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RIAA's Nasty Easter Egg
Bruha writes "It appears the RIAA is being very low key about the fact that the five major labels think that 99 cents per song is too cheap, and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song. I was a huge fan of the 99c per song, but if they think that they can raise the price on me just because I don't buy full CDs anymore, they've got another thing coming. Suggestion: make good CDs, and maybe I'll buy the whole thing."
That would put an eleven track cd at $33 depending on exactly how high they get the rate to be per song. As the article points out no online store is really make a profit as it is, if you increase the price of songs some stores will simply have to shutdown. By driving the price up I would bet they will make less money, as it will just make it more worthwhile for piracy. Someone might not mind paying $0.99 a song and have it instantly, but if you make it three times that many people will find other ways to get their music.
I kinda agree, there really haven't been any really origional bands in the past several years worth putting $13 down for a couple songs.
This is ridiculous. At some point the RIAA's proverbial bubble is going to burst and the fat cow will collapse under its own weight.
Just let them kill themselves. Something else fill in the vacuum created by their departure.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
Are there only four songs on the album? I'll pay $.99. I won't pay $3. Listen up, RIAA.
If the market will bear $2.99 CD's then they have the right to sell at that price. Don't like it? Don't buy. Unfortunately for you, there are millions of people who WILL pay the price.
Of course this was going to happen.
If you thought it would last, you're either really stupid, really naive, or really really optomistic.
RIAA was fined for price fixing to make more money. They are all about money, not music or entertainment.
Putting the romance back into necromancer.
Nice.. /me opens kazaa
When you download you just get the tracks you like.
I think the music industry is afraid thier "bundling" days are over!
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Thats why i don't buy them. You should be able to buy just the song you want, and you should be able to buy it direct from the artist. That way they could set their own prices.
Labels are like Microsoft, all about getting some more money...
Jeoin
Record company execs: A bunch of greedy fucking bastards who were among the first against the wall when the revolution came.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Trying to generate an unbiased opinion : without name-calling, there are a couple of huge issues here. It only costs a tiny fraction of the money record companies receive to make good music (even with groupies and band buses and the works it is still a pitiful few million compared to the billions groups that get all this take in).
And second, how can they compete with free? The threat of a lawsuit is almost insignificant compared to the ease with which one can grab pretty much anything they like.
So how is this going to play out?
well, the worst deal i've found on itunes has been .99 for a 4 second interlude track (janet jackson, i think). the RIAA needs to either make better music, save money by stop paying off radio stations, or die. well, it doesn't need to, but it would be nice.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
Well, the RIAA, like every other cartel, just wants to charge what they think the market will bear. People don't pay $20 odd per CD anymore, or at least, they perceive the price to be too high.
So, after the initial offering, they'll try to gouge more money out from the consumers of online stores. Why don't you think that for some, $1.25 is still going to be worth the price ? If you don't like it, vote with your wallets and don't buy it.
What, you don't think CDs started at $20 a pop, did you ?
maybe this is an attempt to increase piracy thus they can sue more people?
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
don't know when a good thing is staring them in the face. Why not force their artists to sell ALL their songs ONLY for 99 cents a song? (Won't happen, but still.) Raising the prices of these songs will simply provide a similar reason to the original exodus to Kazaa/Napster. They're winning people away from filesharing, and if they go through with this they're sending them back.
i wonder if the jackass who broke itunes has any part in influencing this decision.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Get together, purchase the tools or access to the tools to create music directly, make CDs, and together, negotiate to sell them to stores.
You don't need any RIAA "representation" - your music is yours to do what you want with. This is your life, and the lives of countless other artists - so work with other artists to cut these brain-dead suits out of the picture finally!
Ryan Fenton
Isn't this a duplicate of this? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/08/215825 0&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=141&tid=188&tid=95&tid=9 8&tid=99
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
that's such a rip off...aren't they making enough already? go ahead and do that and lose all the support you've already gotten for downloading music legally. it's like they're too stupid to see that it's working very well how it is now for .99 cents and they're going to ruin it by themselves by having a price hike. i hope they do it and lose all the support they once had. then they can start pointing fingers at everyone but themselves
I think that we need to accept that although selling songs online will make money, it won't ever be what it was at the high-point of CD sales. Instead, artist revenue should be primarily driven from selling their music to radio stations to play and from concert ticket sales.
Maybe this means that musicians no longer get to make millions of dollars a year, but I'm certain that just concert sales can still put major bands in the very-comfortable-to-lavish lifestyle range.
L.A. Reid went to the Mercedes dealership a few weeks ago and was only able to afford the mid-range model. He has been a recluse ever since.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
SO they are pricing themselves out of the market. Stupid, but unless the shareholders can proove that the directors know its stupid there is nothing that can be done to stop them. Luckily I sold all my stock in major record companies a long time ago, and invested in some smaller companies. I suggest you all do the same.
/. then you deserve to be ripped off)
(I suppose I'd better say that this is not financial advice and if you beleive an AC on
Seems like a dupe to me...
This is a capitalist country! If you don't like one company's price, go to another company and buy their product instead! So if you don't like the RIAA's prices then go to... uh... hmmm... fuck.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Capitalism doesn't take away our right to whine and bitch. And this move, if true, deserves some whining and bitching.
Not to mention it's been covered everywhere else since the first time it was posted.
Yes those prices might be high but it's crappy music anyways. There's all kinds of great music that's free or darn close and every bit as good. Just don't worry about it, let them inflate the price and show em by listening to indi bands... or go to a church, live free music every sunday hehe.
Link to the old story
Here comes the mighty dupe ...
That is a HUGE increase!!!
I see, they get people signed up, then hike the price. And I thought the RIAA were trying to portray themselves as the good guys!!
I have no sig yet I must scream.
How do you expect those people to support their cocaine-sniffing habbits at 99c per song? It's an outrage!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I use itunes because my apartment blocks p2p traffic. However, I don't mind the price as I have purchased some songs that I have been wanting for a while, plus I never have to wait or search around for that song. I can deal with the limitations of itunes on what I can do with the purchased music. The only problem right now is selection. However, if at any time the price of a song goes higher than $.99, you can kiss my ass goodbye.
stop buying the lastest most popular tunes. Instead I buy compilations of music from a few years back, which sound great now. Stick with going for quality and your wallet will thank you for it.
Music like liquor tastes good after it has matured.
There are other, better ways to get music. We can still download illegally (Kazaa, Overnet, Bittorrent, FTP sites, Usenet groups, etc.). There's still no copy protection on music; we can burn all of the CDs we want. We can physically steal the music from stores. Or, my personal favorite...
Support smaller, independent labels and unsigned groups. There are a lot of labels and musicians that offer their music for a very low cost...or occasionally free.
If the RIAA wants to screw themselves, let them. I'll still have my music, and I won't be the one that suffers. :)
Goo goo g'joob.
I'm not poor, but I have much better things to spend 10 dollars on than whatever Britney Spears has moaned out recently.
These labels just don't "get it". Maybe people will abandon pirated downloads if they can get the legitimate version for a reasonable price, but not if the price is just stupid ($2.49 for a 3-minute song?).
The RIAA obviously has a severely inflated view of its own importance. Reality is going to catch up with them, whether they like it or not.
K
99cents equals 12 dollars for a damn cd as is an that includes NO PACKAGING and NO CD for goodness sake, the RIAA is a cartel...raping and pillaging the listers and musicians...raise the price? how about we STOP BUYING MUSIC. there are lots of great groups for free making money on concerts...ooooh also boycott clear channel...someone start a social movement to take down clear channel
It's too much work to get a real band together that can produce 50 great songs in a career.
think 99 cents is too high. Personally, I think about 50 cents per song would be the fair price for the average track.
the five major labels think that 99 cents per song is too cheap,
That's nice. Isn't there an agreement in place?
and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song
So a price increase of between 35% and 200%? Sounds great. Interesting how this new business model is suddenly so important, isn't it?
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
umm....didn't the RIAA just have to fess up a zillion $13 checks because they were found guilty of price fixing?
How is this different? (except that they have the balls to tell beforehand)
Fuck you man!
No need for editorial f*cking bait...
the worst deal i've found on itunes has been .99 for a 4 second interlude track (janet jackson, i think
... Brrr!
Thanks God, It could be much worse: imagine 3 minutes of Janet Jackson
as well as being a quite possibly miserable business decision, if the alternative for the consumer is piracy. However, looking at any other industry, setting prices per song should be 3 or 4 times as expensive as the individual songs would be on a CD.
It makes no sense to sell a $15 or $20 CD's songs, of which there are between 10 and 20, for 99c each, simply because in that case, there is no incentive to buy the CD. Volume discounting makes perfect sense, andhaving a cheaper alternative if you buy per song is bad business for them, as much as you want to complain about it.
There is altogether too much whining about the RIAA deciding that it has a legitamite, legal rights to profits they generate through their research, promotion, and effort. While they may be robber barons, or jerks, they do have a right to protect themselves from the market that wants to pay nothing.
The Information may want to be free, but it also wants to be expensive, and it is clear that although the paradigm the RIAA works with is unfair, and failing, the fact that they are attempting to re-work it to be usable with technology is not a bad thing.
OK, now that I've said it, you can mod this post to hell. I have the Karma to burn. And no, I don't work for the RIAA, but I decided that I can live without illegal music, rather than steal it, or help out the RIAA.
I'm a concientious
$.50 a track, 192kbit stereo is what it'll take to get me to buy my music. Until then I'll just drive around and listen to the dozen used CDs I bought five years ago. $1 a track is already too expensive for most of the music out there. In a perfect world we'd be able to pay a small subscription fee for access to all the music we want via audio on demand.
Can you imagine how popular XM radio would be if you could go online and set up a playlist of ANY music you want (and none that you dont) and listen to it from you car?
its called mute
Can someone (that doesn't work for the RIAA) please explain to me how this isn't price fixing and at all legal?
_______
2B1ASK1
I havent used iTunes myself, but I would have expected then to make allowances for track length....
Mind you, that leaves Meatloaf fans open to having to pay $10 per track since his songs are so long...
Do you get to see the track length before downloading the file?
I have no sig yet I must scream.
Only problem is nothing on the radio is worth recording.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
I really hate it when people say "When you start putting out decent stuff, then maybe I'll buy it." Face it, bub. You (and me) are in the minority. See, while *you* may think shit like Britney Spears and Metallica suck ass, the millions of albums they continue to sell firmly says otherwise to the millions of fans they continue to cater to. And think about the classic rock from the 50's and 60's. The Beatles were nothing more than a boy band for their era (ditto for the Monkees), and the more "obscure" Mo-Town stuff was driven by the same profit-chasing motivation that drives the industry today. Tastes in music is subjective, get that through your head. I think bands like Incubus, Limp Bizkit, and Rage Against the Machine are horrible, but I'm willing to to bet they have a sizeable audience here on /. as well. And judging by the fact that the music industry is still continuing to rake in cash hand over fist, obviously the $16.99 isn't a barrier for many, either.
.99.
/. jumps up and down and collectively (mostly) cries about something, it's a sure win for the other side. See iPod-mini, Howard Dean, and PATRIOT act. :P
The music industry may have just decided that there is more profit to be made at $2.99 rather than
See, one thing I've noticed is that whenever
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I bet there are a bunch of Indian artists who will sell me music tracks for .50 a track. Stick THAT in your crack pipe and smoke it, RIAA!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
you can't apply commodity logic to art.
There is no way to get the music of signed artists except through the companies they have signed for. If it's just about lifestyle, and not the music, then fair enough. You can choose a different brand. But if it's about the music, then tough. They have a monopoly on that person's / group's music.
People don't buy singles anymore because they finally figured out something i've known for many years - ITS NOT WORTH IT. Who on earth would buy a single? Get the album, it's more worth it, though I don't buy those either.
Most music nowadays is pretty shit, if you don't want to pay these prices - don't. I don't, I refuse to pay that much for a CD and I'm not going to pay to download them, because that's also not worth it, especially with these new prices.
It's simple, you either pay, break the law by downloading them illegally, or don't bother with the music, make your choice, I've made mine, which is to never buy a CD until they cut atleast 30% off of them.
It's sad that there's so many stupid people around that are willing to waste all their money on music, makes it hard to make a stand.
Ok, I think this story was posted before, but I want my rant so I am posting anyway...
Can anybody tell me exactly how this ISN'T price fixing? Eh? As far as I know, the whole iTunes thing is doing pretty well, and $0.99/song seems like a pretty fair price to me, considering how you just get a DRM'd file, no CD case or nice insert/booklet thing or whatever. This move just looks like the RIAA is some kind of cartel or something, who just try to keep prices as high as they can get away with because they have a stranglehold on the market... oh, oh, hang on, is that EXACTLY WHAT IT FRICKING WELL IS?
I'm truly sorry if there is some reason apart from lust for coinage that means they have to raise the price, like bandwidth has suddenly become more expensive, or the money generated does not leave the artist with enough money to live or something like that, but to this customer, it almost looks criminal.
Bastards, I'll laugh when you're dead, RIAA, and I'll never pay you a penny again.
They must feel awfully confident that Digital Rights Management would work if they will raise the price.
Unfortunately, 98% of the world's computers run a windows OS and make this very easy for microsoft to force on non-technical users.
Eventually, the techies running Linux will be forced to succumb.
Many CD versions albums that were originally released in the record-and-tape days have silent tracks that represent a gap of time on the original albums. iTunes will gladly sell those tracks one-by-one for 99 cents as well. It's just a matter of the database building happening on autopilot... if you want it, you get what you paid for.
No, capitalism would not allow the RIAA to have a partly-government helped strangehold over the music market and the right to keep draggin people through court without any real evidence of charges
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Excellent idea! Except....
Don't music stores have some kind of deal with the record companies or their distributors that they are only allowed to sell for the 'Big 5' labels? I could be wrong...
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
Not that i've seen. all songs are 99 cents, but verious audio books and transcripts have varying costs. i don't really use the itunes music store, i just wanted my free pepsi songs.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
Everybody download bit torrent before it's too late!
On another tangent, they may be shooting for the first reverse discount I've ever heard of: Since online distribution is competition to CD sales (their traditional business), they need to make CDs appear to be a better bargain. By increasing the price per song online, they have given CDs a discounted rate without ever really discounting them.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Support artists by going to see them in concert.
if they allow recording at the concert, do it.
get into bands that have an open taping policy....get involved in trading shows/live concert downloads and whatnot...
been doing this for years now and have some really really kick ass music, from a lot of kick ass bands....and all it cost me was either a ticket to a concert (which was worth it for the memories alone) and the cost of a blank cd (or 2 or 3)
And if they band sucks live - do you really want to listen to them anyway?
Seriously, what CDs are we listening to here? Sure, the top-40 CDs are single + filler... and it's our buying habits that have justified these economics.
Step a tiny bit off the beaten path and you'll find all sorts of well-known-but-not-huge-commercial-success artists with great albums, not tracks.
Sadly, this is hard because the RIAA was designed to crush people who try to sell their own music. They can wait out the independents forever, they have vast resources, and the indies have bills to pay, a van to gas up and another grungy bar to play while they try to get Sunrise Records to stock their CD... Thank god enough people demand records by non-RIAA bands (and the retailers are themselves large enough corps) that the RIAA can't intimidate retailers into complete lock-in...
Freedom: "I won't!"
It's amazing to me that musicians haven't connected all the dots to make something better.
No one MAKES recording artists sign with big labels or even smaller ones. The major labels don't own all the recording studios in the world. They don't even have the lock on distribution.
So what part of the current model is works so well that artists feel obliged to make use of it? And why hasn't someone built a better mousetrap? Why haven't YOU?
I know it's been quite a while since I've played a CD. I RIP to my iPod or my Mac. I listen to audio books when I drive. On the radio I listen to PBS and baseball. I buy most music from the iTunes store or, if they don't have it, I buy the CD.
Yeah, I buy music. I don't like stealing someone's creativity and I won't make up excuses for doing it by whining about the distribution process. BUT...I'd rather see a system that gave more bucks to the artist, it's just that artists don't seem smart enough to find ways to do that.
Why not make the prices fully variable and a function of the rate of downloading. All music would start at 0.99 per song. If the rate of downloading is high, the price would creep upwards until the rate of downloading slows. If the rate of downloading is low, the price would subside. Maybe the good songs are worth 2.99, maybe the sucky one are worth only 0.25 -- let the rate of downloading set the price.
And if you really want to use a market mechanism, then let people put in bids. When the price of the song drops to the bid price, the bidder gets the song. If the bidder wants the song sooner, then they will have to up their bid.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Or a trick to increase perceived damages?
I was amazed that they ever used the flat-rate-pricing. Who would pay the same price for Picasso as some amatuer work (regardless of merit). Or in young lingo, the same price for a T-shirt by Abercromie or by K-Mart.
In this case, its the fact that there is a titled track between real tracks. the standard silence isn't a part of the track itself - its how the disk is burned, tape made, etc. As far as i can see, she has at least 10 tracks under 15 seconds, and twenty that are under half a minute. She's a particularly good example because she tends to have these short tracks scattered across all her albums, probably from using the same production team over and over again.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
Well, considering that the RIAA still hasn't figured out that the ridiculous prices CDs sell for is one of the major reasons why illegal filesharing became so popular in the first place, I'm somehow not surprised that they don't realize this point, either.
I think maybe they've been milking so much money for so long that they don't realize how expensive their music is. How else could they not reason that if I'm not willing to pay $14-$20 for a CD, why would I be willing to pay something like $15-$40+ for electronic copies of the music where I have to worry about keeping it backed up incase of hard drive crashes and I don't get to have a copy of the jewel case, liner notes, etc.?
At this point in time, I only have legal music on my computer. I've been trying to take the moral high ground and stick with golden ethics even if it means giving money to these shitheads. Granted, they're still shitheads so I try to stick to (truly) indie labels, used CD's, and $10 albums bands sell at their concerts. If they go through with this plan, though, I think I'll change my operating mantra from "turn the other cheek" to "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and download a copy of every single filesharing program I can get my hands on.
"Can you imagine how popular XM radio would be if you could go online and set up a playlist of ANY music you want (and none that you dont) and listen to it from you car?"
that cannot happen, the way they have XM radio set up currently. all listeners get all feeds, and if you had an amount of feeds equal to the amount of listeners, their allready not-very-large-bandwidth would have to be split more-or-less equally amongst all of them, which means shit-audio quality for everyone. Course in a perfect world, you could stack infinite many symbols (and therefor have infinite many different listeners interpreting specific symbols) in one Hz(or less) of frequency worth of bandwidth, so mabye i shouln't be pointing this out. And in a perfect world XM wouldn't exist(because it is heavily underfunded by the RIAA, who wouldn't be around ina perfect world either)
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
>Do you get to see the track length before downloading the file?
yes
In a perfect world we'd be able to pay a small subscription fee for access to all the music we want via audio on demand.
For U.S. residents, that's already arrived. All you need are an x86 PC, $200 for a Windows license, and $10/mo for a Roxio Napster subscription.
This is slashdot.
/. story, well then that would deserve some modded-up attention-grabbing heads-up for the rest of us ;)
Look at you, you found a slashdot duplicate. And you wonder why you don't have any moderation points?
Had, instead, your discovery was something like, "This slashdot article is NOT a duplicate of a previous story down the page" about a
Cover your eyes and click this link!
stay in your chatrooms you little A.D.D. whores
def lepeord has one of the only cd's that love every song on..
I am sure their are exceptions, but there are alot of great songs I want, but don't buy because of the extra crud.
Jeoin
Let them give the masses another reason not to buy their pathetic product.
Let them give us yet another reason to download instead of buying a CD.
Let them bury themselves in more unused CDs than AOL.
See if I care.
Quality products create a pull marketplace where people actually want to buy the product without the mounds of marketing budgets. Maybe if they cut down on the Make-the-band, pop-stars, american-idol manufactured stars and put talented folk on open stages in central park, they could get the industry back in the positive spotlight.
Just my .02
99 cents is already too much to pay for something that is essentially no different from listening to the radio. The label doesn't have to produce or surrender anything tangible in the case of downloads. They are vapor. I am surprised anyone will pay at all for something that they could lose with a simple false keystoke, or mouse click.
How ya like dat?
$2.99 CDs?! Where do you live?
It seems a lot of people are saying how terrible the albums are... maybe you are looking in the wrong places? If you found music you liked then, by the definition, you would like it!
Music for Nations and Nuclear Blast, for example, have some albums were I thought the songs were consistently great. So I didn't mind paying 16 for them. Of course, when I buy expensive albums then I feel cheated.
In England, at least, Music shops often let you sample songs (HMV have CD Players with headphone with selected tracks playing) and some magazines often come with sample CDs, so there are ways of sampling music without downloading from your favourite P2P network.
It is a shame prices have to go up on this new model, but don't let it make you think all albums are bad!
- Jax
If. You. Don't. Like. It. Don't. Buy.
Which part of that do you not understand? The lawsuits are a nonissue, as the people being sued are violating copyright law.
It doesn't matter whether the price is $1 or $100, you shouldn't be buying anything from these online stores. Right now record labels are able to use their copyright ownerships to get both consumers and retailers over a barrell. The solution is to buy nothing from these stores until the music labels collapse, at which point bands can start negotiating directly with online distributors, which will mean a fairer price for everybody.
I haven't bought a new CD in ages and none of the money that I give up for used CDs will ever see its way to the artist.
If the RIAA wants to charge $3 a song, go ahead and let them. Hopefully they'll just price themselves out of business.
On that note, I'm going to give a big middle fingered salute to the RIAA and continue downloading all of their music for *FREE* because they obviously care nothing for their customers other than the dollars they rake in every day.
Miles Davis won't see any of my dollars anyways, nor will Thelonious Monk or Johnny Cash.
The more people that quit buying the RIAA's overpriced garbage the sooner they will fall.
Didn't they ever once think that popular music is in a slump and that the fact that CD sales are down have really not a great deal to do with downloaders but a poor economy and the lack of anything remotely decent on the popular charts anymore?
zosxavius photography
Hey, this is only music... it happens very often that you just pass in front of a radio or a TV that play some music that you DIDN'T pay for.
So what's the idea of paying for it anyway when a lot of people can CREATE it for free?
It's like paying for breathing... hahaha, paying for listening... what a nasty joke.
They are killing themselves slowly. First they delayed for so long with online distribtion and now this. It's like they want file-sharing to ruin them.
Last time I checked, setting rate for product minimums is a form of price fixing which is illegal. RIAA should be only allowed to charge royalties for distribution and leave it up to the vendor to figure out how much to charge. Market would determine which price is acceptable.
I mean look for yourself -- they increase price, sales in legitimate stores fall down significantly, sales of physical CDs won't pick up, so they start a new round of screaming that P2P is killing them (again/even more than before/despite legit options -- pick one). And all of a sudden new law that makes P2P connection criminal offense with minimal mandatory sentencing of 5 years in federal prison and 20 000 dollars fine gets passed.
