; my wife and young kids have been without cable and CD buying for three years now and have gotten used to it. PBS is great, especially after Soccer practice, a brisk walk in the woods.
How much marketing do the record companies do for Elvis, The Eagles, Frank Sinatra, The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles these days?
Um. A lot.
-Waldo Jaquith
Popular music is not just a random collection of songs, it's ONE song that is being pushed, and then a puch of other different ones. Example: Evanescence (sic probably). My roomate likes it and was playing it for me in his car. I, correctly, identified track 2 (Bring me to Life) as the track from radio. Not because I listen to the radio, I don't have one, but because I heard the huge change from the rest of the album. There is an additonal MC that you don't hear in any of the other songs, the style is somewhat different, and it's mastered different, and hotter (to the point of distortion on good speakers) than the rest of the tracks. On examination of the CD, turns out a different engineer was responsible for that track.
So what you have is 10 tracks of the band, and then one track of what the music industry thinks is popular and is played all over all the time.
The raido track is, of course, as homogenizied as possible. The music is limited all to shit as to have no dynamic variation, it reminded me of Linkin Park very strongly, and was genereally less interesting musically than the rest of the tracks.
So do what I do, say "fuck it" to popular music. Get yourself a copy of the Carmina Burana by Carl Orff as done by Orchestre symphonique de Montreal. You want a solid bunch of music? That's it. The divine ecstacy, life, death, pain, pleasure, it's all there. Even though it's in Latin and German, you can feel the power.
There's also a big, and every growing, indy movement. Check out some of the stuff that never makes the stores. Much of it sucks, but some is quite good. One of my co workers (we're IT types) is in a group called Project Argo (http://www.projectargo.com/) which is some cool dance music if you are in to that kind of stuff.
So fuck the big music industry, there is still real music out there, despite their attempts to crush it, and the Internet can help you find it.
Video games take 1+ year to develop, with teams that can consist of up to 100+ people, working more than 40 hrs/week nonstop busting their ass. They all probably needed a pretty decent eductation too. Finished product costs $50-$30, and will almost eventually go down to $20 or less. Movies (even though the RIAA is pissing me off too) take close to a year to create, can have a cast of 1,000s, and even have to pay over priced actors. Yet the finished product only costs $5 at the theatre, or $17 for your personal copy, complete with bonus goodies. But if Britney takes her time and makes two really good songs (which should take like, what a month, for not even a dozen people), then she fluffs her CD with 8-9 other crappy tracks, then a few remixes (we call it reuse in the software world, cause it's really cheap), I should pay $16. And to top it off, there isn't even anything to use with my eyes except for the little shitty CD booklet. The truth is music is OVERPRICED, way OVERPRICED!!! Start selling it for a nickel per track and I'll start buying, cause that what it's worth!
Actually, this is sadly true...
This is why I keep debating whether I should tell everyone I know about it, and hope the company uses the extra revenue for better servers/more bandwidth, or just keep it to myself and hope no one else finds out about it.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
But, it is sometimes those "less desirable" tracks that are the interesting ones in the long term. They may not be as catchy as the ones picked for hits, but they can be more complex or innovative or otherwise worth listening to. In fact, it has been my experience that if there is only one track on an album worth listening to, that track usually isn't worth much (evaluated over the long term) and the album won't bear up over time. On the other hand, sometimes the catchy songs end up sounding like crap in the long term and those others that you only hear because they're included on the album are the most worthwhile.
This consideration makes me wonder a bit about the long term sensibility of single-track purchases. Not just "is it good for the artist?", but "is it good for the art?"
Actually, MORE than fair in the case of soundtracks. A movie soundtrack is paid for in movie production costs. If the song is an existing song, as some of the ones in the Matrix are, the company making the film pays a fee for it's use. If the music is orignal, as much of the music in the Matix is (viva Don Davis!) the composer and musicians are paid to do it as a work for hire.
So, since the music is already paid for, it would stand to reason that it should be cheap to the consumer, perhaps even a complimentary part of the DVD. I mean, you are paying for the movie, part of which is the music and part of the cost of which is the music. Thus it seems you HAVE paid for the music.
How then can you claim ANY logic in a soundtrack costing MORE than the movie itself? The music was paid for by that movie. Any soundtrack sales are gravy. All the production costs have already be recouped.
Soundtracks are the most clear example of the gouging in the music industry there is.
Guess this is their way of destorying their on-line sales so they can drum up numbers that have P2P as the Big evil.. They just whined about a 7.9% drop in CD sales.. what % was due to their on-line ventures? From their view point 0..
