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."

Comments

$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Novanix]

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.

The only way for the RIAA to die is by suicide

[eaglebtc]

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.

Re:The only way for the RIAA to die is by suicide

[bwy]

I guess I may be dumb (probably not even up for discussion) but I have never really understood the need for the RIAA in the first place. Artist records music... record company produces CD... product is distributed... consumer purchases music. Why do we need a big monolithic organization involved that messes up everything for everybody?

If it were impossible to do this stuff without the RIAA, there wouldn't be lots of "independent" deals where there is no RIAA to be found. Somehow artists and independent record companies found some way to accomplish all this stuff on their own.

Anyway, somehow I think the term "Vaporware" now applies to music too. I mean, you've got idiots like Britney Spears all over everything and she's basically "vapor-ware"... prototyped, mocked up boobs, artifical, pre-recorded singing voice, and clearly just a glamorized screenshot- she's not even a functioning prototype. I think somehow the need for the RIAA has to do with having this Britney Vaporware in our faces 24x7 and in our ears at least once an hour on every radio station.

Re:The only way for the RIAA to die is by suicide

[jfengel]

Independent artists exist, many of them, but few are rich. It's hard to get really rich when you don't have a massive support organization making lots of money.

For the money the RIAA spends on one artist, we could fund 1,000 independent artists who would almost certianly make better music. And each of them would make 1/1,000th the total profit.

In fact, those artists are out there, and you've never heard of them. Yeah, you've probably heard of the ones local to your house, but you've never heard this great band in Minneapolis who... the point is, we're talking about the RIAA because you've heard of the RIAA, and the artists the RIAA supports.

There are some resources that are scarce. Not the artists, who are essentially free (if it's not your band it'll be any of ten thousand other bands) but the TV and radio airtime (for both ads and for the music itself), for billboards, for promotional tours. Even the front page of iTunes is a limited commodity. The commodities are limited and they help sell records. Which means that who spends the money, makes the money. That's the RIAA. Those things allow a few bands to get really rich, and a few executives to get really rich.

Who wants to hear it? Well, a lot of people, apparently. Not me, and not you, but an awful, awful lot of other people. So many, in fact, that the RIAA simply doesn't give a rat's ass what you want from music.

Nor do they care much about the independent artists. Let 'em produce, and let them collectively make 1% of the total money spent on music. If you don't think to look for them on iTunes, you don't buy their music. Simple as that.

Re:The only way for the RIAA to die is by suicide

[bonch]

I guess I may be dumb (probably not even up for discussion) but I have never really understood the need for the RIAA in the first place. Artist records music... record company produces CD... product is distributed... consumer purchases music. Why do we need a big monolithic organization involved that messes up everything for everybody?

The RIAA is just a lobbying group for a collection of major record labels. As for why an artist would need a record label to succeed--go out and try to be as successful as, say, Metallica without a record label promoting and advertising you and making you available.

Contrary to Slashdot's niche opinions, the Internet hasn't made it easy to promote yourself as an artist. People don't like net ads, remember? People like tangibles like posters and singles and so forth.

Re:The only way for the RIAA to die is by suicide

[gmhowell]

The two people who replied are just about as nearsighted as you are (ouch, that sounded harsher than it should). The RIAA member companies (who are really the ones you have a gripe with, not the RIAA itself) are the remnants of a historical necessity.

In 2004, any group of doofuses with a Macintosh and a microphone can burn a CD. In 1954, it took rather expensive equipment to make records. So the people who could afford record cutters got power. Then they grouped together, and consolidated their power. They spent the decades developing monstrous back catalogs, buying the rights to songs and distribution. Jump to today. If a radio station or record store wants a song by one group, they have to carry a certain number of CDs from the publisher. Or, if not forced, they'll get a discount for bulk purchases/plays. Or, the publisher has enough money to 'influence' the habits of program managers and others.

Summary: publishers used to have a valid reason to exist. They used that valid reason to leverage the situation, and hold onto it even today, when they have outlived their usefulness. They serve no purpose today, but have set up the rules of the game to extend their dominion for at least a little while longer.

Re:The only way for the RIAA to die is by suicide

[4of12]

Nor do they care much about the independent artists. Let 'em produce, and let them collectively make 1% of the total money spent on music. If you don't think to look for them on iTunes, you don't buy their music. Simple as that.