Hyperom.com
On the up side secure P2P protocols will be better, and have better stuff. I mean if they're going to make piracy pay twice as much and be militant about it. Maybe it's time we be militant about enforcing our constitutionally garaunteed right to copyrights of limited periods of time. (anything longer than a significant fraction of human life is effectively unlimited.)
:)
Really, they could be competative and reduce their margins, while increasing the quality of their service (theoretically: finding good music) to extend their hold on a dying business plan and attached distribution system. Instead they've opted to push people, often unwillinging, to find their own music, and listen for free. They're spending their hard earned money to accelerate the adoption of this innevitable trend, causeing a fair amount of extreme sorrow to a similarly extreme minority. Frankly, if you're not one of the unlucky, it's a best case scenerio.
Don't worry. Be happy.
Just create your own music and stop buying plastic cd's or dealing with money. Playing music is much more better than buying it..
HAHAHA paying for dead, boring, recorded studio music?? What will they think of next??
Save your $3, go see LIVE music and tape the show... anything is better than this
I believe what you're talking about is Napster Premium. For $10 a month (your small subscription fee for access), you can:
Probably redundant. Oh well...
I occasionally buy music from the iTunes store because it's cheaper and I don't have to get every track. If they hike it up to this new proposed price range, buying half the songs on a CD will practically cost as much as the whole disc would in a regular store. So what's the point of buying them online anymore? Convenience alone is not a big enough motivator for spending more money for lower quality audio that doesn't come with a physical backup copy.
If they raise prices this much they're not going to increase profit from online music sales, they're going to kill online music sales. Of course that's probably what they'd like anyway.
Actually, seeing as how I recently moved and had to switch from cable to dialup again, I haven't downloaded many songs in the past year, maybe 4, and I've actually purchased a few CD's since then as well.
What the RIAA should understand, is that if the CD's that are put out were actually decent people might buy them. Instead, they see that not enough copies of a certain CD are being sold and chalk it up to file-sharing. The other part of this problem is that the execs from the RIAA that make the decisions about marketing CD's are morons, and think that this crap that is being released on CD nowadays is what people want.
In fact, I hate the RIAA so much that the last couple of CD's I've purchased over the past year, I went straight to the artist's website and ordered from them.
Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
Okay.
To be consistent you must apply the same rules to every market, so you have no right bitching the next time OPEC decides to cap production to drive up oil prices.
What the market will bear, right?
What you and too many others here don't understand or realize is that it is NOT that easy.
Let's figure up the average for recording a full-length CD. If you get a deal cut for the studio time you might get 3 days at $1200, which would be $50 an hour. We'll assume that mixing is thrown into that figure to simplify matters. Toss in $500 or so for mastering, and it's time for artwork.
You could do it yourself, but more than likely you want to get someone to do it for you. For a quality CD layout with a multi-page booklet you're probably looking at $300, maybe more. We're up to $2000 and haven't even started duplication...
Which we'll do now. Printed CD, not stickers. Multi-page color booklet. Standard jewel cases. Figure $1200 total for 500 CD's (including extras. I got this figure from oasiscd.com).
$3200. That's a fucking FORTUNE to most people, let alone guys that spend 18 hours a day in a van moving from gig to gig hoping that the manager of the club they're playing tonight doesn't fuck them out of their money so they can eat and gas up the van.
It's not as easy as 'Just do it yourself' all the time. Most artists HAVE to have a label to forward them cash to produce recordings. End of story.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Amen.
What people don't get is this. If RIAA wants to raise their prices, that's absolutely fine. People will eventually stop buying from them, just like any other company that is not a complete monopoly. Even if they did own 100% of the record market, people would still eventually stop purchasing from them: it's hardly something that is truly "required".
The "pirating" we are seeing is only popular because of the fact that the RIAA is doing what it is doing - that is to say, jacking up prices and trying to get away with selling one or two songs that are supposedly "good" with ten or so crappy songs. If they had reasonable prices and reasonable offers, the "piracy" issue would disappear completely. Assume that there were no alternatives to Windows. If Microsoft jacked up the price to $1500 for Windows XP because they bundeled it with a bunch of crap that almost no home user needs - server utilities like SQL Server, etc - people would pirate it too.
The RIAA is just digging their own grave. Nothing more, nothing less. Even if they stopped piracy, they would eventually see their sales slip from people sick and tired of their tactics. The ease of piracy is just speeding up their loss of profits and whatnot. People may say that the RIAA is capatalism at work in a bad way, but in my opinion, it is an example of the regulation that capatalism ends up providing. People WILL end up getting sick of it and stop buying what they sell.
Just my two cents.
Unfortunatly this is win win for them:
Maybe, ya might just think, it is the sleasiness and questionable practices of these companies that drove people away from honest purchases? Somehow there is a lot less guilt when you steal from the theif. . . .Which will lead to a) more and more lawsuits against people like you, and b) stricter and stricter laws governing the use of technology related to music storage and playback. Eventually, you will probably not be allowed to actually "own" any device that can record or playback digital content. I can imagine a future whereby all devices will be centrally managed and end users will face automatic civil and criminal charges for tampering with either the hardware or software of such devices. Of course, you fully approve of this since (as you admit) you are directly contributing to the need to put such protections in place.
if Im going to buy Anal Cunts 2900+ song record.
Don't bet on it. I mean, um, actually, that's about the price they tried to put on singles. Guess what? These are singles. Hint: singles aren't selling real well right now...
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"pick some artists that don't suck.
of my 500+ CDs, only a few of them have just 1 or 2 good tracks. the rest have probably 75% good tracks, and maybe 25% so-so.
but on topic, RIAA are fools if they think raising prices will help sales. it will merely kill the budding online song selling business.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
When I hear stories of the RIAA talking about music sales going down due to file sharing, I get really tired about the other side of the story not being discussed.
:)
:)
I own nearly 200 CDs and have bought 4 in the last year or so. Why has my purchase rate dropped by 2/3 or so?
1) I'm already happy with what I have.
2) Changing perception of how much music is really worth to me -- not in terms of "because I can get it for free" but just in terms of its price relative to other things I want to do in my life. Looking through my already-existing collection I can look at each CD and go "Was that really worth $20?" I honestly feel like maybe 20% of it was worth it. Maybe that makes me a dumber buyer than most.
3) Second thoughts every time I'm in a CD shop and think about how the RIAA treats file traders. I understand that what's being done is illegal, but I don't agree with assuming that they've caused $90,000 in damage by sharing one song with 14 downloads in the last month.
4) Access to Internet radio which gives me far more of an opportunity to listen to the genres of music I enjoy with far, far, far less ads.
I understand that the popularity of Internet radio might change the ad ratio in the future, but while my choice in the FM radio is limited, my choices online are not.
5) Using my local library for movies, books, and music. I understand that some people don't live in a large city and can't take advantage of this, but those who are might want to give it a try. The city I live in allows me to reserve an item from any library in the greater metropolitain area and have it sent to the library closest to where I live. Returns work the same way.
The library might not have the CD of a random indie group you heard at a bar/club/rave last night, and some of the waits for a reservation can be long (think in terms of half a year for some items -- this is balanced out by the fact that you can book 50 things at a time) but they can help with some needs
--
I was considering buying music online but the sound quality and the idea that I didn't really have much more than an ephemeral/virtual "proof of purchase" were those that stopped me (with a CD, you can consider ownership of the physical item a proof of purchase in a sense). Adding a ludicrous price to the equation doesn't help.
Anyway, the market will sort itself out. It should be an interesting decade for music
Leave aside moral judgements, for a moment. Start with one concrete fact, and one heavily-anecdotally-documented fact.
The RIAA takes some plastic that costs well under a buck, and sells it for over $15.00
The RIAA generally pays most artists very little, perhaps less than they could get in a 'real' job.
IMHO, this brands them as one of LEAST EFFICIENT INDUSTRIES in the world. If they have over 1000% markup and complain about not making profit, then their business practices are terrible. Absent copyright law, which gives them a monopoly, they'd be out of business in a flash given any sort of competition.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I stream most of my music like radio now - couldn't be bothered to actually download mp3s (free or not) - and I can't wait to see something like peercast p2p radio combined with a "people-who-like-this-also-like-this" collaborative filter.
--
Power to the Peaceful
This is absolutely capitalism. if you don't like it, don't buy it. This applies to anything and everything. If you like an artist that charges $500 per track then you either a) pay $500 per track, or b) don't. If noone pays $500 per track, then the price will probably drop. Same thing apples everywhere to everything, except where irrational and idiotic liberal concepts of government regulation come into play.
I agree completely. Stop giving the RIAA your money if you hate them.
Of course, the RIAA are still assholes, I won't say they aren't.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
And I bet he didn't even get to see a tit.
The existance of copyright law prevents it from actually being a free market. As I'm sure has been pointed out several times, a single song is a unique commodity, there are not multiple sources. So sources cannot compete, and without competition, the price will not necessarily decrease to the minimal possible price the market can bear.
The reason these great bands aren't popular? Their members are ugly. Donald Fagen (half of Steely Dan) has been described as looking like a a techno vampire. He's not marketable, but he's brilliant.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
I understand that. But don't claim that this is capitalism at work (and therefore somehow "right")
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Instead, artist revenue should be primarily driven from selling their music to radio stations to play and from concert ticket sales.
Only songwriters and their publishers make any money from FCC licensed radio. United States copyright statute 17 USC 106 provides that only the owner of copyright in the underlying musical work, not the owner of copyright in the sound recording, has the power under copyright to exclude analog public performances of a song through use of a phonorecord, and 17 USC 114 states that digital nonsubscription broadcasts don't fall under copyright either. So in order to make any royalties from commercial radio, other than secondarily by using it as an advertisement for phonorecord sales, the recording artist has to have written the songs that the stations play. What percentage of songs on the top 40 were written by the recording artist?
that cannot happen, the way they have XM radio set up currently.
Actually it can.... even on broadcast FM. Think Tivo for radio. You'd have a lot of persistent storage in your car stereo -- a 4 GB Flash drive would hold 1,000 songs' worth -- and a smart, low-power-drain receiver that would seek out and record the songs you've told it to listen for.
Skipping commercials and idiotic station-ID blurbs (buzz beep buzz Q102 FM ROCKZZZ!!!!11!! buzz buzz orchestra-hit beep buzz sound-of-toilet-flushing beep buzz) would be pretty easy, too. The receiver would be equipped with a long-term correlator that would basically say, "If I've heard this segment of audio within the last 24 hours, don't record it."
Something like this would have the potential to make radio not suck... which in this day and age would take nothing short of magic.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
And isn't this monopolistic behavior?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Todays music sucks.
its been said a zillion times, and i'll say it again.
support local music
support independent music
support magnatune
if you REALLY like music thats what you'll do.
- sharp
[...]and Rage Against the Machine are horrible [...]
Their self-titled (first) album is one of the best albums ever released in my opinion. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, they're hardly the 'current in thing' and I don't think they ever got any substantial air-time on MTV, which is what I use to classify the extremely glossy commercial music pushed by the big labels where the CD is one hit from one of the Big Producers and the rest is just crap bought in from the low-end as filler.
Well, compare that method to other artists who don't label their between-song inserts as tracks, and simply fold them into either the start or end of the songs. Those inserts make sense when listening to the album all the way through, but are quite annoying in a shuffled playlist.
I'm not poor, but I have much better things to spend 10 dollars on than whatever Britney Spears has moaned out recently.
You know, a combination of "Britney" and "moaned" gets quite a few hits on Kazaa.
1. its not $2.99 a CD, smart boy, its $2.99 PER SONG.
2. monopolistic practices are NOT capitalism at work.
This space available.
Capitalism doesn't have a respect for the law. Respectible economists have postulated that it's possible to calculate how overpriced something is by how much it is stolen.
The record labels want to maximize their profits? Tough shit, I want to maximize my utility.
Please, appeal to my sense of morality with a straight face. Corporations are amoral entities -- but I should be consumed with guilt for approaching them with as mercenary an outlook as they approach everything else.
"99 cents a song is a pricing model designed to protect CD sales, and not one designed to move people into a new digital music marketplace," senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation Fred Lohmann told us recently. "If an iPod has room for 4,000, does Apple think people are getting to spend $4,000 filling it with music?"
Why is the EFF even asking a question like that? That's economics....that's business....that's marketing. That has nothing to do with My Rights Online.
(Yes, I'm an EFF contributor, but they shouldn't be worrying about how much a music track should cost...)
The question is, What can we do about it? I've got a list of starting suggestions:
- Do not share RIAA-0wn3d music on P2P networks. First of all, if it's all such bad music (as is endlessly stated to be the reason for falling CD sales), why are you sharing it? Second, even though you may have legitimate reasons for sharing it, doing so plays straight into the hands of the RIAA. If the amount of traffic on P2P networks suddenly plunges for a prolonged period of time and CD sales continue to slip, that's a pretty solid piece of evidence that P2P is not the problem. If people chant that they sell worthless pap and then go get it anyway, that sends a message that we DO want their music, we just don't want to pay. Listen to indie music and radio stations instead.
- Don't listen to ClearChannel because they broadcast the same music found on CD's, and increased viewership will again send the message that we DO want their music, we just don't want to pay; Wrong message
:(.
- Tell your friends and family! Saying this here is just preaching to the choir. Ranting and raving to Slashdot about what a bunch of anal raping bastards the RIAA and their congressional cronies are does not help.
The point here is that the RIAA is claiming that falling CD sales are caused by rampant, unpaid sharing of their music on the Internet. As long as the sharing continues, judges and congresspersons will continue to believe them. If the sharing stops and sales keep dropping, at least some officials will have to see through their argument.On a lighter note, This is what their easter egg makes me think of.
Yes, of course. What is your point?
its already here :: IRATE RADIO
$.50 a track
Don't you think that's more than a little unrealistic? Fifty cents a track means a total cost of less than six dollars for most albums. You can pay more than that for a six-pack of decent beer, and it certainly won't last as long as a good album.
I've never understood what people's problem is with paying $10-15 per CD. I have at least a hundred that I bought ten years ago that I still like. How many products in that price range deliver that kind of long-term value, besides film and music?
If I were a professional musician, and my alleged "fans" would only pay fifty cents for their favourite track, I would pack up and quit because it would be so insulting. You can't even buy a soda pop from a vending machine for that little anymore.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Dear Independent Artists,
Keep creating the music YOU want to make. Keep doing your shows in bars and other small venues, and have one of your good friends make you a decent web site for beer. Join any one of the new crop of indy sites aimed at getting your music out there. Use a payment or donation system, and always make sure that your audience knows where to look on the web when they get home.
Why not sign with a major publisher? Because odds are you'll make more money doing it yourself these days, and there's a growing number of us who will not pay for overpriced shit marketed by megacorporations.
Good music finds its own audience. Good luck.
Seems to me that should be illegal under some antitrust law or something.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Nonsense. "Artists" survive due to the marketing abilities of the record companies and the RIAA. They need the RIAA more than the RIAA needs them.
This wouldn't surprise me. Although a service like iTMS doesn't turn much of a profit for Apple it's certainly very successful, and definitely doesn't help the RIAA with it's argument that online music sales won't work and that piracy is killing their business.
An alternative is that perhaps the RIAA has seen that online music stores can work and they want to kill the opposition by raising prices before introducing their own service.
Unfortunately for us this unfair monopoly has all of the advantages of time and law. With almost unlimited copyright extensions, the music industry holds almost every major song every written in it's iron fist.
True capitalism allows for unfettered and equal access to competition. This certainly is not the case here where they toy with pricing simply because NO ONE ELSE CAN!
The RIAA is the OPEC of music.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
The "pirating" we are seeing is only popular because
...IT'S FREE
I was thinking of converting to paganism, but where the hell can you find sacrificial virgins these days?
Face it, bub. You (and me) are in the minority.
It seems to me that sales being down for the fourth year in a row shows that we no longer are in the minority. Of course the RIAA would much rather blame piracy as if cassette recorders didn't exist and weren't widely used before the advent of Kazaa.
After all a good tape recording has as good a quality as an mp3 if not better.
ooooh also boycott clear channel
Who, other than the major commercial radio providers, has the right to stream audio into moving motor vehicles in geographic areas where the major commercial radio providers have already snapped up a few dozen FM stations, to the point where the FCC can't find any spectrum available to open a college radio station other than the local Bible school's existing station? This is the situation in Fort Wayne, Indiana. No, XM Satellite Radio is not an option; Clear Channel owns the biggest chunk of XM that car makers don't own.
If you want to promote such a "social movement," then advertise this site heavily.
Oh, yeah NPR, CBC and BBC via Real Streams, too..
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
XM radio is kick ass as it is. If that were physically possible with their format it would fucking soar.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
Why would you pay $2.99 for a song when you can download it for free? Pfft..
Moo!
Hmm...Ive seen lots of artists on non-major labels in non-independant record stores (in the UK). Ive even seen a couple of unsigned bands' CD's.
Could be exceptions though.
Silly rabbit
That means it would actually fall under the usury clauses that several European countries have (which, at least in some cases, do apply if there's a significant and obvious disparity between the price paid and the value of the product received). A court in one of those jurisdictions could invalide any contract pertaining to the sale and/or licensing of those MP3s.
1. Drop $ 33 on a CD.
2. Sue the RIAA.
3. Profit. (Well, not really. I was just trying to make a point. A pricing scheme like that is ridiculous.)
I mainly listen to Australian independent artists, as usually their CD's are not full of filler, and most of the money goes to the artist, not some suit sitting on the 24th floor of some office block in the CBD. I also try and buy their CD's at their gigs, from the artist.
I hope that RIAA, ARIA, and all the other organisations like them realise that they are their own problem. 99c per song (if only you could by songs online in Australia) is reasonable, $3 is not. That is the bottom line. They have to realise that we only have a finite income, unlike the suits whom make these decisions, and have an infinite income when compared to us normal plebs. Sending up the prices, means that people can afford less, and therefore either stop buying, or look to free alternatives.
And some people think that MS is a huge monopoly, I think ARIA, RIAA etc are a much bigger problem, especially since the governments of the world are actually changing laws to make it easier for these monopolies to survive, and sue the people whom these governments represent. MS is tiny compared to these evil groups of wankers.
When will the world stop following the USA, and stop becoming the litigious place it is quickly becoming.
Third of Nine
Well, um, yes.
We just want to pay the artists more! (+5 Funny)
An average music track is 3-4 minutes. 3-4 minutes of music to me is NOT worth $1. Give me 3-4 hours for $1 and I'll consider it. These people are already filthy rich and I don't feel a damn bit sorry for them.
Just don't buy it. Or check out used CD stores if you want to buy something. Don't buy this shit and the RIAA will crash.
How often does it have to be explained that capitalism means that people pay as much as something costs to produce, not as much as it people want to pay for it.
To put it differently: if there was only one vendor of water, and he sells it for 1 euro per liter, is that "Good, it is capitalism at work"?
Don't like it? Don't buy.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, economic theory takes into account theft. If they refuse to sell at a reasonable price, it is my duty to steal from them if I desire their product and there is no other source.
I'm just doing my part, as part of the Invisible Hand.
There are other products you can buy. Britney doesn't have a monopoly of being an underaged hottie, you can buy Christina, Mandy Moore, or better yet buy something like Rilo Kiley. While copyright gives a monopoly on a particular song it doesn't prevent competition from making a song in the same style, or someone who looks just like briney from covering the song and selling it for a quarter a track (the mechanical which goes to the songwriter is about a dime). If you don't like people making an album that only has one song on it that you don't like, then buy someone's album that has more songs you like.
The thing is the lawsuits aren't really profitable - except maybe for the attorneys. I think it's clear the RIAA no longer honestly represents the industry it was created to promote. Instead their out to promote their own existence at any cost and suck more supporting dollars from the labels who pay their salary.
Business now days is more short-sighted than ever, too many companies are all too happy to destroy their future markets for some quick cash today.
CD sales are ebbing and online music sales are bigger than ever.
RIAA's members' primary business is distribution. If they don't control distribution they have nowhere to cast nets for profits.
A booming online music industry is not in the best interests of RIAA member corporations' bottom line because it eliminates the essential profit funnels. A worldwide legit online music industry would completely obsolete every member of the RIAA. The music industry has spent literally the last few decades homogenizing the retail music industry to stabilize a chokepoint infrastructure. They got a few good years of use out of it, gouging consumers everywhere through virtue of blanket cartel control, before the bottom fell completely out and mp3s took off.
Every other sign from RIAA members indicates they're desperate to turn back the hands of time and stuff the mp3 genie back in the bottle. The brick-and-mortar infrastructure cost billions to establish. A revolutionary method of distribution is a nightmare to these people, not a dream.
This might not be simple greed at work. RIAA(/CRIA, etc) members still do have contracts and IP storehouses on their side. Price raising could be intended as a way to stop the hemmorhaging CD market, or at least slow the flow of blood. Or it could be a sinister attempt to derail the burgeoning legit online music market and drive people towards piracy. RIAA members have Congress' ears and the ability to legislate-by-proxy with the aid of oodles of cash; a successful legit online music industry is a roadblock if "music downloads" need to be demonized for harsh new laws to get passed.
So this means you get five songs each day? Every day? In what way would that be better than radio itself (well, minus the fact that you get rid of those stupid DJs.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Free market capitalism exists only in textbooks. Not even the blackmarket drug trade is truly a free market--those markets wouldn't exist if not for massive government intervention. It amazes me that someone can blurt out the names Adam Smith or Ayn Rand and get modded as "insightful" as if that's the end of the discussion on anything that can be assigned a "price." Is there ANYTHING on the planet, including money itself, for which the only concern is the price?
They sue us when we do that.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
and not for the reason you expect.
He sees it (charging over 20 bucks a cd) as a litmis test for finding the artists who are making music worth while to buy at a higher price. A "tax on shitty taste" he calls it. Not only would it weed out the weak but force artists to give you more bang for your buck (instead of DMX squozing out an album every 8 months like he did).
Besides, if you are only interested in one song from an album, isn't a buck in change better than 13+ dollars for the same fitness?
Of course there are other options. Say secondspin.com which is an online used cd/dvd store. Just bought a disc there for a 1.99 that is out of print. Even counting in S&H I got music for half the price of iTunes.
What is music when you despise all sound?
How is a single record company, or even record company trade group a monopoly, there are plenty of other record companies, Merge, Touch and Go, Mint, Murder, EMI, 4AD, Epitath, etc....
First off, the summary:
Suggestion: make good CDs, and maybe I'll buy the whole thing.
I'm sick of pointing this out--kids today LOVE the music coming out. The fogies at Slashdot think that their niche opinion represent the majority. Today's computer users aren't downloading music because they don't like the whole albums--they're downloading because it's free and available.
Well, considering that the RIAA still hasn't figured out that the ridiculous prices CDs sell for is one of the major reasons why illegal filesharing became so popular in the first place, I'm somehow not surprised that they don't realize this point, either.
Same thing. Illegal piracy isn't popular because of "ridiculous prices." It's popular because it's convenient and everywhere, and it lets you rip off albums for free. They RAR up whole band discographies now and stick 'em up on eMule.