Gah This is just makin me nutz...
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
It only takes a second to open iTunes, enter Fly or Die into the search field, and find it's price for the album is $13.99! The same as Napster, but yes, still more than Amazon.
I won't say the sentiment of the article is wrong, but the facts are blown out of proportion.
I, to date, have not bought an MP3 online. Why not? Because I don't want to pay the same price as I would pay for buying the whole effing album if I'm not getting a damn thing but a 2 meg binary string. An 11 song album would cost around 11.00 to download, and about the same in the store. Some are more some are less, but the fact remains.
So basically, it costs the same for them to print a cd, print the liner notes, buy a jewel case, shrinkwrap it, send it all the way around the country, and let the seller mark it up 20%, as it does for them to let me download a copy in an inferior format onto my own damn media.
And now they think they're making too little? They want to bundle songs? I just told my cable provider to shove it for their crappy bundling.
Fuck them. I'll never buy another damn song if they're going to keep acting like morons. I'll feel better about myself if I spend the money on crack and underage prostitutes.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The one cool stones album "sticky fingers" used to have an actual zipper. They removed that.
And then "black and blue" had the coolest commercial...it had a woman tied up and looking beat and the caption said "I'm black and blue over the stones newest album".
Man, the stones used to have stones. Now they're the grandpas.
The music industry just doesn't fucking get it do they?
As someone with more than $400.00 spent in the iTunes store legalizing my collection of MP3s I have two words for ANYONE who thinks I'll pay more for a digital copy than a physical copy.
BLOW ME.
The physical copy doesn't come with restraints. I can play it anywhere, anytime. I can rip it to OGG, MP3, whatever I want, and take the results with me wherever I want, and I'm happy.
I put up with the DRM in iTunes only because it is a convenience that is also *CHEAP*.
You start charging more, the convenience goes away, and I'll either a) steal my music or b) buy the CD.
Either way they fuck themselves.
My reality check bounced.
Can you blame them? Really, can you? Let me give you an example of how they think:
Picture this. You own a company that manufactures shit. No, literally shit. You have a warehouse full of dogs taking a dump, and you collect it and package it. You have a few specials on MTV where you put some shit on the stage, wearing sparkles and exposing its midriff. And maybe have it endorse a few products. And people are breaking your doors down trying to by more shit. You can't keep up with demand. Then, one day, some enterprising young college student looks in the toilet before he flushes it, and figures out "My god, here's some shit for free." Sure, it's not necessarily the same quality you get when you have a whole warehouse to select from, and sometimes it gets, er, damaged in the processing, but darn it, it's free. Now you're the executive of ShitCo. And suddenly, after nearly half a century, people don't seem to want to buy your shit. They'd rather use their own. You're losing money. What do you do? It can't be that your stuff is too expensive, or not good enough - they couldn't get enough of it in the past. So, you do the only thing that makes sense - you raise prices. That'll increase your revenue. It's the only thing that makes sense.
There, now you know how it works.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Why is it that the recording industry thinks an album is worth the same as a movie? Isn't there a lot more cost in producing a movie vs. an album? Doesn't a movie INCLUDE a soundtrack? Time to support local bands and skip the national music scam from the labels.
The RIAA is kind of like the UN, a lot of groups are involved, but the big boys still decide on policy. The main reason I believe the RIAA is fighting so hard, is not that it is some old curmudgeon that is has waited to long to adapt, but rather that if music goes completely online then everyone will be on equal footing, the indies will be as pervasive as the majors. It will be increasingly unlikely that cash cows like Britney Spears will come about.
Long story short, complete(or mostly) online music will cause loss of marketshare for the majors.
This is good for the consumer, but bad for Sony, et. al.
It'd be doable with a lot of bands today whose songs sound exactly the same. Don't believe me? The linked file is an MP3 of Nickelback. In one channel, the song "How You Remind Me," and in the other is the song "Someday." Be sure to turn off any virtual surround sound effects you have on. This requires stereo to observe the full effect. If you don't want to download the file, the conclusion is simple. Nickelback's songs are basically identical in form except for some lyric changes.
I just don't understand why anyone is buying music in a lossy format. Yes, it's compressed so it's easy to download, but once you've downloaded it you're stuck with a 192 kbps (or lower) mp3 file.
Aside from just sounding worse than a wav or flac file you're also stuck with that format (unable to update to newer codecs when they're released) unless you want to put 1 lossy format on top of another.