An accurate assessment of the music industry, unfortunately.

So, besides the artificial hype of specific bigname artists that comes from radio airplay, can someone recommend:

1. good online communities that rate music (I'm looking for an amazon like "other listeners that liked BigName liked LittleName1, LittleName2, ...)?
2. good online streams of random music so that you can be introduced to lesser known artists that are just not "lucky" enough to have signed the Big Contract?

[I do hear some nice music (reggae, folk, etc.) on my local college station, but often they don't tell you the name of the artist, etc. until 6 songs later after I've gotten out of my car or forgotten whether the song I liked was 3 from last played or 4 from last played...

$3?

[eliza_effect]

Are there only four songs on the album? I'll pay $.99. I won't pay $3. Listen up, RIAA.

Re:$3?

[bstone]

Are there only four songs on the album?

No, only four good songs per album.

Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Surprised?

[Vargasan]

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.

Re:Surprised?

[eaglebtc]

Here's the fundamental problem, IMHO: Music has become a utility.

The art of music is not a leisurely pastime nor an avid pursuit. The common folk just want some nice sounds to "fill the void." Hence Top-40 bubble gum was born. As for it being a utility, the people think they need music to carry on with their lives. Truth is, we don't "need" music to survive. On the day the music dies, our brains will still be churning away and the heart will still pump blood to our vital organs.

When something becomes a utility, it means that both the rich and the poor can have access to it. The poor can afford a little bit, the rich can afford a lot. But everyone needs it. The price for the utility must also be justified; if it is too high the people will complain, but because they "need" it they will continue to pay the money and hope that the government will control its price.

Remember the difference between a want and a need: you NEED food, clothing, and shelter. You want electricity, phone service and music because they are convenient, entertaining, or whatever. But you can still survive without these things. True, your life will be drastically different, but your basic functions are still operating.

George Orwell was not too far off in his predictions for our society.

Re:Surprised?

[Requiem Aristos]

Umm... if you have food and shelter, why do you need clothing?

Mixing the good and the bad.

[MrIrwin]

When you buy a CD you get perhaps 3 or 4 good tracks and perhaps some not so good ones.

When you download you just get the tracks you like.

I think the music industry is afraid thier "bundling" days are over!

Re:Mixing the good and the bad.

[CylanR77]

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.

Re:Mixing the good and the bad.

[87C751]

I think the music industry is afraid thier "bundling" days are over!

Actually, this article mentions that our RIAA fr^Hiends are considering bundling download tracks for that extra-spendy goodness.

Re:Mixing the good and the bad.

[Unknown Lamer]

Amen.

I have a nearly 250 album collection and there are only maybe 30-40 songs which I could say weren't at least mildly enjoyable. Most of those are Iron Maiden ;). Out of 2,227 track on my computer, maybe 100 of them are songs which I skip when they come up (XMMS on random).

People need to listen to more stuff like Dream Theater, a band who seems to have no difficulty with pumping out excellent material every other year (Falling Into Infinity doesn't count...the live versions of all of the songs on that album are different [rather, the album versions are different than what the band wrote] because the produce forced them to change every single one at the request of the label in order to make DT more marketable...DT self produce their albums now for a reason).

Likewise with Devin Townsend, Blind Guardian, Opeth, Symphony X, Gordian Knot, Porcupine Tree...

Re:Mixing the good and the bad.

[Palshife]

Good point. Next time I'll just buy music from the "Everyone Likes Me's." That way we'll finally have music that everyone likes. We wont have to disagree over what's good anymore, we'll just be confident in the reality that everything on the CD is "good."

Or, in the real world, we can expect that artists of any level of talent will write songs that resonate with some people and piss others off. Sure, I like some bands more than others, yet I've never once found a CD where I love every single song.

Please don't send out these calls for people to be more discriminating. People will like what they like. Why should you care?

Re:Mixing the good and the bad.

[geekoid]

Actually, that pretty rare that a band can put out an entire albumn of songs you would want to listen to more then a few times. How many bands put on a terrific B side 20 years ago?
Not impossible, but rare.
There are everal reasons for this:
1) Artist like to try different things(well, the good ones) sometimes they miss. Personally, I'm glad they try.