Slashdot wants you to believe that piracy is justified because CDs are overpriced (they're $12.99 at my store...that money covers a lot more than the pressing of the CD), that the RIAA is somehow bad for going after copyright infringers (which is exactly what Slashdotters were saying they should do when Napster was being sued), and that they somehow rip off artists even though artists willingly sign their contracts, shit on gold toilets, and never asked you for your "help" in ripping them off.
The anti-RIAA propoganda around this place is so annoying. Look at the headline--raising the price of downloads by a dollar is suddenly a "nasty easter egg." Slashdotters think their niche opinions represent the majority. You guys need to get off this site and see the rest of the world. ADMIT THE TRUTH--those millions of traders aren't using Kazaa to "sample" albums, they're not using it because they have some sort of righteous opposition to something called the "RIAA"--they're using Kazaa to download music without paying for it. People have yet to offer a valid legal or moral justification for ripping artists off.
But go ahead and post another anti-RIAA article, then after that another anti-Microsoft article. Recycle, repeat.
Nah, I doubt it. I remember seeing a sig somewhere once that said "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" ;-)
Because going beyond 99 cents will mean I won't be buying diddly ever again.
If they want 2-3 dollars per song I suggest they mail it to me on CD in CD quality format.
I am pretty sure the 99 cent model does crimp their profits, but honestly most music sucks today. Rarely have I heard an album with more than 2 tracks that were worth a damn, it is rare to have 3 or 4. Most CDs out today seem to be the standard one hit wonder type. One good song from a new band and the rest just suck. Granted radio stations will play it OVER AND OVER again (can you say Hero?)
Curious how they will fare against Wal-Mart. Doubt that Wal-Mart would be too keen on running up the price.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The Darwin Awards honor those who improve our gene pool... by removing themselves from it.
Is there a Darwin Award for business and companies?
If not - Why not?
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
For the new song 'Hole in the World' the Eagles made an agreement with BestBuy to have the exclusive right to sell the single for 30-45 days.
Why?
Because they owned the rights to it.
I think not. There are several things at play here. They've raised the price to recoup the losses they claim they lost last year, much of which is due to piracy (again, so they claim). They are well aware of many things on top of it. If raising prices causes their sales to drop, it'll improve the sympathy in the business world because of continued dropping sales. And most people do *not* buy CDs for the entire set of tracks - most buy for the "singles".
Some additional types of things they like to circulate are the ratio of blank CDs::retail music sales + dropping sales = increased piracy. So if I go to Best Buy and purchase 100 CDs (severely discounted during another rebate sale) and two music CDs for $12 each (underpriced, but play along), RIAA's claim will overlook the fact those CDs can be used for something other than music and rather than $24 legal dollars, there will be $1'200 illegal dollars taken away. 1) They didn't volunteer the truth and point this out; 2) They presume everyone who obtains an illegal copy means money out of their pocket. So they believe that if all pirated|warez copies of music|games|software could not be duplicated people would buy them in the same quantities they copied them? They know and the rest of us know, this is pure sophistry. Unfortunately, no one in the media has enough brain cells to rub together and generate a question (or prefers not to ask because they'd be shunned by fellow media) which puts them to the test and asks them what their actual sales would be if pirated copies couldn't be made.
So explain why P2P file-sharing of illegal mp3s is so popular. The "majority" you speak of would agree with the miniority in that most of the CDs they buy are for 1 or 2 songs they like, and the rest will rarely ever get played. The difference is that they don't know any alternatives, so they are forced to overpay for the 1 or 2 songs they really want.
/. "crying," you're the first person to say that, really!
And nice job throwing in the little bit about
Used CD's are really cheap and sound just as good. (for all practical use). True your still indirectly supporting the RIAA but it's not quite as bad and it still pisses them off.
If I legally "tank up" a few CDRs for my personal use to listen on the open road while I visit Canada for a few weeks, can US Customs object when I come home? CD: 700Mb/avg 3.5 Mbytes per Mp3 = 200 songs 2200 songs (plenty for my favorites)=>11 CDs $0.21 cdn/CDR tax * 11 = $2.31 cdn ~ US $1.75
The people posting about killing online music sales or proposing that the labels produce higher quality music are completely missing the point. The whole aregument is based on the lie that the record labels are about the production of music.
The record industry is about controlling how music and what music is able to make it to your ears. The fact that they want to raise the price so online music is a marginal service aimed only at the overmoneyed is an expression of this desire to control. Itunes, Napster, MusicMatch are now effectively record labels. The next step is for them to cut deals with the artists directly.
The last thing record companies want is anyone to interfere with their indenture of recording artists. For most musicians record contracts are proof that slavery was not abolished by lincoln. The latest gem from the record companies is just an acknowledgement that they are deaply worried that digital technologies are disrupting their traditional tactics of ripping off the consumer and artist alike.
The single truly annoying thing about this is how our elected officials from both parties have done absolutely nothing but protect the Labels right to be stupid.
So basically, if all songs are about 3 minutes long, and I pay $3 per song, I have to pay $60 an hour just to listen to new music. Even if I listened to my music for two hours in a row, I would still be paying $30 an hour. Even if I listened to the music a few more times, it hardly seems reasonable.
I doubt RIAA memebers buy shelf space. I think the dependency goes the other way around: stores stock big 5 music because Britney Spears sells, Jim Bob's indie music composed from the sound of spoons smacking metal pans doesn't.
If they find they aren't making enough money off it to begin with, then why did they allow Itunes, Napster and others to sell for $0.99 /song?
... I usually sample the first few tracks on an album from Amazon and make a descision from there. I'm strongly considering buying a subscription to a commerical free digital radio provider.
To me, this seems to be a trick to get the ball rolling on on-line music purchasing. Once enough people buy, they figure they can jack up the price since people - as they seem to think - enjoy the benefit.
Personally, speaking - I used to listen to albums where there were one hit wonders. I'm in my twenties now and kind of grew out of the Top Chart muisc. I'd much rather listen to (as examples) a G&R, AC&DC, Hendrix, or other CD as opposed to some new rock band CD that I can't attest to the quality of the whole track.
iTunes and co. won't work for me
RIAA and labels - wake up already! People still want to buy music but they want value for their money.
I have only a few things to say.... http://www.kexp.org/home.asp?noflash=false http://www.wfmu.org/ If you haven't listened to these you are missing out bigtime. http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/ Like it buy the album!!!!
once more into the breach
So this means you get five songs each day?
:)
Well, I didn't say all the bugs were worked out.
But, seriously, if getting only five unique songs per day makes people realize what's happened to FM radio, so much the better.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
$3200. That's a fucking FORTUNE to most people, let alone guys that spend 18 hours a day in a van moving from gig to gig hoping that the manager of the club they're playing tonight doesn't fuck them out of their money so they can eat and gas up the van.
Mod parent up.
Most independent musicians I know are lucky to make about $100 playing a show. When a couple of them went on tour a few years ago, they actually *lost* money the whole time, because it was so expensive to tour up and down the west coast. This wasn't living the rockstar lifestyle, either. They were throwing down sleeping bags on the side of the road at night because motels would have been too expensive.
Like it or not, being a major label band has its benefits. You don't see Evanescence getting kicked offstage after four songs because the club's sound guy is an asshole, or having to threaten physical violence to get more than 50% of the payment for the show they were "guaranteed."
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
It makes no sense to sell a $15 or $20 CD's songs, of which there are between 10 and 20, for 99c each, simply because in that case, there is no incentive to buy the CD. Volume discounting makes perfect sense
:) And they're not even selling you anything real. There are no material goods that are cheaper to produce at a bulk rate.
Increasing the price of individual items isn't exactly a discount.
In any case, the cat is already out of the bag. Charging 2 - 3 times as much as the price people are used to paying just isn't going to fly.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
"If the market will bear $2.99 CD's then they have the right to sell at that price. Don't like it? Don't buy. Unfortunately for you, there are millions of people who WILL pay the price."
If the music industry wasn't an oligopoly, I might agree with you.
"Derp de derp."
And regarding how the government should file an antitrust suit against the RIAA (which is beyond a shadow of a doubt a monopolitic cartel, don't get me wrong). If nothing else, the current administration has shown little interest in pursuing antitrust cases of any flavor. Second is that we've been had on both sides of the aisle on this issue: Republicans favor business, Democrats get half their funding from Hollywood.
After that, assuming that antitrust charges are even filed and that the prosecutor is willing to really fight the case rather than make a token effort to please their constituents, take a look at the Microsoft case. At the very least, the RIAA will use their legal team to drag the case out for ever and ever and ever; By the time it finally does come to a resolution (assuming it ever does), the original issue will likely be dated (by the time the judges decided about the First Browser War, Microsoft had already destroyed Netscape). At that point, it seems likely that the RIAA (like Microsoft) would get off with, at most, a slap on the wrist and continue their monopolistic behavior unabated.
Sorry, but I don't think that a legal/legislative approach will work against the RIAA. Just as it won't work against spam or malware or any other electronic problem.
If you're only looking for different songs and not the whole album, you'll probably skip those interludes though, no? If you buy the whole album, those songs shouldn't add much to the price. I say 'should' because I've no idea about the actual state of things there.
I havent used iTunes myself, but I would have expected then to make allowances for track length....
.99 each. That's a little over an hour of some of the best music ever recorded.
Sometimes they do, but occasionally they don't. This can be advantageous, though, I got Pharaoh's Dance, Bitches' Brew, and Spanish Key off Miles Davis' Bitches Brew album for
Home of the $33 compact disk.
Seriously.
If you're ever north of the border, check out HMV. Be horrified at the highway robbery.
Good riddance. And you wouldn't be called a "professional musician" in that case, you'd be called a "recording artist" who depends on artificial-scarcity enforcement to make money as your first priority.
A real musician would be playing for the love of it and building human relationships with actual fans who would have no problem paying for fresh and scarce concerts, scarce physical merchandise, and CDs-as-a-patronage-thankyou.
You can't even buy a soda pop from a vending machine for that little anymore.
And if you could make an exact molecular copy of a can of Coke for next to nothing (and you soon will), would you feel bad that CocaCola (and WalMart, and the rest) are now being "ripped off"? CocaCola would have to reinvent themselves by having to work again ... by continually coming up with new recipes. Of course, they'd never be a giant sugar-water-advertising-&-distribution company again (just like the RIAA is going to have to downsize).
--
Power to the Peaceful
See, one thing I've noticed is that whenever /. jumps up and down and collectively (mostly) cries about something, it's a sure win for the other side. See iPod-mini, Howard Dean, and PATRIOT act. :P
This is the most convincing argument. It may be completely anecdotal, but it seems like you are so right.
I think Goober meant $2.99 per track not CD.
Or leave out the last step and sell them directly to fans via CD Baby. Check out their "about" page. They only sell music that comes directly from musicians. Artists set the prices on the albums (most are around $10, which hits the $1/song price point), and they get a much higher percentage of the sale without all the RIAA middlemen to pay. Plus, CD Baby has all sorts of recommendations -- music for a certain mood, style, "sounds like", etc. -- making it easy to find music to match your tastes.
So check out the site, listen to samples of the music, and throw some cash at whoever is making music you enjoy. And stick it to the Man in the process! :-)
Because of itunes i have bought primarily independent records for the last few months that i would have never heard of. I spend about $40 a month at the itunes store buying albums. Luckily this will make independent stuff even more popular as they will stay priced at 9.99 and the crappy riaa stuff will go up to 13.99+(using nerds new album as benchmark for price from itunes)
They see the end coming and they are running out of ideas.
Tim
$3200/500cd's=$6.40 a cd. Sell it for $10,that's $3.60 profit * 500cd's = $1800 profit plus what your making on gigs plus sponsorship. It's do-able. It's NOT easy. But nothing worth while ever is.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
Yep, I'm in the same boat. The only digital music I have I either ripped from CDs that I own or bought from iTunes. I'm a pretty avid user of ITMS but if they hike prices, that will be it for me: if I can't hear it live I will stick to NPR or what's already in my collection.
And they wonder why their sales have been declining for years. Hello, screw & sue your own customers long enough, and you won't be able to sell iced tea in the middle of the sahara!
It's impossible to contribute to that need. The worst the parent pirate can do is fail to drop money on a CD or paid download. But there are myriad reasons why he might have done that. "Pirating" the song isn't a direct contribution to anything but his possession of a copy of it. There is no directly associated loss, because even if we move to a police state system where it's completely impossible to procure the music industry's recorded audio without paying, the pirate of today may simply eschew the product altogether.
...to get me an Audiotron (check it out at ThinkGeek if you don't know what it is).
Then I'm gonna get me a good-sized USB hard drive and rip all my CDs. Then I'll add all my dad's MP3s (he went Napster-crazy back in the good old days). And then I'll ship them to my brother.
He's already ripped all his CDs, and a bunch of his buddies are doing theirs. We're talking about folks with good taste in music and larger collections than mine, and I have somewhere around 500 albums. Even with dupes, there's gotta be a lot of good material in there. Varied, too; I'm into folk, my brother's heavily into blues, another guy has a huge classical collection...
Then we put them all together on a server and point our Audiotrons at the server. Bingo, instant online music library. I'm really looking forward to this.
It's a good thing these people are all friends, 'cause here in Canada, we can share music with our friends. As my GF would say, "That's... just... great." Anyone else thinking of setting up something similar?
Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
then you should try allofmp3.com it's about 8cents a track, and you get what ever format you want. the best deal around.
You can't even buy a soda pop from a vending machine for that little anymore.
you can where i live, but then again, the nearest walmart to me is 45 minutes away so i've got to be living WAY out in the boondocks. hell actually i think theres a drink machine here thats $0.35 though it isn't coke or pepsi its still pretty good for the price
Uh, the incease in prices is precisely consistent with the argument that many Slashdotters make, which is that an $18 CD contains only a few good tracks.
Some songs should cost $3 or $4, while others (the much-maligned filler tracks) should cost $0.30. The songs are not all of the same quality and are not demanded equally, and so the prices should not all be identical.
Amazing magic tricks
The really alluring thing about on-line music sales is that it offers the opportunity for a much, much larger portion of the music sales proceeds to go back to the artist - I can assure you that any musician would be absolutely thrilled to see even $.25 per track.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
The Beatles were NOT a fucking "boy band." They were a REAL band--they were not assembled by committee, they did not "win a fucking contest" to be part of the band.
They worked hard playing shithole pub after shithole pub, clawing their way to the top. They were NOT a "boy band" as you claim. Not a single "boy band", from the New Kids to N*STUPID has ever had to play the club circuit. Hell, I doubt any of them even know how to play real instruments. They were given a golden image and marketed with the the full backing of high-powered record execs. The Beatles had to EARN their place.
The Monkeys...eh, everyone knew that. They even admitted they were a "manufactured image" (see the movie "Head").
are they refunding my bandwidth used to DL then??
Sadly, that doesn't work. All it's going to do is continue to distance the recording industry from the users, and as such the users will have zero qualms with moving to cheaper more effective means. Namely: P2P.
Karma: Non-Heinous
Nonsense. "Artists" survive due to the marketing abilities of the record companies and the RIAA. They need the RIAA more than the RIAA needs them.
If all the artists left the RIAA's labels, who would be making more money -- the artists or the RIAA?
Artists can always sell music online or tickets to their shows. The RIAA needs something to sell.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Ummm, the lawsuits are exactly the issue, because copyright law in this case functions as government intervention in the market. The fact that they are violating the law is irrelevant; the law as it currently stands was lobbied into law by the very corporations profiting from this government intervention. I'm not saying "down with copyright law," but don't pretend this is just "capitalism at work." Capitalism has a big helping hand in this instance, and it is in no way "invisible."
What would happen if they charge more for the more popular songs, and less for other songs that are not as popular?
Every album (CD) has one or two killer songs, with the rest being more or less filler. Using a bit of market research, they could charge more for the top song(s) and less for the filler.
Some people will just want the top songs; and will pay top price. Then there are the band groupies that collect everything that a band ever records.
They could set the prices by the popularity-- just watch the number of downloads of a particular song. The more popular, the more it costs. The less popular, the less it costs. Prices rise and fall on popularity (and, if you get in early, you might get a really popular song cheaply!).
This can be done. It is an alternative to what the RIAA is proposing in this article.
I know, they never play Roger miller or Doris Day anymore.
But remember, the music industry is apparently exempt from anti trust law. How else can they function like they do? When you have half of congress unofficially on your payroll, you're able to make your own laws.
``the ridiculous prices CDs sell for is one of the major reasons why illegal filesharing became so popular in the first place''
For me, it's more a convenience argument. I don't have to go out to the store, browse the collection, discover that they don't have what I'm looking for, go to another store, repeat. Or order CDs online, several at a time so I won't add 100% to the price for shipping charges, which requires me to assemble a list of albums that I want, and typically doesn't enable to me to try before I buy. Or consider if it's worth it to buy the whole 10 track album just for those few really good tracks. And then rip and encode so I can just play it without having to swap CDs.
Instead, I go to a site where I can listen to samples, then pay (if someone gives me something I like, I don't mind giving them something they like) and download the songs that I like, and start listening.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
more proof that the record label execs didn't take Business 101 and/or got a correspondence degree in business without earning it.
Business 101 topics:
- Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
- Don't overcharge when people aren't buying.
- Don't bundle crap with crap.
- Don't accuse potential customers of being anything but just that; customers.
Britney Spears _is_ crap music. She can't play a musical instrument. She can't sing (ever heard her warble without the voice machine to fix up all her vocal inadequacies). The lyrics and melodies are very lame, even for teenage pop music.
But you're right, she does sell millions. Why? It's pretty obvious why. She's gorgeous, she's young, and she dances suggestively. I've just had the misfortune to see her latest video clip. She plays an aeroplane stewardess who has sex with all the passengers! Then she slinks around "naked" (actually wearing a flesh toned lycra body suit). She's appealing to the raging hormones in every teenage boy, and the image-obsessed teenage girls who want to mimic her every move.
What that's saying is that it _is_ crap music but it is also a brilliant package. People buy Britney for the _whole package_. The dancing. The video clips. The bubbly "How I Do My Makeup" articles in Teen Dream Magazine (or whatever they call it these days). If you took away the video clips and the posters and the magazines and the _idolism_, how long do you think Britney would last? My guess is, she would never have had any attention in the first place.
Well isn't that interesting. You've lumped in RATM with those other two bands. Now I don't actually like Incubus or Limp Bizkit, though I do respect them because they play their own instruments and write their own songs (a rarity these days). But RATM is different. They had a huge fanbase well before they ever got their first MTV music clip. People turned up to their gigs because of their lyrics, their stage presence, and to hear the music. Because let's face it, not even a mother could love those faces. They're ugly bastards.
Riddle me this. How many pubs, clubs or dance halls did Britney play in before she became an overnight sensation? My measure of a band is, if they had a paying audience before they were famous then they're probably worth hearing. If the band members never met each other until the marketting machine began then I smell a rat.
By the same reasoning, you mightn't like Metallica, but there's no denying that they were extremely popular even before the RIAA got their hooks in. When they were playing pubs and small gigs they were receiving rave reviews from the fans. Their music was good, well before the video clips and the multi-million stage shows and the merchandising. It can be argued that they've turned shit in the past few years, though I think St Anger is a long overdue step in the right direction.
To quickly finish this off, I get mightily tired of the "music is all subjective" argument. I know you weaseled out of that with "tastes in music" but I'm going to rant towards empty space. Music is both subjective and objective. An untalented person who sings off-key is objectively a poor singer. It doesn't matter if you like or dislike the genre or the song or the person's face; you can still measure the quality of their singing.
Doesn't someone own the copyright to silence? :^P
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
if they think that they can raise the price on me just because I don't buy full CDs anymore, they've got another thing coming
I believe the expression is, "they have another think coming".
I can't help but think of the scene from A Bug's Life where Hopper illustrates what would happen if the ants figured out that they vastly outnumber the grasshoppers.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
> The Beatles were nothing more than a boy band for their era
:) ) and the tracks that I like the most are almost never those which were released as a single. The music you end up enjoying the most isn't that which reaches out and grabs you immediatley - that kind of instant hook often comes at the price of a lack of sublety. The songs that on first listen conceal their beauty are the ones that you'll come back to time and time again. The first set of songs make good singles, the second set don't.
Which era Beatles? If we're talking the early stuff (love me do) then I'd have to entirely agree with you - most of the stuff in this period was covers of other people's material - a sure sign of a record company tryiing to cash in on a band's good looks. On the other hand, a great deal of their later material demonstated real talent and originality. They clearly retained a great deal of artistic control - much of the work has obvious Eastern influences, for example. There are few bands before or since who could come up with both the elegant simplicity of 'Elanor Rigby' and the chugging proto-rock of 'Come Together'.
Of course, there were still duff tracks (Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Ob la di Ob la da) but on the other hand there were genre-defining moments (the flip-side of Abbey Road must have spawned a thousand concept albums).
Which almost brings me to my second point - why are so many people complaining that most CDs only have 1 or 2 good tracks? I can't help but get the feeling these people think the only 'good' tracks are the ones that they've already heard hundreds of times on the radio. Almost without exception all the CDs I own have more than 1 or 2 good tracks (the exceptions being the CDs I don't like at all
My final question is this: Why has noone come up wth a 'shareware' service for music? I would *love* a service that allowed you to listen to a song for a week for free. After a week, the song would stop working (yeah, this implies DRM. In general, I object, but if you haven't actually bought anything, it seems reasonable) and you'd have the option to buy the song/album. I don't know about anyone else but I would *love* such a service because it would allow me to check out artists that I've heard of but haven't actually heard.
being down for the fourth year in a row
A little thing called a recession will do that. The FIRST thing most people chuck when they have NO money is extras like cd's, movies, games, etc. There are also other cheaper more usefull forms of entertainment out there!
It means the guys at top need to SERIOUSLY rethink the 12-20 dollar cd. Look at the console industry. Nintendo/MS/Sony have ALL lowered prices yet are having record number sales AND profits. Their software sales have also jumped quite dramaticly too. But that is a slightly different industry.
High price means less people will buy. Then if you drive them to find alternatives (p2p, warez, etc..) they may NEVER come back. As free is just as good to some. But to others they may just take that 15 bucks and buy something ELSE that is just as entertaining.
Also they NEED to think about utility. For 15-20 dollars I can get a TOP shelf DVD. For 10 I can get last years top shelf. Now a average DVD runs for 1.5-2 hours. Yet a CD holds a MAX of 74 minutes. Then most of the time people are not happy with the 'filler'. Yet they are very happy with the whole DVD usually. Then the DVD has some 'extras' usually too!
Just go into a CC or BB and look around. You see more and more shelf being devoted to DVD vs CD. That says something right there. BB and CC have got the clue that DVD's are selling like hotcakes and CD's are not exactly flying off the shelves. The day BB moves DVD's from the back of the stores to the front is the day you will know CD's are on the way out. CC is the kind of store where they put the good stuff at the back so you have to see more of the store to get to it. When DVD's are put at the back of the store there...
Piracy is not what is causing their downturn. They have just forgot whom they are competting with. OTHER forms of entertainment.