If the prices go up it's just one less reason to buy these files, and if they're going to bundle them with filler anyway I might as well just buy the album. Right now, it's not that much more expensive to buy straight from a label's website than it is to buy mp3's for a buck a pop.
Oh well, just one more reason to avoid artists under the RIAA's influence..
Raising prices of a product to increase demand only works when the product in question has a quality that is difficult to determine. For instance if a consumer is given the choice between two music players that have the same storage capacity but one costs $50 more than the other they might assume that the one that costs more is better. They do what could be called gambling economics, they know in their minds that better quality materials cost more than lesser quality materials so it's likely that the more expensive product has gold wiring instead of copper.
Of course once you've played around with technology long enough you know that price can be determined in odd ways that subvert the ol' concept of supply and demand.
Music, and perhaps most art, has a value that is rather easy to determine. You listen to the thirty second sample or you hear it on the radio. You know whether you like it or not and chances are you look for either the cheapest, quickest or easiest way to purchase it.
Now I suppose some music stores could start offering different compression techniques that claim higher audiophile quality. There could be some appeal in that some people want to believe they're getting a decent version of their favorite song. Who knows maybe we'll start seeing "iTunes with Techron" or some other appeal to a higher quality compression product. I doubt it though, you're already accepting lossy when you start purchasing online and I think what Apple understands is that people want cheap music that's easy to listen to. Cornering the audiophile market with .aiff downloads wouldn't just lack profit (like iTunes does now) but would be a pit that money would actively be poured down. At least for now.
Bend over and lube up here come the record companies again.
I guess the legal downloads of songs has become too popular and now we are being punished for not buying the "filler" songs that are on every CD these days.
I think the record companies going back to their "shoot their foot off policy" of making money. You have to give them credit for making some of the stupidest business decisions in history and still keeping their jobs.
Get your P2P programs fired up, it is time for free music again.
the music industry proves overall, that they are an *industry*, hell bent on manufacturing entertainment to the clueless masses - and they know that they can maximize their profits so long as the masses remain clueless.
:o)
So long as you have both 15 year old girls and their 40 year old moms will both listen to Brittney Spears; or 40 year old dads who will tune into Top40 Clear Channel Stations, and give their kids the money to buy these CDs in a vain attempt to be "cool", the industry won't change.
So long as people *want* to be entertained by *utter crap*, the industry won't change.
The only way around this is, first of all: Don't go off and support the Kazaafication of every CD there is. Instead support Itunes or the Barnes & Nobles stores that let you preview music. (Some Wal-Mart stores do this to, but I'm kinda against those because the previews are really just the same ones you've heard on the radio. When I want to "preview" I want to at least hear 30 seconds of *every* track.)
Secondly: support your local bands. Go to the local clubs. Get out, quit listening to the radio or watching cable TV, ffs. It's all controlled either by AOL/TimeWarner or Clear Channel anyway. You're just being fed. You wanna lose weight; go out to the downtown area, walk around, visit some of the local scenes, join some online discussion groups, or find peeps that are into some of the lesser known labels. Join a street team or something, pass out stickers. Stickers are always cool.
Just, in the end, stop feeding the machine, and get all your friends to do the same. Start hosting WinAMP radio stations on the Internet and give people something else to listen to. Give people options, and remember: vote with your wallet. Where there is no market, there is no profit.
Try not to let life get in the way of living.
YHBT.
YHL.
HAND.
If you've replied to this post, you have been trolled. Judging from the amount of replies he's gotten, I'd say he's been quite successful.
if you can read this, then you have all you need for free music, movies etc. things like shareaza, newsgroups are free for alls. in many cases you can get the actual cd/movie weeks or even months before its released to the paying suckers.
do the math. the average "pirate" has over 1000 "compact discs" worth of music. that equates to about 12 thousand dollars, enough to buy any car out there. sure cars cost more than this, but it's only price fixing. cars used to cost 4000 bucks for a badass, ton of horsepower rocket. it is true that a product will cost the most to produce duing the initial phase, but after assembly lines, slaves in chiwanamerixco and other things are established, this cost goes way down. so why has the price of cars gone up by 1000% instead?
another point to consider is that downloading free music may be perfectly legal, even if it is copyrighted. if the majority of the population is doing it, then they have condoned this activity. this would constitute a vote by proxy, or the will of the people.
record industry? labels? executives? artists? these all sound very strange to me. what color is the sky in your world?
soon we will all be executives, raising the prices on each other all day long. but wait, what about the slaves? well excepting the odd pirate, most of them are pretty docile and will work for food.
