Slashdot Mirror
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."
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!
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.
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
$.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?
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 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
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.
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?
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!"
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?
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.
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
What bands are you listening to?
I'll never understand this. Why do people listen to songs from a band that can only turn out "3 or 4 good tracks", when you could buy an alblum from a good band and get an entire CDs worth of good music? Is it really that important to you that you get those three tracks, or can you live without those few songs that will end up never being listened to after year? Must you stay current with whatever's popular?
I really am tired of hearing about how a CD will only contain a single good song or two. Bands that are creative and sound good through an entire alblum do exist, people. Maybe you should try looking at sources other than MTV for what you want to listen to.
http://cylan.deviantart.com/gallery/
Not sure how the iTunes/RIAA contract reads, but it may be the case that iTunes must set prices across the entire catalog, and can't set one price for an RIAA track and another for an independent. Just guessing here, as I have never even been to the iTunes site, or own an iPod, or plan to do either one. But it _would_ be keeping in character for the RIAA/Big Labels.
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
"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...)
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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
...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.
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
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 tracked it down. Be baffled.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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
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."
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
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.
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!
Not only can you buy silence, you can buy applause -- like this, for instance. Do a search on "applause"
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.
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.
"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.
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."
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."
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
"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!
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.
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.
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).
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.
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."
The programming he does for love (OSS) _is_ free.
The programming he hates (his daytime job) he does for the money.