They are treating their busness as a monopoly. They are not. They are an ologopy. Which is a subtle difference. They think they can set the price anywhere and people will just buy like crazy. I say LET them raise the prices. Eventually they will figure it out when their clients (the people making the music) stop using them because they can not make any money through them.
Sorry, this is one of the stupidest peices of crap I've heard in a long time. steal if you want. You can even call it passive resistance. please, however, don't try and pass off stealing as a duty. You have desires, as do I. I choose not to act on my desire to track you down and make the world one less person stupider, and you can resist your desire to steal, or listen to music you are morally opposed to.
Or is this about the free lunch that no-one wants to give you?
I'm a concientious
I am waiting for $0.50 songs to sign up for a music service...
Until downloadable music is less expensive than buying a CD, count me out. I have posted my feelings about this subject before, so rather than being redundant, click the link above if you are interested.
[what?]
That would fit. Much like Microsoft, the RIAA's only profitable division is their complaints department.
More likely, they're trying to kill online music sales as a business model. A couple major outfits go out of business and they can go back to the way things were. Except, of course, that you can never go back in time. But there's not shortage of people who want to try.
The RIAA's cartel mambers takes some 65 cents per song, and the credit card companies likely take another 10 cents.
:)
That doesn't leave much money for tech, bandwidth and advertising costs.
I thought about opening an online music store, but such numbers are frightening.
The only way I can see this working, and since it is likely there will be very few players in this market, is to have a co-op. Mountain Equipment Co-op is a prime example of how to do things right- and a member-owned online store would not have advertising costs like Apple's since word of mouth would probably work well.
A socially responsible, internally democratic institution would be fairly novel in the music industry, and work will with the ethics of the open-source movement. Anyone want to take this on?
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
"I don't want to sell my music. I'd like to give it away because where I got it, you didn't have to pay for it." -Don Van Vliet
Wal-Mart wouldnt have a choice. The record companies that license the content would tell them they have to charge X or they wont license the content to them. Dont like it/legal has a problem with it? Fine, the record companies will just double their licensing fees, and Wal-Mart can either shut down their online store, deal with it and raise prices, or take the music industry to court.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I live in Canada, so I can "pirate" music to my hearts content without any legal reprocussions thanks to some recent legislation. However I still find this quite appauling, $3 USD per neutered/DRMed track is sick.
While they're instituting that, how much is the artist getting pray tell?
You guys really need to change your laws, because they do not seem to reflect what is right.
more of the same
"Suggestion: make good CDs, and maybe I'll buy the whole thing."
The fact that you don't like most of the tracks on a cd is you they don't get airplay. Therefore, you haven't been programmed to like these songs by the media. Maybe if you actually listened to the songs on a cd a few times, you'd actually like them, instead of just skipping around to the songs you recognise.
No, it's not. It takes time and effort. Provide a good service at a reasonable price and people will go for it. So-called piracy is simply the competition.
Umm.... I can't believe you were modded to +5 for getting everything wrong. No one is going to pay 3 dollars per *SONG*. We're not talking about entire cds here, we're talking about individual songs.
Capitalism is based on the free market.
If the five biggest labels think that $2.99 is a correct price, then it's a price fixing which contradicts the free market...
They must feel awfully confident that Digital Rights Management would work
Foolishly confident. I can prove that digital restrictions management does not prevent lawfully massaging a restricted phonorecord to the point where unlawful reproduction and distribution of the work over a P2P network is trivial. Given a PC authorized to play a DRM'd file and a second PC, both with sound cards, I can run an analog cable from one sound card to another and start Audacity on the second. This so-called analog hole introduces much less audible noise than the WMA encoder introduced.
Almost likewise with video; I can copy an audiovisual work from a VHS or DVD machine through a $30 video stabilizer to another VHS machine. But unlike video, audio remains at acceptable fidelity even after one trip through the analog hole.
Changing the price from $0.99 to $2.99 indicates people are likely purchasing the "singles"[1]. With no more than four or five - we'll say five for erring on the side of caution - people are in essence paying $0.99 x 5 = $4.95 per CD, yet RIAA's oligopoly and financial systems are set up around CDs selling a certain volume and price considerably more than that. e.g., if a CD costs $13.00, and there are thirteen tracks on a CD, the RIAA oligopoly sees this as $12.87 when everyone purchases every track for every CD. This is their field of dreams: if you build it they will come. Talk about Pollyanna. But, if - again using the five singles - people only purchase those from a downloadable CD "menu", only a $4.95 purchase per CD occurs. $12.87 - $4.95 = a "loss" of $7.92. Now, if people purchase the same five singles for a price of $2.99, the RIAA Keystone Kops take in $14.95. This sounds more like a price they'd like to take in. Granted, it's more than the $13 we were using as a temporary base point. But when you look at this type of scenario, you can see they want to make their price point in the end run - without thinking about the effect the $2.99 will have on sales. No piracy, $2.99/track, and we get our full CD retail price.
You'll never get them to admit it, but the numbers do play out rather conveniently. I realize I took some liberties with the actual numbers, but as rough estimates...
[1] Why do they get to pick the singles? Send out the discs and let the DJs and customers pick out what they want to play.
Perhaps someone should teach them how to draw a supply and demand curve.
No one is going to buy songs for over $1. Period. Unless the song is extraordinary (i.e. longer than 10 minutes), this will lower profits significantly. And don't give me this "two for one" bullshit; your target audience is more intelligent than that.
Just when the first viable solution to their piracy problem comes up -- buying music online -- they get greedy and will fuck it up.
--
Split 4 ways (for a 4 piece band), that's only $67 a month to put out a CD a year. Are you telling me that the only way 4 guys can finance that amount is to sell their soul to a corporation? If they can't, then they probably had a hard time buying their van, amps, pedals, cords and microphones as well. $3000-5000 is within the reach of many of the credit cards issued to college students. I had offers with credit limits of $3000 when I made $500 a month. With 4 guys, recording an album with the budget you laid out is easily within reach to finance privately, even if only on credit cards.
Plus, even just looking at oasiscd's prices, its $1200 for 500 CD's, but it only goes up to $1400 to double the number of discs. If they can move all 1000 CD's (which they should be able to do if they are touring constantly at 18 hours per day), they net $6500 on the CD's if they sell them at only $9.95. Is that enough to live on? Of course not, but it definitely isn't a negative cashflow on the project. The second 500 discs are practically free, netting $4800 of their total net.
Moving 1000 CD's in a year if you're actively touring isn't that hard. If you give 2 shows a week, you only need to sell 10 discs at a concert. And, if they sell faster, or the disc can continue to be sold for more than 1 year, their net profit per disc will go up.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Exactly. I know the prevailing theory on Slashdot is that indie music can't get on store shelves because the big music companies have retail outlets in a death grip, but the reality of the situation is that it's fucking expensive to get your album on the shelves. Consider how much it costs to get your album on the shelves of nearly every Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, FYE, Coconuts, all the smaller chains, etc. That's what it takes to sell millions of records, and that's why artists rely on record companies. They have the money to get the artist's product on a majority of the shelves in the places Americans buy music, and they have the promotional tools necessary to ensure that the average person is at least somewhat aware of the artist in question before heading to a retail store to buy that artist's album. It's not a conspiracy to keep the little guys out, it's just the reality of the situation: it costs a lot of money to stock products, and if there is little indication that your item is going to sell, stores will be hesitant to waste shelf space on your product when there are products that have a better chance of getting sold.
..."YOU WILL EAT WHAT YOU ARE SERVED"...
Trouser chili,
down my pantleg,
warm and runny,
into my shoe.
If five labels get together to jack up prices, isn't that illegal collusion under anti-trust law? 'Seems we've been down this road before...
"n a perfect world we'd be able to pay a small subscription fee for access to all the music we want via audio on demand"
Rhapsody already supports this model. Unfortuneately you need an internet connection to listen.
MP3Search and AllOfMP3 offer music at 1 cent per Meg. They are both russian, but if you're worried about your credit card, you can pay them w/ Paypal.
AllOfMP3 also has online encoding. When you buy your songs, you select the format and the bitrate, they encoded it for you, and when it's done it goes in your download queue. Flac, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AAC and several other formats are available.
In any case, I pay anywhere from 70 cents to $1.86 for an entire album. Which is about what most music is worth to me. There are very few really great artists out there, and I already have most of their CD's. One thing great about these two sites, is you can get very hard to find music and music that is not available in the US. True, some of it may be considered crap in the country it came from, but it's a refreshing change from the shit we get forcefed on clearchannel stations.
I find your kooky religio-economic theory intriguing. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
Uh, I hate to break this to ya, genius. The Beatles were not a boy band. The Beatles were never considered a boy band. I watched them on Sullivan, I went to the first showing of Hard Day's Night, etc. The impact of the Beatles on music at the time cannot be overstated. I was there. From the tone of your post I'm pretty sure you weren't even a gleam in your father's eye at that point. I'm not even much of a Beatles fan but I do know the difference between them and a boy band. The Monkees, on the other hand, were a boy band. They were put together with a cattle call.
Clues will be on sale in the lobby after the show.
Is how these people spout as if free market economic theory were the solution to all problems, yet appear to not understand a number of very basic things about it. For example, the simple fact that even according to the theory, free market economic theory ceases to function in the presence of a monopoly or cartel.
The RIAA is a classical textbook case of a cartel. The rules the music industry is operating by are no longer located in the chapter in the microeconomics textbook labelled "free market capitalism".
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
If some immaterial bits being rearranged on a disk is valued at $2, then your dollar is not worth very much.
It's not like they're pressing vinyl for you.
In fact you aren't even buying anything. You're giving your money away. You receive audio information, but you don't even own it. What a waste!
I recommend that anyone who posesses dollars in any quantity should immediately exchange them for something of actual value while you still can. Better hurry!
Buy Gold, Silver or Real Estate with your dollars lest your currency's remaining value shrink completely out of sight whilst you posess it.
If they raise the price, I won't purchase any more songs. I find the $0.99 to be acceptable, but any more would not be so.
I have purchased quite a few songs up until now, but I am not afraid to "vote with my wallet" and just stop buying.
No matter where you go... there you are.
who cares about the crapola music industry, i rather listen to talk radio, www.coasttocoastam.com
That's not capitalism. Capitalism is where they charge $2.99, you don't like it, so you buy from SOMEBODY ELSE at a LOWER PRICE. That process continues until it's impossible to produce the song any cheaper.
They've been selling at 99c for ages. Now they are discussing a unilateral hike of 200%. That should be your first warning sign that capitalism is not working here! Where are the other online vendors selling the same songs at 50c? Or the same songs at 10c? If 10c is unrealistic (maybe it is but I suspect it isn't) then THE MARKET will find the actual sustainable pricepoint. The very second you hear that the RIAA is deciding the "sustainable" pricepoint instead of the market is the very same second you should have realised this is not capitalism. This is a cartel.
If capitalism was working then the prices would have dropped for music. That's how it works in every other industry. Company A makes steel bars for $1/bar at 10% profit. Company B thinks 5% profit is sufficient and sells bars for 99c/bar. Company A decreases their production costs (perhaps by innovating new techniques) and sells bars for 95c/bar. THAT is capitalism. It's using THE MARKET to drive innovation, reduce costs, self-regulate the quantity of production, while still producing the cheapest goods.
In the music industry the prices have gone up and up and up. Even faster than inflation. While production costs have gone down - a music studio and CD production facility can be built in your spare bedroom for under $10k these days, compared to $10s of millions only 2 decades ago - the CD prices have not dropped. Why? Because this isn't capitalism! Production costs are down, yet prices are up. Market is flooded with alternatives, yet prices are up. Look at the big picture. It's NOT CAPITALISM.
...or nothing. If they choose nothing, that is their choice.
It's a personalised 128k mp3 stream that adapts itself to your musical taste. If you don't want to hear a particular Janet Jackson track again, you never will. No fixed $$$ per month (although they are happy to accept donations)!
No downloads though - and right now I expect that there are few people in a position to receive a "broadband" stream in their car, so it won't solve that problem immediately.
Still, assuming you're not in your car you get your taste in music but with no "entertaining" DJ spiel and no adverts. Can't be bad.
I can buy a CD for $13 CDN at future shop. Unless a CD has less than 10 songs on it, at $.99 USD/song it's already more expensive for me to buy music online than to buy an actual CD. I download the music I may be interested in buying, and if I want to buy the CD I wait until I see it for a reasonable price and purchase it. There are some songs that I am interested in purchasing but I have yet to see any music service offer CD quality songs at a decent price.
I personally think it would be a better world if the recording industry as it is today would shrivel up and die. But thats just me.
this has been posted by an AC already, but posting as AC is stupid. It's "another THINK coming", otherwise it would be "if they thing they can do this to me.. they've got another thing coming!"
and that doesnt make sense.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
How long is the preview on that?
-Colin
Not sure, but Simon and Garfunkel have the sound of it locked down. :-)
How about pricing CDs by the number of LISTENABLE songs? So say, any CD by KMFDM would be no more than 6 dollars because there are never more than 2 songs that could actually be called music on them. White Zombie's "La Sexorcisto" would be about 30 dollars, while "Astro Creep" would be about 9 bucks. And all rap would be free.
Can I get mod points for being angry at the world?
People somehow manage to do it.
Jello Biafra & Alternative Tentacles.
"If the market will bear $2.99 CD's then they have the right to sell at that price. Don't like it? Don't buy. Unfortunately for you, there are millions of people who WILL pay the price."
Yes and they are called sheep. The difference with bearing a 2.99 cd is just that, it's a physical object so somebody knows they've purchased something. There was a production and manufacturing chain involved in getting said object out into the marketplace, not some grease linuxchode sitting around ripping and uploading to iTunes whatever they've licensed for the week. So in essence what the RIAA will be saying is that people are stupid enough to buy a substandard copy of a object without getting said object. And it is not capitalism when the only racket in town expects per year revenue on a increasing sale while trying to back it up with governmental controls. That doesn't sound like the market place working itself out.
There you go. There are far too many people here that don't understand that there are bands somewhere between 'weekend playing covers for fun' and 'headlining arenas'. These dudes spend a fuckload of time in vans every day, setting up, breaking down, loading in and out, sleeping on floors, dealing with assholes, getting fucked out of money, and for what? $150 and the chance to play for some people they've never met before. Those are the people I'm talking about and I'm happy there's at least one other person here that's on the same page I am.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Metallica's (well E/M Ventures, the corporation that their label, their management, and the members of the band own the shares in) already getting c.$0.40 for tracks. $4.00 per CD divided by 10-14 tracks per CD.
Their live-music download operation gets them $9.95 for 128-kbit MP3 show (20 tracks, counting "Kirk Doodle #1", etc., so $0.50 per track or $0.08 per minute) or $12.95 for a FLAC show ($0.65 per track, $0.11 per minute). Of course, there's server and bandwidth costs associated with this, but assuming that it costs 3 times as much to send a FLAC as an MP3, $0.40 per track is reasonable.
Metallica has rejected iTMS and a couple of similar services for three reasons:
Problem is, you need that $3200 all at once. A struggling musician isn't going to be throwing down that kind of coin. Credit cards are usually out of the question too.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
You can call economics "stupid" if you want.
This isn't about a free lunch: it's about removing inefficiencies from the system. Just like I have a duty to buy the cheaper of two identical products, and a duty to sell my labor for the highest price I can, I have a duty to steal a commodity that I cannot purchase at a reasonable price.
To pay too much for an item is to cheat all my fellow consumers. To accept too small a wage is to cheat all my fellow laborers. To fail to steal from the RIAA is to cheat both my fellow consumers and the RIAA itself: the fact that piracy exists to this extent is proof that they could make more money by selling their product for less. If I failed to demonstrate this to them, I would be doing them a disservice.
Is it mercenary? Is it amoral? It's economics.
What else can you expect from these bunch of idiots?
AND, here in canada, we still have to pay the RIAA tax on all recordable media because we might just pirate something...
But it won't be as hard to get space in online stores. The artists can cover the cost of storage on servers to eliminate all the risk for the store. It won't be much.
See, while *you* may think shit like Britney Spears and Metallica suck ass, the millions of albums they continue to sell firmly says otherwise to the millions of fans they continue to cater to. And think about the classic rock from the 50's and 60's. The Beatles were nothing more than a boy band for their era (ditto for the Monkees), and the more "obscure" Mo-Town stuff was driven by the same profit-chasing motivation that drives the industry today.
I highly doubt that anyone will be listening to Ms Spears for as long as the Beatles and Mo-Town will be around. Taste may be subjective but quality lasts; boy bands are just a flash in the pan.
-Colin
So if I want your credit card and social security numbers and you refuse to sell them to me at a price I deem reasonable, it's my duty to steal them from you?
Looking around most of my CDs have about 10 songs.
Assuming I bought a "CD's worth" of songs from a download site I would pay about $10 versus the 15$ and up from a record store.
The record company might be out $5, but I have read many reports how their prices are inflated to an absurd extreme. They will also be relieved of the costs of the CDs, processing the CD's, shipping, warehousing, and packaging.
Steve
No, but he apparently did get bent over.
Excellent call. This is exactly the same conclusion I came to, particularly considering these guys' track record. Just when they were close to making this whole online music thing work, they do something mind-buggeringly stupid like this, and the whole damn thing falls apart.
This is insane!
The only reason the music companies get away with this is because this is how business has been done for the ages. They've got the monopoly on the artists and we can't get their music with out going through them. Maybe its time we show them that we're not going to put up with this shit no more.
I say we should make the first week of may "Customer awareness week" at the RIAA where we don't buy any music for a full week and let them know we won't put up with this shit.
-Mike The Flame Bait
LOL, either way the same people get the money. Or haven't you been paying attention? The RIAA controls all those artists, and effectively cuts any they don't directly control out of the business altogether. Its not like there's really such a thing as competing record labels.
I tracked it down. Be baffled.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Maybe you misunderstand. The RIAA may be stupid. I happen to beleive that they are. HOWEVER: your choices are your own. I think it's sad that you will not just admit that when you, and others, decide to steal, it is a question of personal gain. The fact that I can beat up the guy next to me does not constitute a moral justification.
This is a simple question of a mass prisoner's game. If everyone jumps the turnstyle to get on the subway, the subway goes away. If artists cannot make money (and it's getting harder, I know a couple who sell CD's, one through a major label, and 2 who sell personally) they will have to find other jobs. justify your theft any way you want, but calling it your duty to the people you steal from is one of the sadder, more pitiful excuses I have seen.
And I hope that most people don't see theft as a service to those they steal from. It would kind of ruin civil society.
I'm a concientious
One of the stupidest things I've heard in years. Why are they going out of their way to alienate their customers and shoot themselves in the feet?
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Are you joking? I'm sorry, but I don't want a subscription. I want something I can pay a one time fee for and own completely. I don't want to have to keep paying a monthly fee to listen to music, period.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
After price downloading music is popular because you get just the songs you want.
Sometimes the "other songs" on an "album" are not just filler, but actually good songs that are more artistic and show a little more of the muscian's talent.
Often these songs don't have a "pop enough sound" to make it onto the radio and sell themselves.
What happens to these songs or other "less then pop" songs that people may learn to being bundled together on CD's if the download model replaces buying full CD's?
Will the record companies only shell out to produce the most popish, top 40 friendly songs?
Ick.
Steve
Some music store out there needs to implement an algorithm that changes the price of a song based on demand in realtime in order to *maximize* profit. Hell, if I ran any e-shop of any type, I would do this. The business is happy because they are raking in as much dough as possible and the populace is happy because they are effectively setting the price. I'll be able to get all the old music I like for something like .10 a track while the common pop addict will pay $4 for the lastest Timberlake single.
BrynM: The RIAA would like it if they could prove that online distribution "doesn't work" ...
...as such the users will have zero qualms with moving to cheaper more effective means. Namely: P2P.
ebbomega:
It's pretty obvious: P2P proves that online distribution does work. All the record companies could prove is that they're not smart enough to make it work for them.
My Jr. College Macroeconomics proffesor told me a story back in the day. He notice that they upped the price on the crappy hotdogs they were selling in the cafeteria. He asked one of the Cafeteria workers why they had done that, since it didn't look like they were selling too many of them. She said to him, "you must not know much about economics. Since we don't sell very many we have to raise the price to make more money on the ones we sell." He was dumbfounded.
I'm sure he would be just as dumbfounded by this story.
TW
Why yes, the estate of avant garde musician John Cage managed to wring a six figure settlement out of alleged infringer Mike Batt, according to CNN. Batt's infringement would have had a better chance of going unnoticed, had he not jointly credited himself and Cage for his own silent composition. In an article in The Independent, prior to the settlment, Batt defended his One Minute's Silence as not infringing Cage's 4'33", saying "But my silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence."
If a group of companies get together and set prices such that they are all the same, and particularly above what appears to be a reasonable market price, isn't that illegal in most countries ?
Record companies can go to hell. All I hear from them is, "Downloading hurts the artists! What will the artists do?" and other such nonsense. If you ask me, the artists make too much as it is.
I'm an engineer. If I patent something and it makes a million dollars, my company owns it. My cut of that million dollars is a new toaster and a cheesy plaque saying something to the effect of, "Good job, Slappy, you made us $1 million dollars!" Why the hell should "artists" get any more than that? Maybe if artists and record producers didn't have to be shuttled everywhere in limosines equipped with champagne fountains, the industry could afford to produce music at competitive prices and people wouldn't download things for free.
Let your money speak for you. Buy music from independant, non-RIAA affiliated labels. Hurt the RIAA where it most counts, their labels bottom lines. Also, don't download pirated RIAA labelled music, then they have no choice BUT to rethink their greed, and change their treatment of their customer base, thats you, the customer, speaking with your dollars.
does this mean the price of pepsi is going up too?
maybe it's just myTaste ... but, even those tracks I really loath, I jump over to listen when I'm so f*cking tired of hearing the same ol' same ol' 'good' tracks.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
Your last paragraph shows how little you know about what it's like for touring bands.
First, not all labels are corporations. The OVERWHELMING majority of labels are simply people that are involved in the local scene that have a bit of money. To these dudes, putting $3000 on a credit card and paying it off sometime soon is feasible. They can afford to go long-term because they know they'll get their money back.
But for the bands? Most of the bands out there have a hard time even making their rent. They have to find new jobs when tours are over, then quit them as soon as the next tour starts up. Vans are usually borrowed, sometimes they're owned by one of the band members. Equipment is something you have to have before you even consider touring. That's something you get out of the way before you hit the road. But once you do, money is tight. Putting $3000 on a credit card is out of the question. For a lot of these guys, that's a year's worth of rent.
Two shows a week? Uh... no. If you want to do stupid shit like EAT and sleep someplace with a bed, you're doing five shows a week, MINIMUM. We're talking about traveling across the US, not England. Texas alone is bigger than most countries. Van mileage sucks, and gas isn't cheap. On a recent tour the band High on Fire drove from Houston to Austin to Fort Worth to Austin to San Antonio to (IIRC) New Orleans. That's about 2000 miles of driving in 7 days time. Also, good luck selling 10 CD's at a show. One to three per show is a much more realistic number. Maybe someone will buy a shirt too.