God, I hate the RIAA and the big music corporations.
I thought prices on MP3s were supposed to go DOWN not UP. What a bunch of jerks.
I guess the consumer exists as partly to blame. The people actually BUYING downloadable music do not even realize that the music quality is not as good as CDs. Furthermore the files have copy protection. Can someone please point me out the attraction of this?
CD: $20.25 / 100 (hours of listening) = $0.20 per hour
DVD: $15.00 / 12 (4 times watching + features) = $1.25 per hour
I sit and listen to music any chance I get. The most I've ever watched a movie that I own is maybe 4 times. A PS2 game would come close to the approximate cost of a DVD (per hour) if you were to think of the time I've been playing Need For Speed... :)
We have to pay 20 Euro's (24 u.s dollars) for it here in the Netherlands :(
Never judge a song by 30 seconds?
we started downloading because they were starting to rip us off. I download religously off of itunes because I don't mind paying 99 cents or 75 cents a song. If the price on itunes ends up going up to 1.25 a song then the whole point of downloading will be a waste of our time. I don't want to pay for a 15 dollar cd online if I am not going to get the cd/cd cover. Don't JACK the cost. oh please oh please. I also don't want to end up paying more for actually getting the an actually cd at my local best buy, sam goodie, etc...
Yeah I really wonder as well what albums people are listening to where they think that 75% of the album is crap?
Anyway, I don't use P2P because I only want the few "good songs"...I use it because I don't want to pay $16 or whatever the price is in the States, and also to check out new music that I would otherwise not be exposed to.
The text says:
..."
" Unburdened by manufacturing and distribution costs, online music was supposed to usher in a new era of inexpensive
That's not true. Packaging and shipping is not what determines the high price of music CDs. They spend less than a dollar to get the CD to the store. All the rest of those $13 is a price-fix, monopoly style.
Online music is not going to bring cheaper music for as long as the middle man remains in place. When artists start selling direct, then we'll see cheaper music. And the artists will see more money as well.
No, it's not. It's up to the seller, dude. It's the package they want to sell you. If their package is a CD with 12 songs on it, then you have no "right" to demand you only get one song.
you are correct, i as a buyer have no "right" to demand someting from the seller (unless its specifically stated in a contract or something similar).
BUT, they also have no "right" to demand my cash, which they quite obviously do.
the music industry is almost the only which gets away with providing crappy service and complaining about lost revenues (and even receiving government support).
also your analogy sucks. one track is a complete work of art, so staying with your picasso example it would be the same as telling picasso you only want ONE of his paintings instead of 20.
and please dont tell me that an album is a complete work of art, because if it would be so, radio stations would only play whole albums and not just single tracks.
so my point is: if *THEY* want *MY* cash they need to give it to me in a form i like or else i will spend my hard earned cash somewhere else. *THEY* also have no "right" to complain about me not spending my money on their products.
i need to convince my employer that i am worth the bucks he gives me, and the same counts for *EVERYONE* out there.
want my cash?
convince me you have earned it or else buzz off!
(yea its hard but thats just how capitalism works)
-- Karma: beyond good and evil - mostly affected by posting political
Why not? After all, they'll buy a topheavy, rollover-prone SUV with reduced stopping distance in the belief that it makes them safer.
...only the names are changed. it's funny how civilized people make the very same mistakes they used to despite back then.
back when?
in romania, about 15 years ago, while it was still under communist ruling, ceausescu (the "general state seceretary", a.k.a. the president) used to do the same with books in every common store: there were very few good books, which were overpriced and bundled with bad ones.
Lord of the Rings (New Line Cinema), probably being the worst culprit.
As for online music: My wife and I each own an iPod and we enjoy shopping for music at the iTMS, mostly due to the low, 99 price per song.
If that price were to rise anytime soon, they had better add more content to the music downloads, such as complete liner notes (an embedded PDF is fine) or printable images that can be used to print my own CD Jewel Case front and back cover.
Inflation is one thing. Raising the price just to raise the price is just gluttony.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Wouldn't artists prefer to work on and sell one song at a time? Why not? Why wait until you have enough material to satisfy the **manufacturing process requirements**?
IF they would keep the tracks to .99 a piece and FINALLY get ONE FREAKING place to take your pick of music from, I'd stop downloading it.
BUT, here we go again. Good god the level of stupidity in the music industry is mind boggling - although I guess not THAT stupid, as they've managed to maintain CDs prices for this long.