2) The listener just finds some songs not to their liking, but enjoy the other songs. Britney Spears has a song out right now, and I like it(yeah, yeah, pipe down in back). I am old enough to know that 1 good song, does not mean the entire album is good, but people closer to her demographic aren't as 'experienced' in the ways of business as a crusty 39 year old.

It has been my experience that the overalll comparitive quality of the music as gone up since the CD has been introduced. Mostly because of no B side. For a while the usic industry wanted a 'part' of the CD to be treated as if it where a 'B' side. That didn't work for the obvious reason thats its lame as hell.

I used to know people that have never heard the 'B' side of some albums they purchesd. Use to drive me up a wall. I would be like
"Dude, that could be the best song you ever hear on the be side of that album"
"Naw, B sides sucks, besides I don't want to risk scratching the side I want to listen to."

Finally, you talk as if MTV plays music? Did they start doing that again?

Re:Mixing the good and the bad.

[jd_esguerra]

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?

If they are good tracks, even from an otherwise shitty artist, why wouldn't you want them to listen to ? To "not-like" a song solely because the artist usually spews garbage is as juvenile as mocking the newest teen-band just because they appear routinely in your girlfriend's (or boyfriend's ?) erotic fantasies.

I'm way out of touch on the music industry issue here, but from what I've read, it sounds like many of the complaints have been that people are "forced" to buy crap in order to gain legal access to non-crap or lesser crap. I suppose it would be like hardware vendors requiring that you buy their POS junky computers in order to get one of their wiz-bang video cards.

I know first hand the frustration of buying a really shitty album after having built up high expectations of it; I'm sure the producers would be thrilled to know that I don't really regret it (I got the song I wanted, I just payed too much for it). But they probably don't want to hear that it was the last CD I bought (about 9 months ago)-- not out of protest, but because I really don't listen to much music other than what I already have (80's, 90's. I'm "old.")

Since I anticipate a response to the tune of "but there are so many indie labels and local bands you should listen too ! Free your mind ! Toss aside that mass produced garbage !" Yeah, no shit. I enjoy local bands immensely, when I have time to see them. And let me just remind some of you that just because it's a local band doesn't mean they don't suck too.

Re:Mixing the good and the bad.

[zieroh]

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?

Methinks that's quite a bit like when your grandparents asked you why you didn't like Lawrence Welk. It was pompous and ignorant then, and it's pompous and ignorant now.

Seriously. People (or Kids, in this case) like what they like, or perhaps what their friends like. They don't choose their music based on the proficiency of a given band at filling up a whole CD. That's just stupid. I would be surprised if you really chose bands that way, rather than it just being a happy accident.

I'm an adult now, and I listen to adult music, but I imagine that if someone had suggested to me back then that the whole problem was because I liked the wrong bands, I would have laughed and laughed and laughed. And then I would have punched them in the nose. It's a preposterous suggestion. Seriously.

Re:Mixing the good and the bad.

[crashfrog]

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?

You might as well ask "why would you eat at the Chinese place that only has 3 or 4 good dishes when you could eat at the Mexican place that has a menu's worth of good dishes?"

Well, duh. Because I like Chinese better than I like Mexican (or whatever.) You listen to those 3 or 4 good songs because you like them better than that other band's entire album.

Maybe you should try looking at sources other than MTV for what you want to listen to.

Maybe that's too much fuckin' work. Not everybody has the time to make sure their taste is up to your discriminating standards, Mr. Culture Police.

cds are just single with a bunch of crappy songs

[jeoin]

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...

Definitions from the future:

[BandwidthHog]

Record company execs: A bunch of greedy fucking bastards who were among the first against the wall when the revolution came.

Exactly how will this work, anyways?

[ShooterNeo]

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?

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[crackshoe]

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.

test the market, then raise the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ?

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[DaLiNKz]

maybe this is an attempt to increase piracy thus they can sue more people?

These guys...

[SuperMo0]

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.

Re:These guys...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Perhaps their bussiness plan is this:

1)Announce possible big price increase.
2)People quickly buy more music before the increase.
3)profit!
4)Occasionaly remind people of possible price increase.
5)goto 2

Artists: This is your cue:

[RyanFenton]

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

Interesting, yes; but...