The fact of the matter is, it is NOT a realistic alternative for the majority of REAL, TOURING bands to completely fund themselves. Some can do it, most can't.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
The other night I saw an infomercial for an album featuring "boy bands" from the 1950s. I'm sure people like you were saying the same thing back then.
Britney Spears _is_ crap music. She can't play a musical instrument. She can't sing (ever heard her warble without the voice machine to fix up all her vocal inadequacies). The lyrics and melodies are very lame, even for teenage pop music.
Says you (and indirectly, I agree). But, have you listened to Metallica's early (and current) lyrics? Here we go:
No life till leather
We are gonna kick some ass tonight
We got the metal madness
When our fans start screaming
It's right well alright
When we start to rock
We never want to stop again
Now, you bring up how Metallica is one of those bands that "toured clubs" and built their fanbase one by one (until they smelled the money and shit on that same fanbase years later). Now, just how socially redeemable is that song compared to anything Britney has "performed"? Other than the fact that Britney has songwriters and Metallica writes their own stuff (or did, anyway), there's really none.
If you took away the video clips and the posters and the magazines and the _idolism_, how long do you think Britney would last? My guess is, she would never have had any attention in the first place.
My guess is, who fucking cares? You don't like her music. Do like I do. Don't buy it. Change the channel if you see her on TV. Whatever. The fact is, the modern music "industry" doesn't give a shit about things such as "musicianship" or "songwriting". It's concerned with IMAGE. Again, face the fucking facts. You're in the minority.
You've lumped in RATM with those other two bands.
Yes, I have. I've lumped them into the "I don't like them" category. I made no other insinuation other than the fact 1) I find the "music" of all of those bands to be completely.. boring. 2) They are all on major labels and are "pushed" as being the cool/hip bands. and 3) I don't like them. Dig?
But RATM is different. They had a huge fanbase well before they ever got their first MTV music clip. People turned up to their gigs because of their lyrics, their stage presence, and to hear the music. Because let's face it, not even a mother could love those faces. They're ugly bastards.
Irrelevant. They sucked before their major label debut. They still suck now. I don't say that just because they "sold out" and went to a major, but because, frankly, angry rap-rock sucks. Millions of records sold states that I, too, am in a minority. The point is, for every person complaining about a "crappy band" putting out "crappy music", there's another person happy that that "great band" is putting out a "great album" (same band we're talking about). I find RATM's lyrics to be trite, pretentious, and pretty fucking stupid, in that order.
Riddle me this. How many pubs, clubs or dance halls did Britney play in before she became an overnight sensation? My measure of a band is, if they had a paying audience before they were famous then they're probably worth hearing. If the band members never met each other until the marketting machine began then I smell a rat.
Well, she spent a lot of time on the Disney channel as a Mouseketeer. She sang quite a few auditoriums and what not developing her "talent". Are you going to say that unless you're poor and destitute or face daily living struggles you can't be an artist? If you want to argue that Britney isn't an artist or a musician, that's fine, I don't disagree. But obviously, the music buying PUBLIC doesn't care what you want out of music.
To quickly finish this off, I get mightily tired of the "music is all subjective" argument. I know you weaseled out of that with "tastes in music" but I'm going to rant towards empty space. Music is both subjective and objective. An untalented person who sings off-key is objectively a poor singer. It doesn't matter if you like or dislike the genre or the song or the person's face; you can still measure the quality of their singing.
A
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
The ONLINE STORE isn't making a profit, but the RIAA is. Doesn't like 80%+ of the 99 cents go to them?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
There are quite a few, but almost all of them you name (including Jello Biafra) have had label support at some point. There are some exceptions (Ani DiFranco is probably the best example), but they're few and far between.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
I don't want *any* of my money going to RIAA members. The only way I'll buy music these days is direct from the artist.
-Rich
So multiple providers of the same product are colluding to increase prices?
These companies are not untouchable like OPEC. They do NOT control a resource that, if withheld, will ruin our nation within the week.
Send Mr. Ashcroft a complaint. Inform him that you would like the DOJ to look into this matter... what these corporations are doing is overtly criminal. Hell, tell your Congressman and Senators, your Mayor, Governor and the President. Get every level of every branch of your government on this fucker.
If you don't, it means you are too lazy, too disenfranchised or too apathetic to even alert the bureaucracy that _you_ pay for, that is charged with aggressively prosecuting such flagrantly abusive violations of Federal law. If you are indeed that stone-helpless, you have only yourself to blame and you _will_ continue to spend your life complaining about the saddle on your back.
Yeah! Or, uh, Canada.
> The existance of copyright law prevents it from actually being a free market
Didn't the American Indians say the same thing about Real Estate?
Online stores are a joke. If you want any hope of selling CD's, you HAVE to have them on-hand at shows. CD's are impulse buys 99.9999% of the time, and you can't rely on those impulses to be there once you've packed the van and moved on to another city.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
"...it is my duty to steal from them..."
"I'm just doing my part, as part of the Invisible Hand."
Uh huh. Who modded this?
Rilo Kiley is on Saddle Creek records, and they have a very good record deal, and are not part of the RIAA. there are plenty of record companies out there that give good deals to their artists, you just would rather bitch or get something for nothing.
This argument is so passe now. To say that all music sucks now and that's why you don't buy music is not only a stupid statement, but illogical too.
Here is a better reason not to buy music.
It's too fucking expensive.
Sony could start putting out the best artists in the history of music, but the fact is I'm not going to pay $15 a CD.
and I'll buy my non-complete cd's (2 or 3 good songs per album) online in a second. Right now I don't pay because I think 128kbps is crap. The way it is now, if I really like a CD I buy it, if not ...
I got a cd of Sgt Pepper for my birthday last year and my wife bought Sherl Crows greatest. Thats it for the last 2 years. The last new one I bought was Springsteen. Thats about how often decent music comes out. I do have a nice selection of older stuff and since it's rare that anything new comes out that I even care for, the RIAA gets very little from me.
Remember you can't spell CRAP without rap!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
ARGH. Mp3.com did this years ago...I feel sad now.
Call on God, but row AWAY from the rocks!
On iTunes, it costs nearly $24 for Reubenstein's rendition of Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. On the original CD, each 'variation' (a short musical segment in the whole work) is on its own track for easier seeking (as the work is about 20 minutes long). They are not separate songs, just different parts of an overall work. Some are only about 10 seconds in lenght, too.
The reason I don't buy music online (besides my 50 or so free tracks, thanks to Pepsi making it impossible to lose!) is I think $0.99 is too expensive for a track. It's just as bad as shelling out $17 for one at the music store. If they think people are going to buy tracks for $2.50, think again. But of course, the RIAA has never been in touch with consumers, so it's unlikely they'd start now...
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Thats exactly what they do. Haven't you listened to your local radio stations, watched MTV/MuchMusic/etc?
The whole concept behind "singles" was to push certain songs, and hopefully that'd drive album/CD sales as well, but you can bet if a pop song takes hold, it'll sell more singles than albums/CDs
"Vapor-whore?"
Translation: If you're enough of a moron to buy 99 cents worth of fuck all, you got what you paid for you cretinous pillock.
:)
Or in nicer terms, "white space != good investment"
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
Wal-Mart can also threaten physical CD sales in their stores. They have zero problems coercing vendors by any means at their disposal.
While musicians make plenty off concerts and their advertising agents (music industry) makes a ton off album sales the people doing actuall work earn a normal pay and many with truly innovative ideas end up "starving." ;). Seriously, what kind of sell out includes the name of a record label in a work of "art?!"
Don't starve your country of justice by buying music. Seriously people, quit feeding the beast. I think if they want to charge more than $.99 a song the song needs to be recorded in at least Dolby 5.1, it should be sent uncompressed or with a lossless compression. The file should have no DRM and there should be about ten times as many artists for each label.
One more thing, the words "Murder Inc." should be banned from song
federal offence last time I checked.
I was trying to be conservative in the number of shows per week. If I had said 5, someone would have gutted me saying, "There's no way you can get 5 shows per week."
My point is that if you can self-produce a CD with a print run of 1000 for $3400, you pay off that entire credit card bill after selling ~350 discs. That comes down to ~1.3 per show at 5 shows per week. If you did something like get a decent recording of one of the live shows, the costs to get a recording ready goes down.
My point isn't that it's "easy" to pay for it, just that it's not like there's absolutely no other way than selling your soul to a corporation. This isn't a binary game: either get a big contract or don't put out a CD of any sort. There's lots of room on the spectrum.
I mean, is $3500 on a couple of credit cards (which will be paid off by the CD sales themselves) worth having complete control over your music?
I mean, even a *dirt cheap* movie like Clerks still cost $15,000 and that's without distribution. If this model of self-financing wasn't workable, independent films wouldn't get made either.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
(not a troll, I'm serious about this)
Why should I give a flaming fuck?
I get all the music I need through Kazaa, and let all the poor suckers pay (ha-ha) for its production.
Now-now-now, I don't care about your concepts of "right" and "wrong", and (ha ha ha ha) "Morality"
Laws about stealing only exist if they can be enforced. Since the RIAA can't enforce its own policies, why should I care?
Wal-Mart has much more of a choice than you imagine. The record industry can't strong-arm them because of the sales Wal-Mart generates from selling CD's off of their shelves, an income the recording industry does NOT want to give up.
The rest will either be lower quality songs or more artistic indulgences by the artist.
I guess its all pop shit now.
Steve
- Agree to music downloads for a consumer-friendly price.
- Wait until music-downloading finally starts to take the edge off piracy in terms of quality, speed, and reliability.
- Jack prices up like assholes.
- Witness a major consumer backlash and the Second Comming of Piracy?!?!?!?
Music industry execs have been in their own little world too long, methinks.CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Any decrease in profit will be blamed on piracy naturally
Any 192kbit? What about 192kbit PCM?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Maybe it would make more sense to charge per minute of song, or by bandwidth.
:)
http://www.allofmp3.com/ charges by bandwidth, and offers some losslessly encoded CD's, as well as encoding to a large veriety of lossy formats. I've bought 5 albums from them so far, and I've been very impressed
http://www.magnatune.com/ also offers losslessly encoded files, and charges on a sliding scale letting you pay between about $5 and $15 per album iirc.
This is what I was waiting for. iTunes and co can go jump in a lake with their silly lossily-encoded DRM-encumbered overpriced music.
OK, at first glance, this can't be true, why would prices go up, when costs go down?
But look at it from a historical perspective!
When CD's replaced vinyl, prices went up, since the cost of production in the early transition were higher.
But afterwards, production cost would be a lot less, and then prices would fall below vinyl.
But surprise surprise: prices only went up up up.
Now consider that with digital distribution, production costs once more will go down. Not only that, but even in the early transition period, costs are down. And not even factoring in distribution, reprinting costs, art-work, etc...
Well, considering the lessons learned from the CD experience, there's only one logical conclusion. The price MUST go up. And a lot.
Can't you see?
I think, therefore I am...I think.
I don't know why it's never discussed when this topic comes up, but there are a couple of on-line music sites that sell for approximately 6-8 cents per song, high bit rates, no DRM. What's really amazing is that it's legal, at least until the RIAA finds a way to buy some Russian legislators.
allofmp3.com has a large selection of music, lets you pick your own encoding (mp3, ogg, wmv, etc.) and your own bitrate (up to 320kbps) and then sells you the files at $0.01 per MB.
As I understand it, the whole thing works like this, legally: Under current Russian law there is no difference between a radio station playing music over the air and a web site downloading music over the Internet. All broadcasters have to pay some small royalties for the right to play the music, and allofmp3.com and mp3search.com pay their royalties and have the legal right to sell you music over the Internet.
So grab your favorite songs at 10 cents each for 320 kbps encodings. And then send a couple of bucks directly to the artist. They'll make more than they would from your purchase of a CD, you'll get the tunes the way you want, no DRM, for less money, and the RIAA will get next to nothing.
Sad but true. I stopped listening to radio in the late 1980's, just in time to not hear the whining of the next generation of brats proclaiming grunge as god. Now old is new again (ie; no creativity, lets rehash old pop melodies from the 60's-70's, and add more guitars or drums, or samples, or whatEVER), only its new for kids, not the 30+ year old crowd.
of course. I meant it's easier to get space at iTunes than Tower Records or WalMart.
Pink Floyd's Meddle LP has a single 23:31 long song called Echoes on one side of the original vinyl version. Many, many classical compositions are quite long. $1 for 5 minutes, $2 for longer tracks would be fair.
Anarchists never rule
I think the main problem with the RIAA is that they are just sticking with tradition. They say, "Hmmm, our artists can only make 2 or so good songs. A CD can fit around 15, so let's tell them they have to make 15 or so songs, bundle it in a CD and make people pay for the shitty songs they made."
What the RIAA should realize is that hey, use some economic theory. If people aren't demanding shitty songs don't force them to buy it or they will be unhappy (and get the songs they want through P2P)! Let the artists make as many songs as they wish, not meet a quota which tells them they have to come up with 15 or so songs. If they give the artists the freedom they want and give the consumers the freedom they wish and just post the songs on online music stores then people will be a lot happier because they have more choices and artists can spend more time making good music rather then meeting a quota.
choices = happiness
And if you could make an exact molecular copy of a can of Coke for next to nothing (and you soon will), would you feel bad that CocaCola (and WalMart, and the rest) are now being "ripped off"?
Not that I disagree with you, but I like to look at things from the other side of the argument as well.
What if I could make a perfect copy of your wife? Then, me and a hundred of my friends gangbang her all we want while distributing other copies of her to the rest of the world? Would you feel "ripped off" or would that constitute some type of fair use?
I realize this is an extreme example, but it shows the issue of "copying, not stealing" in a new light, does it not?
I'm not happy about paying $16 to Big Music (BM), but I'll gladly support the ARTISTS behind the whole thing. As far as I understand, the artists nowadays gets about 5-10% (?) of the profits of CD sales, and the rest goes where? To some fat ass in the corporate offices of Sony and EMI? No, that's not the guy I want to support: I want to support the artist! Obviously, BM isn't going to benefit the artist any time soon, as long as that artist isn't Britney or Christina. Wouldn't it be nice to have whole albums available at $2.50 per album (a quarter a song), but recorded legally, by an independent studio, on a clever website with user stats and artist promotion? I'd support that!
I will agree with this wholeheartedly (the power of Wal-mart). You would be surprised[1] how many different businesses second-guess themselves or just plain retool their new products because of what they anticipate Wal-mart's reaction to be, either in terms of purchasing less than expected or essentially shunning the product(s). This is regardless of what the company thinks about their product, what their PR and marketing firms think, and any other feedback groups. The bottom line is: if this product can be sold in Wal-Mart, then is there anything about the product which, as it stands, will prevent it from being sold in Wal-mart or reduce the quantity Wal-mart is willing to stock. Case: Furby (seriously). Wal-mart not only bought into it, they practically bagged the market. The only way they'd stock it is if they received 33% of all manufactured Furbys. What did Tiger Toys do? They realized they were more than certain they had one of the best things you can have: a Christmas fad. And while other store chains may have wanted to get in on it, Wal-mart laid their cards on the table.
[1] Off-hand research from reading a *lot*.
In a perfect world the radio brings new, GOOD tunes to my attention that I've never heard before. If I'm using a playlist, and only listen to that, I'll never hear anything new.
Anarchists never rule
Like your idealism will stand up to billions and billions of marketing dollars to influence the sheepole.
... HAMSTERS! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLL
You collossal fagot.
ALSO: Slashdot is a place where the intellecual elite go and discuss meaningful matters.
ALSO: DONGZZZZ COCKS CLITTZZ
after a month, and with a fat pipe, you too could have their music collection...for 10 bucks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You can't even buy a soda pop from a vending machine for that little anymore.
Oh, HELL YES you can. Right out side of Wal-Mart or any major grocery store, you can pick up a can of pop for 50 cents. And that's in CANADIAN money....
Oh my gawd, they killed kenny's mod points!!!!
Am i the only one to notice that the slashdot summary of the article says the RIAA is ignoring the companies that want to raise prices? Meaning the RIAA doesn't want to push their luck Your all commenting as tho they never mentioned the "six other companies"
Just because Metallica and a couple handfuls of other megastars are able to demand high rates doesn't change the fact that the VAST majority of artists are only seeing a pittance per track sold. Don't give me this crap about "but they have greater market share" either; if the price is PER TRACK SOLD, then the artists who sell lots make more and those who don't, don't. Giving a few handfuls of bands a premium royalty is just a tactic to lure foolish artists (who in many cases actually have more innovative and interesting music than "established artists" like Metallica) to sell their souls thinking maybe someday they could reach that point, when the fact is it's extremely rare to do so.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Making a large number of copies of my wife would be the equivelent and releasing the plague on the earth. I would think twice...
But this is a horrible example of reductionism. I could care less if you gangbanged a copy of my wife. As long as you aren't gangbanging the real thing (at least without paying me).
I believe I've heard the labels were sued for doing this kind of thing with cd's.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Not only can you buy silence, you can buy applause -- like this, for instance. Do a search on "applause"
"People have yet to offer a valid legal or moral justification for ripping artists off."
I'm waiting for the RIAA members to offer their justification for ripping artists off.
Or can only fans do that?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Tired of the RIAA's bullshit?
Want over 20,000 songs in less than 150MB?
With no nasty MP3 artifacting?
Completely free?
And LEGAL?
High Voltage SID Collection
Some of the best music ever created is in the HVSC. Go get it today, and unshackle yourself from the RIAA's tyranny.
FC Closer
People never learn. Once again, music industry is fucking the consumer in the ass and people are just grabbing their ankles with a shit eatin grin. With this price hike, you'll be paying MORE to download music as opposed to buying the CDs, which are overpriced to begin with.
They (the RIAA) don't understand, people don't WANT to pay that much for fucking music. If they're gonna pull this shit, then they shouldn't complain when people hit P2P in search of songs. So far, the alternatives fucking suck.
Someone remind me again... why should I buy music instead of just downloading it if THIS is what the alternative is coming to? No thanks. I'll stay on P2P/Usenet as the source of my music and gladly give the industry the finger as I snatch the music I want. They can play dirty, so can I.
People need to flat out stop buying music altogether, this is ridiuclous. If people keep caving in to this bullshit, then they'll just get more and more delusional in thinking that this type of stuff is okay.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Also, "secret" tracks where you have 5 minutes of silence, then an unlisted song. In the days of tapes, that might have been a secret, but with CDs (And mp3 players) it's annoying. Just add it on as an extra, unnamed, track on its own.
At which point Wal-Mart goes to each label individually, and says something like:
"We fully appreciate Sony's position on this issue, and will be discontinuing your music. No, not just in our online music program, but also in-store sales of CDs. That's 25% of your worldwide CD sales, according to market figures. By the way, due to market difficulties, we're cutting our orders of PlayStation consoles/games/accessories, Sony electronics, and Sony Home Video DVDs 25%, with a possibility of cutting another 25% in six months."
"We understand Warner Music won't budge on this issue. Okay, we'll charge higher prices. By the way, we are reducing by 35% the advertising we pay for on the WB, CNN, and other Time Warner television stations. Also, we're cutting back Warner CD purchases 75%, discontinuing the stocking of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and will have to stop stocking Loony Tunes toys for the immediate future."
And so on. The only response the labels could mount would be antitrust complaints -- with is the last thing you want to bring up when you're part of a cartel trying to raise prices.
But eventually, with such a restrictive system, the entire music industry will collapse in a cloud of disinterest by the consumer.
People will listen to analog; they'll listen to the existing CD's or they'll listen to vinyl. I'm betting that the RIAA member's tactics will cause their own business to implode as people decide the loss of personal liberty isn't really worth the trade for listening to a few pop songs.
Who knows, it may open up a new golden age for music.
"Why do people listen to songs from a band that can only turn out "3 or 4 good tracks""
Its worse than that... people listen to M&M and heasn't turned out a good track yet.
The RIAA will not accept any decline in profits from the old days when publishing meant stamping a CD and not just anybody could do it.
I know this will be seen as pedantic and off-topic, but I do feel some comment is in order? How is a price hike a tariff? Also, the RIAA isn't mentioned directly in the article. The RIAA has all the right in the world to raise the price. We also have the right to boycott it. Sorry, the tone of the article and parent post rubs me the wrong way.
...and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song.
[from the Slashdot summary]
At first, I was going to blame Slashdot for poor editing, but I realize the fault actually lies with the article. By definition, the word tariff usually implies fees imposed on a product(s) for profit by a government. Perhaps, it can be extended to corporations. It's a stretch, but I'll concede it's possibly a legitimate use of the term.
[from the article]
The pigopolists have barely got their feet under the table and already demanding more.
Pigopolists? Is that derived from pigopoly, pig monopoly, or pig oligarchy? Is this an editorial or some small child's blog?
Look, I don't expect the journalistic integrity of the New York Times (actually, I do, but that's a different story), but this kind of rhetoric clearly shows bias.
Just the facts, m'am.
Frankly, the facts would have stood on their own without the jab at the RIAA. This is a fault in geek rhetoric. I'm actually more sympathetic for the RIAA after such a slanted attack. The article doesn't mention the RIAA specifically. They do mention "five major record labels". Also, a link to the Wall Street Journal story would have been nice too.
People don't want to hear anti-Microsoft|SCO|RIAA diatribe. [Okay, maybe people like the anti-Microsoft diatribe.] They want to know why they should care. Let's stop with the useless mud-slinging and stick to the facts. The facts will defend themselves.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
"$3200. That's a fucking FORTUNE to most people"
And yet these guys will blow $5K on a rack amp, but not $3.2K to buy a future and make some CD's.
My real point in posting is to ask if anybody knows how much the mall stores pay for a CD?
I'm not denying that this is the exception. However, the great-grandparent of this particular post was making a universal quantification... ;o)
Uh... no. Aside from people that have endorsement deals, nobody uses shit like that. The people that are total gearwhores and have that shit usually have the deadly combo of being endorsers and working at music stores (see Matt Pike). Been there, done that, bought the $1200 list price guitar for $400. ;-)
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Has anyone ever tried to obtain a replacement for a physically damaged CD (or DVD) from the supplying company for the cost of the media alone? Try it - it doesn't seem able to be done. When the labels start offering lifetime ownership of the content, or call it lease for the life of the media, I will start to pay for it.
what if you think 99 cents is already too expensive. I think more people will use free services. They should feel grateful they get any money.
Don't you think [fifty cents per rack] more than a little unrealistic? Fifty cents a track means a total cost of less than six dollars for most albums. You can pay more than that for a six-pack of decent beer, and it certainly won't last as long as a good album.
I have no idea the man-hours required to produce an album.
Basically, I guess it comes down to composition, rehearsal and playing costs, and production costs. Classical music probably costs a bit less given most of the works are already composed and perhaps, depending on the arrangement, royalty free, and then probably costs a bit more as a more performers -- in some cases whole orchestras, choruses, and opera singers -- are required.