I just cannot believe they don't see the outcome of this - I REFUSE to buy crap music I don't want. THAT's the main reason I don't buy CDs. Well, back to my 4mb downstream cable modem...
> I hear tell that they're called MUSIC REVIEWS.
I hear tell that a lot of them are COMPLETELY FAKE. Go look at reviews on a lot of big sites, notably Amazon.com. There are nearly-identical reviews praising the CD for being a breakthrough performance, or whatever buzzword is hip. Reviews are are as trustworthy as the verifiable source. If the source is a trusted friend, great. Unfortunately, "on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog," an RIAA lackey, or just some lame fanboy that posts a thousand 10-star reviews for his favorite crappy Emo band.
Also, as others pointed out, you will find a positive & glowing review for almost any album available. Does that mean I'll like any of them? Nope.
You got two songs, so the price is a little closer than what you imply: two songs off of iTunes is $1.98
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
The college station in my sig (WMBC for those who have these things turned off) gets in mostly non-major-label music. I'm not currently very involved with them because of the current management (which will change in a month or so), but I still listen to what people play on their shows. I've found a great many excellent bands through this station.
It's true that we don't often play the whole CD. Some tracks will be profane, and some will not be as good as others, so we have people review the CD and pick out recommended tracks. But DJs are only restricted by the profane songs. It's even better if you can become a DJ or volunteer at a station, because you can probably review music for them and/or come in and listen to the CDs.
I've also found good bands by going to shows. You can often go to a show, pay $5-10 for 2-4 bands, and find one you really like that you'd never heard of before.
Of course, the latter depends on the music scene in your town, but the former only requires Internet access (and WMBC, at least, has a 24k option for those on dial-up).
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Yes, but:
1. It's still less than major label music.
2. On "indie" labels, the artist gets a much higher percentage of that CD cost. Additionally, I haven't heard of indie labels putting the same time pressure/creative control on bands that the majors do, and IMHO, this results in better music.
3. These labels often have at least 1 track freely available online in an unrestricted (well, MP3) format. Check out Archenemy, Touch and Go, Southern (mmm...El Guapo), etc.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Problem is concerts generally promote CD sales.
On the other hand, there's this thing most people call "radio" - but we need a radio that the user controls, not the station manager. Almost like satellite, but I've yet to see a satellite implementation I like.
Here's one of many models for the RIAA to embrace tech:
1. Fund a methodology (like radio) to play songs the user requests. Subscription a possibility. True, it can't quite be full control (for this would be superior to CDs (which is itself a new model)) but it could be Tivo-esque control (thumbs up, thumbs down, and generating personalized playlists from there).
An important aspect to this is to also get the name out there tied to the music. If my dash displayed the artist name / song title of the tune playing that I liked (or disliked), that would be good. Eliminate the station identification/"That was blahblah by blahblahblah, up next.."
2) Encourage the purchase of songs over a medium like iTMS -- one that interfaces not only with your PC, but with your satellite account -- use the portability of radio waves/Internet to all devices. Like iTMS, CD-burning-DRM-things can be included (I don't mind the iTunes model)
3) So now what do we have? An account on a server that plays you the tunes you bought at your control and demand, but also acts as a personal radio DJ. The account space is trivial, maybe a quota of a few megs for each account, but those are only needed for playlists and lists of files owned, etc. Add in a many-terabyte archive that it all links to, holding all the perfect WAV masters and streaming in realtime....
4) Now you're paying a buck for the right to burn/transport a song, and even hold onto it if you let your subscription go.
I dunno, maybe I'm thinking too optimistically. But the point is to give the buyer power (like Tivo does for, say, DirecTV) over the radio. Add into this mass portability and preference memory, and I know I'd buy it.
And the RIAA certainly has the investment money for this idea. The profits could roll in...
Not classical per se--but clearly symphonic and often memorable.
My appreciation for his work began with STAR WARS. Though my filmusic appreciation spread to other composers and to real classical music, the output of Mr. Williams has truly earned a place in music history and should be preserved for future generations as have the works of Wagner, Mozart, and Beethoven have been preserved and passed down through the generations past to the present day.
For once we get a break and finally get songs legally for pretty cheap.
Now what do they wanna do? Raise prices? Don't they see that this is why people started downloading in the first place? CD Prices were high.
O well, if they do raise prices. There is always Kazaa & Emule.
$>man woman
$>Segmentation fault (core dumped)