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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."
Seems like a dupe to me...
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.
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
its called mute
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.
I believe what you're talking about is Napster Premium. For $10 a month (your small subscription fee for access), you can:
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Umm... if you have food and shelter, why do you need clothing?
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.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
Might be cheaper
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.
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.
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.
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! :-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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: $60 each (Shure SM57's are cheap and plentiful)
Monitors: Unneccesary (provided by venue)
Keyboard: Unneccesary unless you have a keyboardist (that sounds like a stupid statement, but it isn't)
Lights: Unneccesary (provided by venue, and many venues won't allow outside light rigs)
Controller: Unneccesary (see above)
You're still forgetting that putting a band together isn't something you just decide to do overnight. I've been amassing gear for nine years. I have a TON of shit (several heads and cabinets, a good amount of recording gear), but I didn't buy it all at once. Fuck, for six years all I used was a shitty 2x12 Peavey combo.
You're on the right track, but your assumptions versus reality are a bit out of whack.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
It's called a loss leader.
iTMS gets people to buy iPod's.
It's the same way that M$ makes money out of the xBox. M$ get nothing for the hardware, but they get money form the software.
For Apple iTMS and the iPOD are the other way. They sell the songs at cost and make their money on the iPod, Also it helps them get a market segment.
Your comments are mostly the same as servoled so I won't repeat myself, but I will quickly comment on this bit. I'm totally in agreement that the total package is unique and it's OK for a single vendor to supply that particular package. The problem as I see it is that there are no other packages. Where is the vinyl recording of Britney? Where is the CD-R version with no coverart? Where is the version sung by Metallica (or whatever the latest boy band is)?
If capitalism was actually working here then an enterprising online music store would have been able to sell Britney's music *legally* before now. The recording is the product. The recording on a CD is the package. The recording as a downloadable MP3 is another package. The RIAA prevents the sale of packages that they don't fully control by using the legal force of copyright. Copyright is by its very nature a government granted monopoly. It is not possible to have capitalism if the state is interfering in the market!
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).
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!"
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.