But in either case, I suspect the total man-hours devoted to the album itself (and not promotion, gigs, etc.) probably compares to, or is less than, the man-hours required, on the part of author and editor and publishing house, to produce a novel.
Hardback novels are sold for something between twenty and forty dollars, but most of the novels I own are in softcover. These days, the cost of a softcover novel is about $7 or $8, or about half the cost of a CD.
As for comparing the two by hours of use, an average album probably gets a single play of an hour at most, an average novel a single read of three to six hours.
Admittedly, a really good album probably gets played more hours than a really good novel gets read and re-read, although some of my favorite albums I've re-read more times than I can recall.
Perhaps the record companies could emulate the book publishers, and publish mp3 downloads like softcover books: a year after the "hardcopy" CD has been published? Let those anxious to get the trendy music immediately pay a premium, and let squares like me buy from a cheaper online back-catalogue?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
If the "rest" of the material on CDs is a sample of the artist's real talent, the America's got a very serious talent problem! In any case, a widespread downloading of songs could help strengthen the small-scale recording market. Artists could go with the bigger record labels for their top 40 hits, and then produce more "artistic" material with smaller studios that represent lower costs. With digital technology as it is, you could probably get an artist to record in a home-based studio, then outsource the mixing and producing to overseas, lower-cost studios.
Don't you think that's more than a little unrealistic? Fifty cents a track means a total cost of less than six dollars for most albums. You can pay more than that for a six-pack of decent beer, and it certainly won't last as long as a good album.
I've never understood what people's problem is with paying $10-15 per CD. I have at least a hundred that I bought ten years ago that I still like. How many products in that price range deliver that kind of long-term value, besides film and music?
If I were a professional musician, and my alleged "fans" would only pay fifty cents for their favourite track, I would pack up and quit because it would be so insulting. You can't even buy a soda pop from a vending machine for that little anymore.
I wouldn't want to listen to music from anyone who's in it for the money anyways -- I would consider your departure from the music world a healthful cleansing.
But just so we're clear, artists get very little from cd-sales as it is. If artists could get 50 cents per track, that would be a huge increase.
Also, lets be reasonable. There are significantly lower overhead costs associated with selling music online than there are when you have to create a physical product, ship it to stores, etc.
I've seen a few CDs that have the secret track after a period of silence, but they do it in an intelligent manner - the silence is in the form of an extra-long pregap before the secret track. This makes it less "secret" but also less annoying.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
the worst deal i've found on itunes has been .99 for a 4 second interlude track
How does the 30-second sample of that work?
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
What ever happend to the "index" feature on CDs?
As much as I loathe to even mention them in the same paragraph as Janet Jackson, I think Sonic Youth can do that one better. They released an album under the name Ciccone Youth called "The Whitey Album." On that album is a track called "Silence" and it is indeed about 63 seconds of silence. And, you can buy it on itunes as an individual track.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
$3200. That's a fucking FORTUNE to most people
Holy fuck! I make that much in two weeks, and so do many of the people who read slashdot... Breakeven on those 500 CDs would be something like $6.40. Charge $10 each and that's $1,800 profit, easy. I, and many people like me, would'd be more than willing to pay $3,200 for production costs on a band that we like if we got an even 50/50 split of the profits... (Aw heck, how about a 95/5 split and you are still better off than going with a recording label!)
You're telling me that the 4 guys in my example are going to make $1750/year each? $3500 split 4 ways is $875.
Now it's you who reveals how little you know about filmmaking. Do you really think an independent film can be made in a few days? Or that it can all be written, shot and edited in "off" hours? Great filmmaking, like all great art requires sacrifice and isn't something you just do on 3 sequential Saturdays and call it "done".
Overall, if you are willing to make some sacrifices, you *can* self-produce art. Or, you can have someone else finance it, but you *will* lose some level of control of the result.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Earth to moron... by paying for the recording, duplication, and distribution of CD's, YOU ARE A LABEL. A 95/5 split is far worse than any label ever, and you're showing precisely how little you know about the subject by thinking that would be better than a label.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
This is why vertical monopolies are bad.
Otherwise, this item is a yawn. Sellers always want to raise the price and buyers always want it lower. The interesting question is: what will replace the obviously broken old distribution mechanism.
Oh fine :-). Fair enough.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
yep, the riaa are a bunch of !@#$ing greedheads. they get thrown a life preserver via online sales and are now complaining that it isn't cushioned enough.
they are geniuses at marketing, absolute geniuses. they have used their marketing smarts to redefine "theft". and before you get the hammers out let me just say they have succeeded; what used to be a copyright issue has become (on both sides) a moral near-crusade.
none of this really matters. most pop music is geared to a young audience, and older people just don't buy as much music (or steal it or even care about it with the same mania) as that young target audience. yeah yeah britney sucks or whatever, but a catchy tune is still a catchy tune, and top 40 radio will hug that curve 'til the end of time. and frankly if the alternative is endless noodling by some techincally gifted but bloodless hack who doesn't know when to stop playing their far-out solo, plenty of people will continue to take 3 minutes of sugar-coated air any day
me? i'm sick of being urged to repurchase the white album (or london calling or dark side of the moon) every time a new format change (or remaster, or "special edition", or 5.1 remix waste of time) comes out. bollocks to the riaa, they've gotten my money over and over and enough is never enough for some people
What is going on here is that everyone selling songs for $.99 is LOOSING MONEY and RIAA is GRIPPING BECAUSE THEIR MODEL IS CONTINUING TO FAIL. Problem is:
* Most consumers have an terrible experience when they buy a song on the desktop in the livign room and then can't listen to that song on their laptop on the road. DRM is sucking the life out of selling music online
* Paying a monthly fee on top of $.99 per track is not the same as paying $.99 per track. Bait and switch turns people off. Drop the ads that claim $.99 or drop the membership charge!
* There aren't enough buyers online to sell the kind of volume in music that the online shops have projected!
Interesting observation:
Why can I buy a DVD of a movie from the value pile at wally world for less than the soundtrack to the movie sells for in the music department? The movie cost millions to make. The soundtrack possibly a few hundred thousand... What gives?
-- $G
Another "thing" coming? English is apparently a second language to you.
Wal-mart are the biggest seller of CDs in the country, and they are also very adept company at playing hardball with suppliers to get their way. The RIAA member companies would be very stupid to piss off Wal-mart.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Argh. I'm sorry if this it nit-picky, but really. I'm so frustrated at the poor writing I see on Slashdot and other sites. Let's all just try a little harder, hmm? With a little bit of work writing good english is not so difficult.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Comparing The Beatles to today's "boy bands" is ridiculous.
The Beatles have had a profound influence on many musicians. They were pioneers (Lennon's purported first use of recorded feedback in I Feel Fine, I believe) and they were (mostly) exceptionally talented musicians. I don't know any musicians in my area's circuit who study N'Sync and look to Backstreet Boys for inspiration for their next original.
Yes, the Beatles were molded into a "boy band" of the time, but to say they were "nothing more than" a boy band smacks of ignorance.
Being as Batt settled out of court, there's no precedent set. The odds in court would have been a crap shoot, but I would think that crediting Cage (he should have remained silent on that point), as he did, would have worked against claims by Batt that his silence was original, rather than derived from cage's silence. I really wonder whether a court finding for the plaintiff would have resulted in a six figure verdict, considering we're talking about two musicians virtually no one listens to and many haven't even heard of. I'd say the commercial value of either silent work is somewhere between none and negligible.
You know, it really is the dumbest comeback to any argument to say "don't buy it" or "don't watch it". I can figure out the obvious on my own. When we're discussing a topic, and I use Britney as an example, I don't need you to tell me how to avoid her. This is an abstract argument about quality of music. You're focussing on the literal example I used. You need to learn to seperate the literal from the abstract.
If you need a more concrete example, what would you think if I had replied "if you don't like my argument then don't read it". Do you think that's a devastating response to your comments? If not, maybe you'll appreciate why I'm not even slightly convinced by what you've said.
You know, after I'd just said that music is both subjective and objective, I would have thought you'd have more sense than to say "nah-uhh, you're wrong".
Yeah, if I'd said that then you'd have made a brilliant response. What a shame that I didn't say that. I said she's a crap singer. In other words, I "defin[ed] the terms involved". You purposefully ignored what I said, said I didn't "defin[e] the terms", then put another claim into my mouth so you could argue against it.
I don't disagree. One of my favourite bands is Flaming Lips and he can't sing for shit. But if the _only_ artistic quality is singing and they can't sing for shit (ie, Britney Spears) then you have to wonder why they're selling. Once again, don't focus on the example, focus on the argument.
Doesn't Apple music store use AAC, not MP3 (as per the article)?
Such irE
Suggestion: make good CDs, and maybe I'll buy the whole thing.
/. to suggest actually following the law. The admins see some inciteful dribble from some psycho flannel wearing nerdboy and post it as a headline like it's some late breaking issue; followed by 1000 posts from dumb people who either can't think for themselves or are trolling to get karma. What gets accomplished? Not much except a few geeks get a warm feeling down there while justifying piracy.
Bruha needs to get off his little soap box and realize the world isn't all about him. If you don't like the prices, don't buy. That does not give you license to steal the property of others.
I know, I know.. It's so unpopular on
Just because it's popular, does not make it cool. For example: Brittany Spears
If a CD isn't within a particular segment of music that I listen to (namely, stuff that's pretty rare in general) I always buy it used. I never have a problem finding any used CD I want- the stores I go to are always well-stocked.
Does the RIAA count this? It probably can't- it represents labels, not retail outlets.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Yeah, raise the prices, lower the prices... I'm still not buying.
Put out good music again and I might consider it. Also create an outlet where I can hear from your (record labels) artists without having to deal with the influence of payola. Stop trying to force feed me your market research and flavor of the week mentality.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
charging by length would encourage artists to make their songs longer for no good reason. "you don't have to buy it" - no, but it's a capitalistic world: the large majority of artists will do it to some extent.
"It appears the RIAA is being very low key about the fact that the five major labels think that 99 cents per song is too cheap, and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song. I was a huge fan of the 99c per song, but if they think that they can raise the price on me just because I don't buy full CDs anymore, they've got another thing coming. Suggestion: make good CDs, and maybe I'll buy the whole thing."
Okay. These points have been beaten over and over on Slashdot "I don't buy full CDs anymore" "make good CDs and maybe I'll buy the whole thing". This angers me very much.
THE MUSIC IS THE ARTISTS. It is their's. They, and who they create it for (record companies) and those who represent them (RIAA) have the right to set -any- price even if its $1000 a track. If its a $10,000 album that is the price. Don't try to negotiate, don't try to justify what is "right" and "wrong", what is "too much" because its totally subjective and it is -their- property.
If you don't want to buy a CD then don't. Thats great. Go listen to the music on the radio for free (and legal) like I do. But don't try to somehow justify copyright infringement (I'm civil and won't call it theft cause its not) by saying "too much" or "filler" in your sentences because thats an opinion not a fact.
Music is an art and like all arts there is no "good" or "bad". No "crap" no "great" because it is all opinion. So while you may think 10 out of 12 tracks on a CD are filler, the artist might have spent much more time working on those "fillers" than on the big radio hit that you wanted and downloaded from kazaa.
This "now they are charging too much" is just another excuse in the copyright infringement chest. Before it was "I want a company with a more realistic business model". So they put music online to compete with lost business through Napster et all. Then it became "I don't want to buy a whole album, I want to pick and choose" so after awhile things like iTunes became available where you could be selective. Now it is "oh...well....you can't decide the price for tracks, its uh...not fair!". The tactic is ever-changing and its annoying as hell. At least stand your ground and live up to your word. Artists are going farther and farther out of their way to accept the new technologies and you just keep making more excuses.
Believe it or not the music industry has bent over backwards to consumer demands more than any other industry has in recent decades. Look at the movie industry. No one demands the same crap from them. "I downloaded Matrix Revolutions because...uh well I didn't fully enjoy the filler in Matrix Reloaded so it is owed to me!"
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: YOU AREN'T OWED A GODDAMN THING SO PLEASE STOP THINKING THAT. You have no right to music. You have no right to demand how it exists, the quality, how it is distributed or the costs or means of it.
"the America's got a very serious talent problem!"
I love how this is somehow an American problem. Not to get too far off topic or anything but the vast majority of bubble gum pop since The Beatles has come from the UK. Not to even mention the disgrace of what passes as electronic music. 180 BPM slop.
As if America is the only place that crappy media is produced. Haven't any of you ever seen Ab Fab? It's trash! And I like British comedy!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Guitar: $2,300.00
Amp: $5,000.00
Mixing Board: $5,000.00 - $15,000.00
Mike: $250.00 each
Monitors : $250.00 each
Keyboard: ????
Lights: $500.00
Controller: $1,500.00
Getting a few grand together to put out CD's is just as easy as getting the funding to get the band together and working in the first place.
You don't need to get the CD's into every Wall-Mart, sell them at your gigs, have mp3 samples on line, and a CD order form from your own or hosted web site.
Don't wimp out and join in the business as usual bullshit simply because you might have to have a couple of less beer a night to afford to cut the CD's. If you want to make it in the industry, you either blow the RIAA, or you have the guts to make your own path. NEVER be afraid to fail, cause not trying is SURRENDER.
So far, Iv'e found 15000 ways that didn't quite work - Edison
That's insane. That person should be taken out back and shot.
Artists, help the artists, what about the artists, save the artists. you know what I say?
FUCK THE ARTISTS.
That was on thinkgeek =)
Forget who said it though...
Just to be fair, bub:
> Once again, don't focus on the example, focus on the argument.
One thing which thing which struck me about this exchange was I know what you listen to, but have no idea what the other person listens to.
I posted this la\st week and got rejected... two other websites post it and all of a sudden its /. worthy... whatever
anyway my take on this is that this isnt even close to being new.... A Perfect Circle's first album wasn't posted as a full album up until recently.... when it was posted as a full album for 11.00... 2 dollars over the 9.99 original album minimum..
there are 13.99 dollar albums out there now... Its a joke
Why we still pussyfoot around and dont file a anti-trust lawsuit for the obvious theft of money from consumers.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
cartel (n): a consortium of independent organizations formed to limit competition by controlling the production and distribution of a product or service; "they set up the trust in the hope of gaining a monopoly"
It doesn't matter that there are other record companies. If they're limiting competition by controlling production and/or distribution then they're a cartel trying to form a monopoly.
Most people dont believe that copyright is a moral issue, and they dont have any qualms about downloading.
(its certainly not just an anarchist few that download- its most everyone)
A law that most people dont believe in is bound to fail eventually. I dont see anything wrong with that- the would will be a better place for it.
Tell me, how exactly does a business that doesn't turn a profit classify as a success?
What if I could make a perfect copy of your wife? Then, me and a hundred of my friends gangbang her all we want while distributing other copies of her to the rest of the world? Would you feel "ripped off" or would that constitute some type of fair use?
I doubt most people would be bothered by the ``perfect copy of your wife'' part of that concept.
Besides, my wife is a physical entity whose value isn't reduced by the existence of an identical copy. Not to me, anyway.
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
Cool dude, I was worried you'd be mad at first if I put up the videos of it.
See you on Kazaa! Well.. not you exactly..
A lot of folks think Britney sings just fine. Maybe they're uneducated trailer park trash, or just image-ridden adolescents, but they still *think* she's a great singer. Your mileage may vary.
:)
I like the Black Lips more than the Flaming Lips. Much more interesting show.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
All the cool people did this four years ago.
If you want cool these days, you have to put a web interface on your (vinyl) jukebox, depop & noise-gate on the fly, and serve it up to your iPod via 802.11b or satellite link.
Kill him with extreme irony: use a silencer.
Wrong. What you call a "monopoly" never actually exists, since there is ALWAYS a choice, no matter how small. If you don't like Christina Aguilera, then you are not forced to buy her music through RIAA.
If you liberal communists want to destroy the music industry, then you have to adhere to the forces of the market and come up with a better product, not whining and complaining about not being allowed to steal.
Who exactly is holding a gun to the head of artists forcing them to release their music via the RIAA? If you can come up with a better scheme and pay musicians more money and make them more famous, then you will get artists signing up and thus you CAN compete. This is unfettered capitalism, and just because you liberal scumbags don't like the results, we shouldn't throw it away.
How about some REAL WORLD numbers?
Guitar: $600-900 (not everyone plays PRS or Gibson)
Amp: $900 (head and 4x12 cabinet, used)
Mixing board: Unneccesary (venues provide them)
Mics: $60 each (Shure SM57's are cheap and plentiful)
Monitors: Unneccesary (provided by venue)
Keyboard: Unneccesary unless you have a keyboardist (that sounds like a stupid statement, but it isn't)
Lights: Unneccesary (provided by venue, and many venues won't allow outside light rigs)
Controller: Unneccesary (see above)
You're still forgetting that putting a band together isn't something you just decide to do overnight. I've been amassing gear for nine years. I have a TON of shit (several heads and cabinets, a good amount of recording gear), but I didn't buy it all at once. Fuck, for six years all I used was a shitty 2x12 Peavey combo.
You're on the right track, but your assumptions versus reality are a bit out of whack.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
I hate to be one of those "it was better when..." kind of people but...
No one puts a quality ALBUM (or CD) out anymore. Can anyone think of anything that come close in quality to the Who's "Who's Next" album? If there was something being put out of this quality I would buy it.
Bzzz Sorry, there are more record companies and musicians who are not connected to the RIAA than there are that are. Plus the RIAA is nothing more than a lobbying group. MAP pricing was an attempt to make Tower Records and other record only type stores happy. If they where really doing bad things with price fixing, people would have gone to jail, like the ADM execs did with Lysine.
"What you call a "monopoly" never actually exists, since there is ALWAYS a choice, no matter how small."
Then by your narrow-minded definition, there is never a monopoly. Ever. You always have the choice to "do without".
But, thankfully, that's not the way it is, and you are wrong.
Tell that to the guys who wrote the song, and expect to be paid for entertaining you, but can't put food on their table.
Well I think one would have to say they really didn't get to be creative artists until they were all doped up. ;-)
A foolish analogy, but you've failed to understand. Thanks for coming out.
It seems the RIAA has finally taken their cue from Adobe and Microsoft and decided to raise prices, blaming piracy.
"Gee, we wouldn't have to charge $500 for Photoshop if it wasn't for all those bad old pirates!" becomes "Gee, we wouldn't have to charge $50 for Britney's latest CD if it wasn't for those bad old pirates!"
I generally don't even buy CDs anymore, but I certainly won't pay $1 for a track of low-quality, highly compressed audio, no matter whose name is on the store. Not until I get access to an actual CD at the same time. Paying for inferior quality music is stupid, and it's mostly stupid people who are doing the buying, sheep who've been trained to believe that downloading music is a cardinal sin. I'm sure there are plenty of intelligent folks who've bought music, but I've a feeling you're in the minority here.
I will not pay per track until I get an actual CD made from uncompressed originals along with the download.
Dude, this isnt like GIJoe where when you punch one twin the other gets wounded.
Except in programming (where you might copy pointers to a single object), when you copy something, the copy has its own separate state from the copied object.
I personally see no reason why we couldnt copy people with desireable traits if it were possible to exactly copy them. The problem is that the world is 90 percent full of undesireable people, all of whom will want a clone that will likely find them unattractive. Worse still, most of these ugly/stupid/shitheaded people are unaware of this and would probably want themselves copied for the betterment of humanity. All we need is 3000000 Larry Ellisons. And he is a borderline case, someone who is arguably of above average value.
However, sound files do not have any of these complications associated with them, so I will continue to download them. If musicians want to get paid, then they should perform music for a fee. Until the 20th century, this was the customary way of getting paid for it. I have even heard there are some musicians who still perform in "concerts" arranged at various geographical locations in what I call a "tour". Just a thought.
All your argument is is that there are good substitutes for Britney's music. However, most your mentioned substitutes fall into monopolies controlled by other RIAA members. The problem is, when you have a collection of monopolies (copyrighted goods, by definition, are a temporary monopoly granted to the author; each RIAA member, then, is a multi-monpolist) an oligarchy forms. And the RIAA representing all these various companies together make a cartel. The problem is, cartels price fixing is clearly illegal, since all RIAA members charging the same price upon distributors is obviously a conspiracy to restraint trade/commerce (people have fixed income, therefore there will be logically less online music bought) . And you'll notice that book publishers, on the other hand, wouldn't all raise their books prices at the same time unless there was some good reason (like there was a writers strike, or the ink crop (do they still use ink from plants?) had a drought that limits yields) because, as you mentioned, there are substitute goods available for most books which would mean any single publisher upping the price would likely me less profits. Do you think the DOJ is going to do anything about all the RIAA members, though?
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Choose from over 500,000 songs from all genres of music.
Right, it's not my favorite artists or songs I'm looking for, it's my favoritie genre.
Collect your favorite tracks and tune into your own playlists.
Okay. Computers are neat, huh?
Download music on up to 3 PCs--for online and offline listening.
So the parent who wanted to listen to music in their car now has to find a pc with a car radio form factor?
Get more tracks for less when you buy in bulk through Napster's Track Packs.
The parent was asking for a flat rate for as much music as they wanted, not a reduced bulk rate.
Plug into over 50 different commercial-free stations that are customized to your favorite genres.
What is it with this genre thing? I don't like musical genres, I like music that I like.
Set up and save tracks to your own playlists and share them with others.
Okay. Computers are neat- wait a minute this is almost just like a previous bullet point!
Build your own custom radio station.
Would this radio station almost have the funtionality of saving my own playlists and sharing them with others?
and more...
Let me guess- we can download music? Off the internet? And then the music files are in the computer?
Besides, read the actual statement, speaking of a Slashdotter. You can be absolutely certain that if a Slashdotter were a professional musician, they wouldn't be in the Megastar label-owning money-raking class.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
If they raise the price of the song to $2.99, I will pirate more than anyone and set up means to aid the process for others. As someone who has held himself back, this pisses me off. Royally.
-Tru
$.50 a track, 192kbit stereo is what it'll take to get me to buy my music.
I'm going to wait until competition drives price down to $.10 a track. Oh, right, it's a monopoly sanctioned by the state but not regulated by the state, prices will only go up as per this slashdot story...
The Register article says "The Wall Street Journal reports that the major five labels think that 99 cents per song is too cheap, and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song."
Huh?! Are they discussing it jointly or separately within each record company? If the former is the case, that's illegal price fixing in the US. Does anyone have the original WSJ article at hand to see what it really says? Or am I missing something fundamental here?
Mentioning Rilo Kiley with that trash hurts me =/
First of all, not all RIAA bands have the same prices, nor do all RIAA labels, UMG just lowered the wholesale prices on CD's. Not only that they do not have secret meeting where they chose the prices. Also they don't prevent you from making an album or N'Sync cover songs and going down to your local record store and getting them to stock it (that is what microsoft did), you just have to pay the statutory mechanical royalty to the songwriter, and that songwriter has no choice but to let you cover the song for $.10 a song sold.
Notice I said better yet, I just wanted a hot female singer, and we all know Jenny Lewis is hot, model hot.