[Osiris Ani]

...I know I've read something like this before.

Deja Vu?

[ikewillis]

Seems like a dupe to me...

What's the big problem?

[MongooseCN]

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.

Re:What's the big problem?

[Saeger]

Like all the non-RIAA labels on iTunes? Since they're not a part of the recording cartel they don't have to go along with the price fixing.

--

Re:What's the big problem?

[BlueStrat]

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:And if it's 10 bucks a song - so what?

[SuperMo0]

I'm not poor, but I have much better things to spend 10 dollars on than whatever Britney Spears has moaned out recently.

Piracy

[LordK2002]

And this is going to stop piracy...how?

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

They would have to make a great album now...

[HDlife]

...not just one MTV hit and a bunch of filler to make their $16. The industry sees that people are just downloading the top 2 songs by an artist and moving on. The biz wants "their" whole $20 for "Hey Ya!" and not just their cut of 99cents! Once people start a-la-carte buying songs off of hit albums and seeing that the rest just sucks...the money will stop flowing in!

It's too much work to get a real band together that can produce 50 great songs in a career.

Guilty monopoly....

[YrWrstNtmr]

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)

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Anonymous Coward]

the worst deal i've found on itunes has been .99 for a 4 second interlude track (janet jackson, i think

Thanks God, It could be much worse: imagine 3 minutes of Janet Jackson ... Brrr!

While I understand It's unpopular,

[gartogg]

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.

Re:While I understand It's unpopular,

[Mr.Sharpy]

You're forgetting that when you buy a full CD you are getting more than the music. You get the physical cd with full quality audio, the liner notes, the case, and maybe one of those god foresaken "Enhanced CD" interfaces to play the disc. Downloaded music is bare-bones, its like an audio version of a Dodge Neon. It should be cheaper by design and purpose.

If you want value-added extras like liner-notes and leather seats, you pay extra for it per song by buying a cd. Thats the incentive for paying extra for the CD.

No, downloaded music costs should have zero parity with the cost of music ON the actual CD. It should be much cheaper, if for no other reason than for the fact that all you're getting is lousy compressed audio.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Naffer]

$.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?

the easy solution

[iamthelung]

its called mute

Price fixing

[eyeball]

Can someone (that doesn't work for the RIAA) please explain to me how this isn't price fixing and at all legal?

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Robmonster]

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?

Re:They're only screwing themselves over...

[Rikus]

> We con physically steal the music from stores.

Regardless of your opinion on the issue of copyright infringement or increased prices, stealing a piece of property is "wrong" (isn't it?).

When you or someone else voluntarily copies their music and gives it to others, they are not losing anything. If you steal a CD, somebody has lost their physical property, however worthless it may be (20 cent piece of plastic).

It's important to make this distinction, since too many people are trying to link the two together.

"Suggestion: Buy a clue"

[Rinikusu]

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.

The music industry may have just decided that there is more profit to be made at $2.99 rather than .99.

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

Gonna Outsource Those Assholes to India

[Greyfox]

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!

Re:Gonna Outsource Those Assholes to India

[SsShane]

Might be cheaper

Re:Gonna Outsource Those Assholes to India

[wheresdrew]

They already have!

You mean you haven't been stocking up on Dahler Mendi CDs?

http://omgwtf.superlime.com/tunak.rm

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[Interruach]

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.

What idiots

[Bralkein]

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[LostCluster]

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.

Re:agreement

[Interruach]

There are, and people will always make music, (Whether they're paid to or not. It's art, remember) but they've got harder to find under wave after wave of re-released pop-idol cover moany dross.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[crackshoe]

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[BrynM]

if you increase the price of songs some stores will simply have to shutdown

There's the finest point you make. The RIAA would like it if they could prove that online distribution "doesn't work" and could somehow move back to being the ones in charge of everything. They would like these companies to fail.

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.

screw studio albums....

[caino59]

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?

Re:cds are just single with a bunch of crappy song

[ThreeToe]

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.

Short-term pain

[No Such Agency]

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...

Market Pricing Mechanism

[G4from128k]

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[mgs1000]

Or a trick to increase perceived damages?

Maybe this is good (in a specific way...)