To properly deconstruct the technologist perspective you must be more accurate. Kids who listen to the radio are not "recieving and demodulating musical signals without paying for it", they're just listening to some music. Practically speaking, Kazaa is treated in the same way. Kazzaa is a way to listen to music like the radio is, except you can often select what you want to listen to. And you get a local copy, though not an especially good one at a 128k bit rate. But in general kids don't care much. They used to be just as happy recording the radio on cassette tapes.
Digital systems and the internet have made it easier to record the radio on cassette tapes. Big deal. No one yet has shown, in any study with any credibility, a change in behavior over the past 30 years. All the words are simply postering attempts to take advantage of the current situation in some way.
"How many products in that price range deliver that kind of long-term value, besides film and music?"
Ever heard of a "book?"
+++ATH0
I have no problem with charging a premium for a hot new CD, in fact, if I were an artist / record company I wouldn't be opposed to charging even more for the first few days or weeks of a really popular release: it's just supply and demand.
But as the weeks go on, and production exceeds demand, the price should go down, and continue to go down as time passes. It simply makes no sense that we should have to pay the same price to within a few dollars for a CD that came out years ago and is not longer anywhere near as popular as it was.
Furthermore, there's no reason why CDs couldn't be produced in "paperback" or low-cost versions later: something like this already happens with the Columbia House and BMG music club discs. But I would make it more extreme: initially sell "collector" or full-price CDs, in nice jewel cases with liner notes, bonus tracks, etc. But after 6 months or a year, distribute it at a vastly reduced price, basically as a bare disc in a cardboard sleeve.
If these "paperback" discs were released in the $10 price range, they would be comparable to MP3s and would provide additional justification for simultaneous digital release with the discount discs.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm a huge fan of the iTunes music store.. So huge, in fact, that I'm actually PURCHASING music through this outstanding service and bought myself a 20 gig ipod. My inclination is hardly to convince the world to pay for their music vs. downloading them ilegally; rather it's because I happen to like paying only $10 for an album. I'm a bargain hunter.
It was bad enough that the RIAA shunned legal digital downloads long enough for the pirates to take over the industry. Add to that their decision to continually fight a customer-driven demand for a more flexible (and cheaper) medium of distribution.. Now just when something out there is working, they want to jack the price up to a level that will send all of those wouldbe legal customers back to the P2P world using anonymousnetworks.
The RIAA needs to wake up and recognize their issues here.. Their customers want a more flexible delivery mechanism, they want to pay less, and need the flexibility they currently have with a CD. Apple accomplished much of this with their product, which the RIAA will subsequently destroy with their greedy price increases.
Let's face it - in business customers drive the industry. When Americans stopped buying domestics, the industry responded with better products that met customer needs. When New Coke flopped, Coca Cola wisely switched back to the old formula.
The RIAA and its member companies had an opportunity in 1997 when illegal MP3's first surfaced to nip this problem. The early adopters were trading heavily on the IRC network, which led the rise of Napster and later Kazaa. These networks suceeded because it was just so darn tough for file traders to find the songs they were looking for. Had the RIAA member companies set up a site at any point between 1997 and 2000 (even without digital rights management), they could have easily circumvented the rise of these illegal networks. CD's themselves were insecure enough to create this massive proliferation in the first place!!
Fight them. Write to them and tell them what a stupid decision this is.
www.lonseidman.com
Hysteria (1987) perhaps?
My all-time favourite disc as well.
That would be more of an offense against his wife, wouldn't it?
If you make a perfect copy of a person, the result is a *person*, who then has the ability to kick your ass and call the cops.
Music is not self-aware. Nice try, though.
+++ATH0
My wife thinks the same thing. However, since she NEVER drinks Pepsi (since it is gross) shelling out a buck per bottle that always wins is EXACTLY THE SAME as just buying the tracks, except for the gas to get to the store, the wear on the car, and your precious precious time...
A real musician would be playing for the love of it and building human relationships with actual fans who would have no problem paying for fresh and scarce concerts, scarce physical merchandise, and CDs-as-a-patronage-thankyou.
Actually, that wouldn't be a professional musician, that would be a starving musician.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Fela Kuti, too.
Good stuff.
~jeff
...and to think I've been waiting all this time for the "absurd" initial price point of $.99 to finally drop to affordable levels... Looks like it's back to downloading "tab" files and learning to play anything I want to hear on the guitar myself -- now if only I had a better singing voice.
Let me get this straight. They have a delivery system for their content which costs them nothing and gives them 100% profit revenue stream. And they want to kill it by jacking up the price to try and slow the deathmarch of their other revenue stream? iTunes makes no money off the service and the labels get a cut of every track downloaded for simply allowing Apple to sell their intellectual property. I would guess that they have the same deal with all the other services but I don't know for a fact. How stupid are these people? Are they just scared blind?
"Trying is only the first step towards failure." - Homer
Average cost to manufacture a CD: $0.25
Cost to get it to stores or to you: maybe $2
Then why the f*ck do they charge such ridiculous amounts of money? I can buy brand new DVD's of the best movies for less than a freakin CD these days, and the CD's cost less to make and market than the DVD's do.
RIAA - kiss my music-pirating ass. If you want me to pay so much damn money for a CD, you've got another thing coming. Things in technology, namely CD's, are supposed to get cheaper over time. Has it? Hell no! Why? Because people are greedy bastards. It is because of these people that I abso-fuckin-lutely REFUSE to buy music any more.
And you bitch about $15 for a CD.
http://www.957theride.com/home.asp good luck finding one like it in your area.
your right its time to go back to latin.
I love dreamers. Want a good CD make it yourself.
PCM is not compressed. So a 192kbit PCM = 16bit@12kHz, which basically means it will sound very, very bad (about AM quality).
Unfortunately, they will attempt to defer the costs of this practice to the artists which created the need for an industry association. A couple of generations of artists will suffer for the RIAA practices until the market wings back in favor of the consumer. This is the process that the RIAA and CRIA (in Canada) right against. Their existance depends on an unbalanced system.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Can you imagine how popular XM radio would be if you could go online and set up a playlist of ANY music you want (and none that you dont) and listen to it from you car?
I can imagine it. Just look at the old Napster. Look at in-dash MP3 players. Nuf said.
Too bad that market is still un-filled by the industry. They will sell you only stuff that won't work with your MP3 in-dash player. The players are out there, the legal content for it is missing. I think it's bad business to not sell what the consumer is looking to buy.
The truth shall set you free!
"If I've heard this segment of audio within the last 24 hours, don't record it."
I don't think that is permitted in the XM service contract. I don't have the service, but this is not free over the air radio. Recording it might be defined as theft of service. Check your contract. I you have a contract, reply to my post and let us know if recording the program is permitted.
The truth shall set you free!
The real question is whether media companies care one little bit about online sales. I don't think they do. And if iTunes and the rest fail miserably they will be overjoyed, because then we'll have to go back to $15 a pop for CDs. Nor are they above giving the online music distribution folks a little push, to help them over the cliff. I mean, do you really think they LIKE having a company like Apple distributing their content for them? The pocket change iTunes generates for them is secondary to these people: they want to return the the days of absolute, unquestioned, iron-fisted control of distribution, and they won't rest until they get it back.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
By increasing the price per song online, they have given CDs a discounted rate without ever really discounting them.
Except it doesn't work. A simple trip over an isle or two shows DVD's are the true discount. They haven't figured it out yet, there is competition for the entertainment dollar. Their product offers little value compared to the other offerings. It's not just P-P that is the problem. Price pressure is a big problem.
The truth shall set you free!
Sure. IF you can. But I wouldn't try it with me.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If you remember back a whole 14 to 18 months ago, the starting price for downloaded music was $2.49. The had already done all the colluding and price-fixing, had it all buttoned up.
Then Apple came along and screwed it all up.
The labels are just trying to get the price back to where they wanted it in the first place.
Just be glad you don't have to pay normal price for this.
Good riddance. And you wouldn't be called a "professional musician" in that case, you'd be called a "recording artist" who depends on artificial-scarcity enforcement to make money as your first priority.
.50 or free. You know, to "show the RIAA who's boss." Because that makes it all right...
...
No, he'd just be a disappointed artist who has realized that morons like you have gotten so used to the convenience of piracy, they expect everything to either be free, or less than a dollar, and so he'll never make a living fulfilling his dream. Doing club shows all year doesn't get you by, sorry. I guess you didn't know being a "professional musician" means music is your profession, which means you get paid for it.
Very quickly, it's getting harder and harder to make money on anything in this world. I've seen whole medical textbooks ripped and put online before. Audiobooks, entire discographies, etc. The things you'll find being thrown around on P2P networks are incredible. Nobody cares about the consequences anymore. What happens when nobody can sell anything anymore? Why do people ignore the inevitable result of this?
A real musician would be playing for the love of it and building human relationships with actual fans who would have no problem paying for fresh and scarce concerts, scarce physical merchandise, and CDs-as-a-patronage-thankyou.
GIVE ME A BREAK. No, better, FUCK YOU. A "real musician" has to eat, because they make their living making music. That's their choice in this life. A "real musician" has the right to be successful from their music. You, sir, are not a musician. You're just another Slashdotter going with the groupthink--another consumer who comes on and replies to anti-RIAA propoganda put forth by OSDN-owned Slashdot. You have no right lecturing people on what a musician should be caring about. I'm a musician myself, and your attitude pisses me off. If Slashdot were made up of musicians, the entire opinion of this website would change. Your opinion is just a result of the justification going on in your head over how piracy has made people expect things for free or for extremely cheap.
By your logic:
* John Carmack is not a "real programmer" because he should only care about hacking out cool engines and building relationships with content creators and game players, blah blah blah, and be happy when people bother taking the time out of their day to bother paying him, out of the goodness of their little golden hearts.
* Peter Jackson is not a "real filmmaker" because he should only care about making epic trilogies to build "human relationships" with the Tolkien fans who take the time out of their day to bother paying him for the things he made, out of the goodness of their little golden hearts.
* Nobody should be upset over anyone not being willing to pay enough to cover expenses. Instead, everyone should be on their hands and knees, grateful and kissing the asses of those who dare--*gasp*--pay fully for shit instead of demanding it be
And if you could make an exact molecular copy of a can of Coke for next to nothing (and you soon will), would you feel bad that CocaCola (and WalMart, and the rest) are now being "ripped off"? CocaCola would have to reinvent themselves by having to work again
"work again?" They're not working now? I could have sworn they made soda that a large majority of the world drinks and enjoys. Yes, my friend, accept global capitalism and deal with it.
by continually coming up with new recipes. Of course, they'd never be a giant sugar-water-advertising-&-distribution company again (just like the RIAA is going to have to downsize).
Your attitude has to be the most pompous and misinformed I've read in a long time. "You're not a real musician if you expect to be compensated for your career choice!" Fuck off, and whatever job you do, I hope you get paid for it so you can make a living. You should
Mainly because I got out of the music business in 1980
you can't apply commodity logic to art.
:) But music is everywhere.
Why? And how do you define "art"? I bet a car designer considers his car to be art. Or a successful leather jacket designer.
There is no way to get the music of signed artists except through the companies they have signed for.
Blame the artist. They signed the deal.
You can go to another band of that genre, or write your own music, or turn to public domain music or whatever. It's silly to act like there's a "monopoly" on the music you can listen to. Everywhere I turn is music--often music I don't like.
That's true in your case, however:
1) I buy my pepsi where I work at a signficant discount (~50 cents per bottle).
2) I usually drink 1-3 bottles of diet pepsi per day.
3) I usually walk to work, so it doesn't cost anything other than the little bit of tread I use on my shoes.
Therefore, for 50 cents, I get a tasty beverage and a song.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Artists like Courtney Love and Janis Ian?
Odd, they are telling us the record industry is the group that's been ripping them off. Why should we believe you instead? What is your association with the music industry, should you happen to have one?
I decided not to bother with a point-by-point refutation when you repeated the *AA companies favorite lie. Given the repeated exposure of this lie, anyone who repeats it now is either too clueless to be worth discussing anything with or too interested in grabbing regular checks from *AA organization or label PR firms to care about it.
You should look to your. . . associates in the industry for an explanation as to why they are ripping artists off.
Note: if you are not on their payroll, you are an idiot. You're doing their work for them free of charge. Your getting modded as "Insightful" suggests that people should be required to take IQ tests before being allowed mod points.
If you don't like reading facts and informed speculation about M$hit and the *AA organizations and member companies, click here.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Not to nitpick, but you kinda have it backwards. My father is a "professional musician". In other words, he exists to get paid. In return for payment, he plays music.
:P
Artists, on the other hand, seem to be somewhat included into that whole 'Starving artist' bit. They do things strictly for the art, the show, the songs, the fans. Most of them don't get "paid". Hell, I'm an "artist" in the sense that we've been paid twice in 8 shows.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Obviously it doesn't...
Then they should get a different job. If you want to try and sell music or most anything else as mass media, you accept that so-called piracy is a part of the marketplace, as it always has been. If you found a way to take it out you'd greatly affect that marketplace in gross and subtle ways and might find that once again there was no food on the table. Mass media isn't a perpetual free lunch, nor is it even a guarantee of a good honest wage for hard work and creativity. It's just a set of temporary circumstances.
Musicians made livings before Gutenberg, and they'll make livings long after the Internet has had its way with the 20th century model of music duplication and distribution.
Most musicians in the current system lose out totally - check out the nearest pawn shop for a great selection of drum kits and electric guitars. Pursuing a lottery mentality helps only a lucky few, as should be obvious. If people want to make music and make a living at it, they're going to have to find a model that better serves both them and their intended customers.
Pertinent section of above post below:
The capitalism model in use now works great when the items are 'noncreative', mass-produced commodities.
Once 'Interlectual Property' gets involved, all bets are off:
Enter software/frivolous/overly broad patents,
copyright terms that last nearly a century,
Digital Millenium Copyright Act,
copy-protected DVDs and music CDs which violates Phillips audio CD standard,
etc.
Austrian (the gold standard laissez-faire capitalist theory) economics only fails to apply (or more properly, shows distortions and inefficiencies) if the monopoly or cartel is established by special privileges and immunities not avialable to competitors attempting to enter the market.
A monopoly or cartel that comes together under natural market forces is still under market constraints in Austrian theory because of the ability for new entrants to enter the field and the ability of consumers to make good substitutions and use reductions (if only on the margins).
I recently received a check for $13 from RIAA, as settlement for their CD price fixing.
I guess I will be able to expect a much higher check in the future.
geez and I though $.99 for System of a Down's 46 second song (rather strangely titled "36") was crazy...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Hanlon's Razor works up to a point. But with the degree, extent, and predictability of the RIAA's bungling in this area, I'm beginning to wonder if that much incompetence can really exist in one organization without the shareholders tearing the whole thing to pieces.
Y'know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water.
Actually, I have heard this. It's a really funny idea, but didn't work well at all.
--Forest C. Adcock--
Well, in the past the RIAA has been convicted of price fixing. It does seem semi-strange that it sounds like all RIAA members are planning on upping their price. And as for your comment about "they don't prevent you from making an album...", I never claimed that wasn't true. There's obvious indie labels out there, as well. Neither of this is relevant, though, if it can be reasonably proven that there was a conspiracy to restraint trade/commerce.
If a single company on a commodity good raises prices, some other company sells the good instead. The only reasonable way, then, for the price to go up is if the supply side for all of them changes which increases their costs and thereby causes all their products to go up in price.
If a single company on a non-commodity good raises prices, there's a certain level of loss of sales based on the elasticity of demand. If there are good substitutes, trade shifts to other companies. If all companies which have good substitute goods for each other conspire to raise prices, then they're restraining trade. The biggest issue, of course, is if the companies conspired. Given that the actual supplies needed to sell the goods (licensing paper, since it's actually Apple, et al whose doing all the hosting work) haven't gone up 25% or more, it's reasonable to guess that all the companies in the RIAA raising their prices are likely conspiring.
At minimal, an investigation in such a situtation is warrented which the FBI might be compelled to pursue if the DOJ were to push them. I, however, am not very optimistic about this situation taking place, so my hypothesis about their being a conspiracy is unlikely to be properly tested.
Your suggestion about doing an album containing cover songs and bring it down to the local record store is interesting. I didn't realize cover songs covered more than allowing performances. However, the discussion is about sales online which seems to have at least a few more obstacles attached with it. It might not be unreasonable to do as you suggested. I personally do not have the capital to fund such a venture nor the musical talent necessary in song production. Beyond that, I don't actually want to make clone CDs of music.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
This is something I never understood. Why can't an artist (who owns copyright to their work) give distribution rights to multiple companies? Then, we wouldn't even have a monopoly on the single work either. those companies could charge whatever they want, but would have to compete with each other (on service, quality, niceties and prices).
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
Oh, come on. Because musicians don't have to eat?
Then why is it OK for a programmer to charge money for his program? He should be doing it for the LOVE of programming and the open source movement.>
They're an industry lobbying / PR organization. The difference between it and ordinary trade associations is that it's better funded than most and in my opinion, it represents a bunch of companies comparable to SCO.
Tech Public Policy stuff
However, sound files do not have any of these complications associated with them, so I will continue to download them. If musicians want to get paid, then they should perform music for a fee. Until the 20th century, this was the customary way of getting paid for it. I have even heard there are some musicians who still perform in "concerts" arranged at various geographical locations in what I call a "tour". Just a thought.
Yeah, that's practical. Why isn't Bruce Willis busy touring the opera houses of the world with his smash hit show "Die Hard II"?
The law is the law. You either pay the price or steal it but don't try to justify what you do by saying that Metallica should become travelling minstrels.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
I can't see why some big company buys up all the used CD's - or brand new CD's for that matter - and uses the physical song to sell an online song. Lawyers can get involved, and witness the destruction of the physical CD's.
This is the solution.
I think we all need to thank the French for creating the proper term to describe these people... "Douche bag"
You wouldn't be a profesinal musician. In the days of classical music composers like Mozart used to throw on big concerts for free, so that people got to hear there music. they would commision more songs and or become a patron and hire the composer and his orchestra for parties etc. Now artists seem to expect people to pay a lot of money before they know how good it is.
Don't you think that's more than a little unrealistic? Fifty cents a track means a total cost of less than six dollars for most albums. You can pay more than that for a six-pack of decent beer, and it certainly won't last as long as a good album.
6 dollars is about 12 (that works at out 2 pound a can that would be expensive for a top quality beer) pounds this is the price (or less) some stores sell there CD's at in the UK so the music industry in the uk seems the disagree with you. also 6 dollars meens the indivudual CD is making a big profit on the manufaturing side and you only need to sell a one or two thousand CD's to make a good profit. This something even small bands can acheive just by selling the CD's at there concerts. Most bands are dropped by Recording compaines not because they don't make a profit but because they don't make a hugh profit.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
That's a very good description of a lot of musician. most still play for the love of music if they can make some money out of it's good luck mostly
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Yeah, I gotta hand it to you there. Seems more like humanity's got a real talent problem!
hmm, so for a service that costs them LESS than making CDs, they want to charge more than twice as much. The record companies that want to do this can all blow me. It will be a cold day in hell before I ever pay more than 99 cents per song. Hell, I think 99 cents is too much, but at least it seems like a reasonable price to a lot of people judging by the sales of online music.
I think sombody should send these greedheads a copy of "The Golden Goose" with explanitory notes in words or two syllables or less, so the record execs will be able to understand it.
it is something you could do in the average vacation time alloted you by any decent job (2-3 weeks per year, maybe more).
Crap. Making indie film is just like making indie music. It goes roughly like this:
Concept => Script => Cast/Crew => Kit => Location => Post-Production => Packaging => Marketing => Distribution
If any of these fails, you're either totally fucked, or you've suffered a setback which requires you to do one or several steps again. And with film, you can't offset initial costs by selling CDs at gigs, because you have no gigs. Don't think that a lack of gigs means you have more time on your hands: if you actually want to make money out of indie film, you're working your arse off 18x7 for it.
Those are the reasons why, upon leaving university in 1999 with a degree in film and a bit of experience in short film and theatre production and writing, I turned to a job which would make me more money: tending bar. How d'ya like them apples?
L
The original poster insisted that he wouldn't buy any music online unless it was a minimum "192kbps", but didn't say which codec. Which he probably thought was "clever" because if he'd said "MP3", people could have pointed out that AAC is better at lower bitrates than 192kbps than MP3 is at 192kbps. But actually it's moronic, because 192kbps could mean anything.
I just bought Queen's Greatest Hits at 12 from HMV in the UK. That's 3 Discs of classic tracks, 17 on each.
17 * 3 = 51 songs
That's just over 23.5 pence per track ($0.43USD)
...these aren't my real teeth.
The record companies are no different. They too are employers trying to make money. It does not matter one bit to them whether music sharing actually loses them revenue or not - the fact is that their perception is that it does.
I live in the UK and the fact is that record stores like Virgin and HMV are packed on a weekend full of people queueing up at the checkouts, willing to pay anything up to 18 pounds (=$30 approx.) for a single CD. Despite the rise of Internet music sites, the trade in these stores seems just as bouyant as ever.
The fact is that whether we here believe record companies rip us off or not is neither here nor there. Whilst there are people willing to pay these high prices, record companies have no need to reduce prices, it's that simple.
If you share music, then at least have the guts to admit that you do it because it's free, because you have no qualms about ripping the record companies and musicians off or because you don't want to pay the high prices of CDs. Don't try to put any other form of justification behind those actions, perhaps in trying to present yourself as some modern-day Robin Hood of the CD world.
The only way the situation will change is if enough people stop paying the high prices and the record companies are hit in their bank balances - therefore, if you want the situation to change, you let the general public and the retailers know that prices are too high.
I'm not judging people who share music - at the end of the day, everyone of us comes from a culture where music has been shared amongst the populace for centuries - however, all that file sharing is actually doing is forcing record companies to manufacture protected CDs and bring in DRM'ed music, nothing more.
In the long term, that means that the rights of all of us get curtailed but absolutely nothing changes with regard to the price of music.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I like They Might Be Giants, but I'll be damned if I'm paying $20.79 (let alone $62.79 at the $2.99/song level) for their song "Fingertips". You might also want to reconsider picking up that track Descendents tracks "All" (1 second) and "No, All!" (2 seconds).
Some people are never happy.
Just goes to show you how greedy these guys, and how willing they are to shoot themselves in their own foot.
Hey RIAA! People weren't downloading music on Kazaa because it was in mp3. It's because it was CHEAP!
Same goes for iTunes.
end rant
Insert Sig Here
They get away with the price hikes for two reasons. One, people continue to pay them despite the hike. Two, the artists you want to hear continue to sign with them. Why do they sign? Because the label offers them more than they can get elsewhere. As soon as the public gets their crap together and comes up with a real solution to getting the artists to stop signing with these money grubbing labels, the prices will stabilize at a reasonable rate. The solution: 1) A new label whose primary delivery method is download based. 2) The share holders are the people who purchase the music. 3) The artists are comfortable that they have the general public's support and that they have some hope to earn relatively the same dollars that they did under the money grubbing labels. ( that's the hard part).