[HDlife]

The full story is that the industry wants to get away from the flat-rate price. They want, for example, to charge $3 for a new mega-hit (especially from a band who's other songs suck). Perhaps this would encourage people to look at other, non-TRL music?

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Bastian]

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.

You mean they can't buy their audience?

[WinterpegCanuck]

This is similar (bare with me here) to a complaint by the MPAA some time ago about blaming cell phone and IM users for low box office sales sincec they could tell their friends much quicker if the movie sucked or not. Maybe if they actually took the effort to make quality fimls/music instead of releasing ANY idea that crosses their desks, we would flock to them again. I paid money for the spiderman cd, but felt ripped of just renting dare-devil and The Leauge of Extraordinary Gentlemen, for example.

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

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[phalse phace]

"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."

I believe what you're talking about is Napster Premium. For $10 a month (your small subscription fee for access), you can:

• Choose from over 500,000 songs from all genres of music.
• Collect your favorite tracks and tune into your own playlists.
• Download music on up to 3 PCs--for online and offline listening.
• Get more tracks for less when you buy in bulk through Napster's Track Packs.
• Plug into over 50 different commercial-free stations that are customized to your favorite genres.
• Interact with Napster radio--specify the tracks that you want to hear, and jump ahead or skip back through past tracks.
• Set up and save tracks to your own playlists and share them with others.
• Build your own custom radio station.
• and more...

Anything over $0.99 is too much

[dn15]

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.

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Artists: This is your cue:

[black mariah]

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[WinterpegCanuck]

By driving the price up I would bet they will make less money

Unfortunatly this is win win for them:

sales go up = They make more money

Sales go down = They blame P2P networks for decreased sales and launch more profitable lawsuits.

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. . . .

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

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...

Tired of it...

[LordOfYourPants]

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 :)

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[TedCheshireAcad]

And I bet he didn't even get to see a tit.

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[NichG]

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.

Re:Artists: This is your cue:

[BrynM]

Get together, purchase the tools or access to the tools to create music directly, make CDs, and together, negotiate to sell them to stores.

It's happening here in Sacramento, where Tower Records first Started. We have a couple of Music Stores here in town (Dimple Records, The Beat) that will sell CDs that don't belong to any label - usually for $10 a CD. I've know a couple of people that have self-produced CDs and then sold them at the local stores. The people actually end up making money if they do some self promotion as well. I have a feeling that we're a step away from some of our local musicians trying out a co-op style label as I've heard it mentioned a couple of times. Yeah, this is a small scale, local movement but the point is that it started. I plan on putting my $$ and audio skills into making it gain momentum if I can.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[John Miles]

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.

Isn't the RIAA the very definition of a cartel.

[Moderation abuser]

And isn't this monopolistic behavior?

Re:They are killing themselves slowly

[joFFeman]

killing me softly with his song?

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[Jafafa Hots]

1. its not $2.99 a CD, smart boy, its $2.99 PER SONG.

2. monopolistic practices are NOT capitalism at work.

What's the EFF doing?

[Rick Zeman]

"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...)

As so many others have said...

[The Master Control P]

The RIAA just does not 'get it'. The whole reason people buy from iTMS and co is because the price is reasonable! For somewhat less than the price of a normal CD, they can get a full CD's worth of music that has only tracks they want!

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[blincoln]

$.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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[PhotoBoy]

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.

Capitalism... With a twist.

[Chordonblue]

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.

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[ivan1011001]

The "pirating" we are seeing is only popular because

...IT'S FREE

Spectrum monopoly

[tepples]

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I donate a fraction of this amount per track to SOMA FM and want for nothing...

Oh, yeah NPR, CBC and BBC via Real Streams, too..

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[NSash]

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.

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[MushMouth]

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[MKalus]

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."

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.

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[C10H14N2]

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?

A guy in the May Esquire suggested this

[sielwolf]

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.

A few points

[bonch]

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.

Re:A few points

[Joey7F]

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

No we don't. We like certain songs. We just get sick of paying 15 dollars for a cd when we hear a good song radio. I have stopped doing this. For example, this week I am going to buy two cds. Ocean Avenue by YellowCard and Palm Trees and Powerlines by Sugar cult, the cds are 7.99 and 8.99 at Circuit City, respectively. Those seem like fair prices, I know I will like 3 songs total guaranteed (as I have already bought them off itunes) With those prices I am willing to chance the sample(s) were misleading (other than the ones I bought of course)

I have/will purchase/d 5 cds in the last 12 months. but to say I am thrilled with music today is like saying I am thrilled with movies, because I liked Master and Commander and Lord of the Rings.