Why would anyone think that we'd spend MORE money on loosey compressed music versus the original CD?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If they think people are going to buy tracks for $2.50, think again.
Given that the RIAA has been fighting online music distribution since day one, I'd imagine the whole idea is to try and kill the market. They still seem to think that CD sales should be the only distribution channel. If they ever manage to come up with a reliable copy protection scheme, the online download market will likely be promptly and completely squashed with even greater tarriffs.
If *you* were a prof-mus, and *you* were selling your tracks for 50c, and doing the work yourself (not a large corp), and if you sold 100K copies of 6 tracks in a year, *you* would get $300K in a year. Not bad for one cut and some hours of work.
Yeah, it would be real tough. *You* might pack up and quit, but professional musicians like Keely Zoo don't and, while they don't suck down mega$, they live.
To be consistent you must apply the same rules to every market, so you have no right bitching the next time OPEC decides to cap production to drive up oil prices.
I certainly wouldn't bitch about that. Driving up oil prices does more to reduce oil consumption and promote alternative fuels than all the environmental lobbies combined.
I don't complain about gas prices. If I couldn't handle paying $20 for 250 miles of driving, then I would have bought a Prius instead of a Jetta.
Although if we're pushing for actual correctness, not just moral equivalency, neither OPEC nor RIAA really qualifies as an example of free-market capitalist principles, so it's not that simple to rule good/bad on their market decisions. Also, RIAA's product can be replicated at virtually no cost and new supply created as long as the funds are there, wherease OPEC's cannot. As such, I think RIAA's model should push for volume more than margin. But I'm not an expert, and I don't run OPEC or RIAA. I'm just saying, if you can state your position in one sentence, you're probably ridiculously oversimplifying the important stuff.
Seriously, I think I would have been better off never seeing this topic. I now feel empty inside, and it hurts; it really, really hurts.
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
well, the worst deal i've found on itunes has been .99 for a 4 second interlude track (janet jackson, i think).
Maybe they'd do better with a 4 second video clip of Ms Jackson's breasts...
Just loop it until it's the length you think is worth $1 - eg 60 times for 3-4 hours. It's easy enough.
It seems that the per track scheme of selling really exposes a major weakness in the current music industry. A flat rate doesn't really fit very well since all tracks are really not the same, especially with the "popular" artists where they make all of their money (one / two hits drive the rest of the cd).
Does a painter price all of their canvases the same? Some are definitely worth more than others and are priced accordingly.
The truth here is that most tracks on a cd are worth much, much less if they were priced this way.
I do buy more cd's now than ever, although almost all are not the major marketed groups.
"Classical music probably costs a bit less given most of the works are already composed and perhaps, depending on the arrangement, royalty free, and then probably costs a bit more as a more performers -- in some cases whole orchestras, choruses, and opera singers -- are required."
In addition to paying more performers, the production costs of a high-quality classial recording are astounding. You need to find a good-sounding room that can fit everyone, enough microphones to adequately capture all the instruments, and something that can record all this at once.
And you're modded +5 Insightful. Proof again that Slashdot has an enormous number of freeloaders on board.
Hear hear! We should go back to a time when the only music produced was that sponsored by wealthy patrons. Surely the tastes of George Soros, Bill Gates, and Donald Trump are superior to that of us mere mortals anyway.
Since your mental prowess seems to be a bit hindered I'll try to spell some things out slowly for you.
Remember cassette tapes? I know it was a long time ago, but think hard. They used to be "the thing", than this wonderful new technology came out called "Compact Discs" which could be produced at half the cost with near perfect sound. Did the cost of an album go down? No, almost overnight it rose by almost 50% (cost of product transition we were told...only temprorary). Now here we are with a distribution method that virtually eliminates all costs of shipping AND manufacturing. Allows for mass copying (not illgal, think cost of burning 1,000,000 cd's as opposed to copying 1,000,000 mp3's) and they're jacking the price up AGAIN.
Since mathematics seems to be a bit of challenge for you let me break it down: 16 song album at Amazon-->approx. 13.49 = 0.84 per song. .99 per song on iTunes = 18.81 for the same album.
Are you scratching your head yet idiot? Also when we take into account that the artist is only getting on average $1.00 per album the absurdity becomes more apparent.
If the RIAA were anything but a bunch of exploitation hungry vampires living off the talents of others, they'd drop the price half and raise the artist's cut by double. Then I'd say "Hey, those are some upright fella's!!"
I've said it a dozen times already, download everything you can and send the artist $.25 per song, (look out here comes some more math). That works out to $4.00 per 16 song album. 4x as much as they're currently getting. Maybe that way it'll put the RIAA out of business and "artists" will have to make it on their own merrits and not succeed by virtue of how well their agent is at convincing 10 year olds they're"Awsome!"
AFAIK, Clerks cost $27,500. Don't know if thats for a single 16mm print, or just the production costs - but it sure as hell doesn't include a 35mm print or distribution.
In the 90s he came out with an album with IIRC only four tracks on it. When people complained it was so short he said something like "Most albums are a few good songs padded with junk, and I just left out the junk."
Did your parent poster testify before congress that he's trying to make a living by selling his credit card and social security numbers at a reasonable price, but that those meddling kids are denying his livelihood? If he did, then you have a point.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
... and they could charge $10 / CD and make a nice healthy profit. Assuming of course that they can afford the money up front (it's all about cash flow).
The programming he does for love (OSS) _is_ free.
The programming he hates (his daytime job) he does for the money.
For works under 30 seconds, you can listen to the whole thing; however, you can't save what you hear. (There's about 20 of Shel Silverstein's poems from "A Light in the Attic" and "Where the Sidewalk Ends" that fall in this category.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
...behind the recording industry's approach to digital distribution. By making sure that the retail price per digital song/album is higher than the retail physical media price, the industry can preserve the efficacy of its traditional distribution channels (retail sales in stores) and in the process preserve the present status quo of the industry (the dominance of the member companies fronting the money to the RIAA, etc.)
I believe that the traditional recording companies are running scared that people will figure out that with the Internet's potential for market penetration and distribution the role of the traditional recording companies serving as middlemen and promoters will become increasingly irrelevant. The attack on "file sharing" is merely window dressing for what I think the real goals of the RIAA and MPAA and other such groups are: to throw as many roadblocks as possible at the entire gamut of digital media distribution with the idea of perpetually stalling it or derailing it completely if possible.
I don't think the prospect of copyright violation per se frightens them nearly as much the prospect of musicians and other artists/entertainers who realize they can now literally promote themselves and their own music and sell and distribute their own media without the need to pay the recording companies large percentages of the income those products generate.
What happens, for instance, when "Internet Recording and Media Distribution" companies arise, which are independent of the RIAA member companies, and offer musicians and others an opportunity to have their music recorded and distributed digitally via the Internet for a much smaller fee than is presently the practice with the traditional recording companies? I think this question is the seat of the angst the traditional media companies feel about digital media distribution via the Internet. These guys are locked in panic mode in protecting their turf, but not from twelve year-old girls downloading songs they couldn't afford to buy anyway, but from the competitive pressure they fear arising from independent digital media distribution companies.
If you actually made anything like 50c/track you would be deliriously happy. You'd probably be over the moon with 20c/track, it would be substantially more than you'd get at present from a 100c sale.
To musicians the value of their product is always below the price consumers pay if they deal with middlemen. If the overheads incurred by middlemen drop so should the final consumer price and it should have no effect on the cut artists get. The real problem is those thieving middlemen don't pass on the benefits of reduced distribution costs to the consumer or the artists, they keep it for themselves and rip-off everyone. .
The value of any product is what customers agree to pay for it, not what sellers attempt to sell for. If any musician finds that insulting they should look for a new business.
I'd send them the sound of .99 in coins dropping into a jar or can.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
Umm.... because Die Hard II would be shitty both as an opera and as a drama? If he were a good actor, I'm sure BW could make a more than decent living as a stage actor. Sure, the wouldn't have the billions(figuratively) of dollars he has now, but does he really need them?
There's this thing called Civil Disobedience. Look it up.
Bull cookies. You don't need studios to record full length quality CD's anymore. I have several friends in the AV market who have "studio quality recording booths" in their basements and whore them out to anyone who can come up with 100 bucks and a guy to run the board.
I know several band members who have two or more 10+ track CDs which they sell at local shows. These are 25 year old kids, not professionals. No one reads the stupid booklets anyway, and cover art is usually buried under the car seat with the rest of the jewl cases. These guys make a couple hundred a show at major locations in Minneapolis and still have enough money for quality gear, CD's, shirts, food, clothing, housing...course they also have day jobs. Music can't be everyone's full time position.
Apple free since 1990!
But he felt a right tit for paying so much for so little
Mother of god! Do they count empty tracks too???
If they sold Nine Inch Nails' album Broken as a single album it would cost a fortune. There's music on tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 98 and 99!
And how do they bill single tracks that have seriously long empty space between the last song and a hidden song?
How would they bill that one artist's track that's 4 minutes of silence?
Direct away from face when opening.
Fast Food: Corporate America in your body
Television: Corporate America in your mind.
RIAA Music: Corporate America in your ears.
L
(and yes, that was a long time ago) we loved the music coming out then. Remember Adam Ant? Antmusic was going to be the next big thing.
The thing is, teenagers are going to like whatever they think everybody else likes. The ones who don't get beaten up and end up posting to slashdot. Music companies know this, and push millions of marketing dollars into whatever is distinguishable from "last years" music.
--
E_NOSIG
I agree $1 for 5 minutes of Meddle would be quite fair. It better be original tape/cd/vinyl quality though, as it's an extremely pretty and intricate track :) Also in my opinion, Meddle is one
of the best road trip cd's ever (next to Obscured by Clouds) so I may as well just buy ANOTHER
CD copy (bought 3 or 4 so far due to entropy). The RIAA is screwed though, 99.5 % of cd's out there
cannot compete with Meddle :)
Exactly. Don't like the situation, create YOUR OWN alternative and sell it. If you can't, its your own failure, not the markets.
Has anyone considered the fact that the reason they want to jack up the prices so high is that they want things like iTunes Music Store to fail? In this way, they can turn back the clock to the days when there were just CDs and they can continue to gouge customers.
It's really sad how the labels just don't get it; at this point, the big corporations are the ones holding music back. Online music sales could have made them billions at a reasonable cost to shoppers, but it appears that they are trying to bury their heads ever deeper in the sand, hoping that maybe if they ignore the Internet long enough, it will go away. Unfortunately for them, the Internet has proven that it will turn out to be one of the greatest cultural changes in human history, for everyone it touches.
I have gotten to really appreciate iTMS, especially with this whole Pepsi/iTunes promotion going on. However, if record labels inflate prices of online music beyond the willing price-point of their shoppers merely so they can squeeze more money out of them, they're going to find more and more people turning to free sharing services like Kazaa and Bittorrent. I say, it's better to open yourself up a bit and make a little money off someone (per track) than to turn the whole world into criminals in order to hold on to your plutocratic stranglehold of an entire industry.
it's gonna decrease profit and they'll put the blame on 'illegal' music download....
course they also have day jobs
This statement right here makes everything you said null and void as far as being a commentary on my post.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
The music I listen to is too obscure for me to find it by scouring the local clubs (in Milwaukee). That is due to the genres I like (post/art/prog-rock,glitch/idm/experimental-electr onica) and also due to the fact that I'm picky within those genres. A lot of my music cant be found on allmusic.com and good luck finding it at sam goody or even amazon.com.
:) Right now I'm listening to Tortoise, which is a 5 member group that plays live instruments and tours.
So, how on earth, do these musical individuals and groups go from desire to make music to a cd on my bookshelf that I paid $10-$35 for? Thats, right, I sometimes pay $35 for a single cd of average length. And I spend an average of $150/month on music.
Well, I make use of allmusic.com, fan websites, chatrooms and my local indie record store (www.atomic-records.com). I buy compilations on the labels of artists I already like. When I like some of the other artists on the disc I look for them, and if I cant find them and like them enough I'll have atomic order them for me.
For their part, since they make such original music, they find listeners across the globe that are looking to explore the same musical space. Many of them SHARE their music online (or it is shared for them). Some of them use online only labels. Check out www.legaltorrents.com! Once they're recognized they'll sometimes do a single track for a compilation on an obscure label that caters to their style. Perhaps they'll remix a labelmates track for their album. Electronic music doesn't always require recording time at a studio, either. Most of the artists start with something like a studio in their bedroom or basement. Recently, many have created their art with nothing more than a portable sampler (say a minidisc player and nice mic) and a computer.
The ones who hit the bigtime often tour. I love seeing electronic musicians play "live"
I guess my point is that there are other ways to get noticed and start selling cd's than touring full time.
And that would work out just fine, if we "real musicians" didn't need to, oh, I don't know... EAT.
Why are people so quick to judge the value of something on its availability? When you do that, you devalue not only the effort and energy gone into creating it in the first place, but any personal connection you have with the work, as well.
Seriously, could you be any more short-sighted? The scarcity of creative work is not artificial. It is all too real. The media on which that creativity resides (be it compact disc, paper, or data file) may no longer be scarce, true, but creating appealing, relevant, and/or lasting art is a difficult task, and it is insulting that you would insinuate otherwise -- Your argument is equivalent to saying, "Time to get a real job." I feel for the programmer who complains that everyone thinks his job is easy just because he sits at a computer all day.
Music Industry Bigwigs aside, artists do need to make a living from their work if they are to continue to devote their full efforts to it. And it is that devotion that provides the public with writing, music, and artwork that, as far as I'm concerned, makes life worth living. If you aren't willing to pay for good art, then you don't deserve good art. What you deserve is the rapidly declining, homogenized music industry you already have. If you think you deserve better, perhaps you should consider putting your money where your mouth is.
I don't support the RIAA in any way, as I find their actions in the legal arena contemptible. I buy used CDs so as not to directly line their pockets, and I advocate file sharing of RIAA-distributed music as civil protest against their legal tactics. But if/when the RIAA dies, will you really have enough respect for the remaining artists to actually pay for the work they do for you? Or will you continue to claim they should do it as a labor of love?
It's becoming clear that the main reason artists haven't rebelled against the RIAA is simply because they realize that the consumer public is even less likely to give them a fair shake. Without the "enforcement of artificial scarcity," a creator depends on the conscience of the public, on the audience's willingness to provide payment for services rendered despite a lack of enforcement. Would you be willing to place your livelihood into the hands of the consumer public on faith? After seeing how people rationalize NOT paying for music here, I would not.
Granted, enforcing artificial scarcity is not a workable long-term solution. But it is those who pay for the music they love who will be rewarded with... well, with music they love. Simple economics -- you get what you pay for. If you don't want to pay for good music, then sit back and enjoy Ms. Britney Spears with the rest of the less discriminating public. Because that narrow selection of music marketed to the lowest common denominator is the only thing that will survive off the pittance offered by those who don't value music enough to pay for it.
The bottom line is, real fans pay for the music they love. I do, as do others who want to see the works they love flourish and continue. Do you?
Wow, no wonder people continue to steal from the RIAA and their profits just keep declining. With a business model that says raise prices and sue anyone who is not buying, it's a wonder they're still around at all. iTunes solution for 99 cents/song was the only solution for which I was willing to go legal. Since the inception of the iTunes, I can count on one hand the number of tunes I have downloaded illegally. If the RIAA moves ahead with this outrageous increase in prices, I will relegate myself to move back underground to get what I can for free. I imagine I will not be alone in this move either.
If you replied to this post, you have been trolled. Have a nice day. If you moderated it up, you participated in the trolling--thanks for making me waste my time looking at this uninsightful garbage.
Time for a coffee break! First time I read that as Jerry Lewis! Not a pretty mental picture...
Beware of Sleestak
Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
> Music is not self-aware. Nice try, though.
"Music wants to be self-aware".
Sounds like a pretty good slogan.
I think I'll look into that. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
You can't even pay for mp3's. You can only pay for DRM-protected crap that you can't play on your mp3-enabled devices.
The acceptable slashbot defined price is $0.00!
is there a reason why would CD would cost more than some good movie on DVD? I find that DVD's have fare price to what they have spent to produce and promote the movie. so why CD's that have only 2/12 or 3/12 of actual good stuff cost $12 compared to a DVD price $20 - $30
Is your definition of a good service is that they have everything and meet all your requirments no matter how absurd, unlikely, or costly they are, and the definition of a reasonable price is free?
Maybe this guy should have paid attenting in school and got a real job once in his life BEFORE attemtping to make it big as a rock star...
It you can't afford to pay for your "dream", then get a real job until you can. That's what the rest of us do! My little bro works his ass off all week so he can make enough $$ to perform his music whenever he gets the chance.
If you can't afford to invest $3200, then you are not serious enough to be playing music full time.
which people are filthy rich? the music labels, sure. the vast majority of musicians are not.
$3200. That's a fucking FORTUNE to most people and it's a month's rent to other people. Come on, three grand is peanuts. If you found a good spot, I bet you could hustle three grand in a week's worth of panhandling-- especially if you had a guitar. Next time you see a guy playing an instrument during the morning commute in the station of your favorite method of light rail transport, spend 10 minutes and count how many singles he has in the case. And then spend 3 hours watching him from a different vantage point, and watch how he stops periodically to collect the money so that it looks like he's only collected five or ten dollars... more people are likely to feel sorry for him... lather, rinse, repeat.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Demand for our product is down so we'll make up for it by raising the price ... hmmm, sounds like the economists for the former Soviet Union all went to work for the recording industry.
[Insert pithy quote here]
That's what I'd like to know. There's a premium to be had on just-released tunes and highly popular tunes. Has any online service yet started using some variant of auction pricing to let the price rise as demand rises and fall as demand falls?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
you're a Bush voter, aren't you. :)
lol
This space available.
But he did see four sparrows and a starling.
The whole supply/demand thing kind of falls apart though when the "paperback" format is MP3. The supply instantly becomes infinite. When marginal cost of production is so close to zero, you can't accrue the entire marginal benefit to the vendor. The purchaser won't stand for it. (That is essentially what's happening today.)
Maybe the ultimately right way to model this is on bandwidth? Charge people $0.05/MB for downloading the media. If you did that, it might be cheap enough that many people would forgo storing their own copies, and the vendors would make more over time. Really cheap folks (like me) would buy some personal storage (which may end up being more expensive!). An advantage of this method is that higher quality downloads would be more profitable.
I also want to reiterate that today's CD cost structure is still more profitable (adjusted for inflation) than the price of vinyl/casettes when those were the major media for music. By the time I bought my first CD, production costs were such that it cost 1/3 as much to produce a CD as it did to produce a vinyl LP. (At the typical published US quantities, >10,000 per album.) In a sense then it's not surprising that the RIAA membership wants a new medium to have an even better margin. (Keep in mind that those margins have never gone to the artists; even during the record companies' heyday, most artists were "starving" and made the lion's share of their earnings from tours.)
If the trend does go the way this article indicates, and songs go from being ~$0.40 each (on CD) to $2.99 each, I'll simply withdraw from music purchase altogether. I have enough CDs now to listen to until I die.
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This is why I don't post much.
I'm sick of pointing this out--kids today LOVE the music coming out. The fogies at Slashdot think that their niche opinion represent the majority. Today's computer users aren't downloading music because they don't like the whole albums--they're downloading because it's free and available.
Kids like crap like Barney, too. Then they grow up.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Because most artists sell the copyright to their record company. Not because they want to, but because the record companies have the power to demand this. The normal rule in the US market is that the copyright reverts to the artist after thirty-five years, and then into the public domain 50 years after the artist dies.
One presumes that record companies are afraid that they will lose this level of control, if artists realize that most of them can make more money selling their wares for $0.50 a song through some clearinghouse like Magnatune or Music Rebellion. Then the record companies will only get the top .01% of talent (at best), and their margins will go down due to having less lucrative contracts with already-proven artists. Plus their main value now is the monopoly they have on distribution channels; that will go away if MP3 becomes the default format for sale.
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This is why I don't post much.
Yeah, but a longer song would further limit radio play, particularly if it was not easily editable.
What the fuck do you do? Do you enjoy your work? Do you expect to get paid for the work you do?
Sorry but people do get something when they listen to music, they are entertained, if you are to be entertained by the work of an artist you should compensate them as THEY expect you to, not by your choice. If you don't like it find someone who will entertain you for the price that you want. There is plenty of choices out there for your entertainment dollar, or lack there of.
Last week people here bitched about managers changing time cards, they did it becuase they could, while I think that sucks, by your reasoning the people who's timecard was illegally edited should just get a differnet job.
As long as you're paying for the service and not reselling it, I don't see how this would be different from using a Tivo to record HBO.
Though I too do not currently subscribe
"If musicians want to get paid, then they should perform music for a fee."
Isn't that what they do in the recording studio? They then get paid a (very small) fee of ~$1 for each album that sells.
Can you explain why used CD shops are thriving? People are buying a Used product here. Give your apology for an abusive (of artists and of customers) monopoly a break.
Jesus buddy, would it kill ya' to admit that fifty cents is pretty skinflintish? If you can't do that could you at least drop the moralizing, disrespectful tone? Who are you to tell musicians that their recordings should be worth next to nothing and that they should expect to pay the rent by hawking T-shirts. Why should they have to consider income from a CD a gratuity?
This topic gets harped on here ad nauseum. It can't seem to be breached without /. experts telling us all about the evils of the status quo and the Brave New World that awaits musicians with the "proper" attitude. It's really getting old.
Until the 20th century live performance was the only way people could enjoy it. You make it sound like you're calling bullshit on a scam that's gone on for 100 years. If recordings had no value, they never would have been priced beyond the cost of the physical media in the first place. In any event, musicians were paid for writing their music down as well, or even just writing it period.
Space shifting it to another locatin/sound system may be the violation. Making VHS tapes of the HBO channel and passing them on to your brother is a violation of most cable contracts. A temporary recording to watch the 2:00 AM show at 5:30 PM is simply timeshifting, not spaceshifting.
This is why the industry is all up in arms about a TIVO type recorder that can export the recording to another device. This is major red alert to the industry.
The truth shall set you free!
Let me guess- we can download music? Off the internet? And then the music files are in the computer?
;-)
Don't forget, you can create and share playlists of your favorite tracks.
Also back then your social status was shown by the parties you did not your wealth (that does help with throwing a good party)so the rich would patronise the popular artists not necessarily there personal favourites.
If your going to try and be sarcastic at least know about the subject and era before opening your arse to speak, you will be more successful.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Thats great. I just downloaded Itunes yesterday because I ordered an Ipod mini. After hearing this..... I might just go back to kazaa and emule if they raise prices.
$>man woman
$>Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Double stupid!
1. Paying for a 4 second track.
2. Buying ANYTHING by Janet Jackson.
And, to top THAT, you have the gall to complain about the RIAA needing to make better music!
That was on thinkgeek =)
Forget who said it though...
Doesn't matter who said it; thinkgeek has EVERYTHING on their site copyrighted, even if it doesn't belong to them. They've claimed copyright on shit that was said waaaay before they were in business. That's why they don't get any of my money.