--Joey

Re:A few points

[Unknown Lamer]

The only reason you don't love what is coming out is because you don't listen to quality music.

Personally, I love a lot of the music being released today. Opeth, Dream Theater, Blind Guardian...all of then are amazing and consistently release worthwhile material.

Part of the problem with a lot of popular bands today is that, upon achieving stardom, they stop practicing and their playing goes to shit. There also seems to be a problem with releasing albums which are mostly tracks which should have been shelved for a while or worked on more before release.

Hell, a good example of this is OSI. The second disc of the special edition version of the album contains a track entitled "The Thing That Never Was" which is a 17 minute and 20 second long track. They recorded everything except for the vocals and then scrapped the song. Yes, they scrapped a pretty much finished song. All was not in vain however; they yanked pieces of the song and turned those pieces into the beginnings of many other songs which comprised the album. Another classic example is Dream Theater's "A Change of Seasons." The song was written in 1989. It wasn't recorded until 1995. The song was played live several times and a new keyboardist reworked the keyboard sections and the song was heavily changed. The result was a really really good song clocking in at 23 minutes and 8 seconds.

A lot of popular musicians need to release albums every two or three years instead of every year or year and a half. Most professional musicians would have thrown out most of the material which actually makes it onto a lot of those albums. Thus you get one or two good songs and a bunch of demo material which needs to be ripped apart and rewritten. Or scrapped entirely.

Re:A few points

[Technician]

that piracy is justified because CDs are overpriced (they're $12.99 at my store

And this is a better value to the consumer who bought a 2 hour movie for $3 more how? To make a CD, they didn't need a set, Movie Cameras, boom trucks, key grip, do location sets and cast wordrobe, write a script, build a set for the many scenes, hire stunt doubles, hire animators, hire folly team, painters, model makers, etc. and still produce a professional soundtrack. The CD crew just did a soundtrack. So they used a few costumes for the album cover, but they were usualy already in the wardrobe for the concert tour. There is a whole lot less goes into making a CD than a DVD. In some cases the sound-track CD is priced higher than the DVD. It's not hard to figure out why people percieve the CD's are overpriced. It's because it's easy to see they are way overpriced.

Re:A few points

[miles_thatsme]

I think you've missed an interesting dynamic: it's often not a question of whether a particular person can absolutely afford to purchase the track they want or must download it. It's a time/money dynamic: if you charge $150/hr in your chosen profession for your services, you won't be spending hours on end in your spare time trying to find good copies of the tunes you want on your P2P. I sure know that for me, the prospect of paying for CDs/downloads is much less daunting now that I've secured a jammy job (with a law firm, no less) than when I was a student.

So you ask for a "valid legal or moral justification" for RIAA opposition. How about the contrast of these propositions:
1. Charging fix costs for things with no marginal cost, extending our property regime into the (strato-)sphere of intellectual property in the name of "artificial creation of scarcity" so the RIAA can continue to control social wealth
2. Creating a system where goods can be infinitely replicated to the benefit of all, where the burden of their production is borne by those who can most afford to bear it.

And when this arrangement fails, will we have musicians and producers working as indentured labourers?

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Abjifyicious]

Nah, I doubt it. I remember seeing a sig somewhere once that said "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" ;-)

Guess they want me to only listen to radio or XM?

[Shivetya]

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.

Nope.

[DAldredge]

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.

Missing the point

[Crashmarik]

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.

Re:Artists: This is your cue:

[blincoln]

$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."

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[nomadic]

I havent used iTunes myself, but I would have expected then to make allowances for track length....

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 .99 each. That's a little over an hour of some of the best music ever recorded.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Saeger]

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.

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).

--

Re:Artists: This is your cue: sell on CD Baby!

[Kaimelar]

Get together, purchase the tools or access to the tools to create music directly, make CDs, and together, negotiate to sell them to stores.

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! :-)

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I think it's time...

[FlyingOrca]

...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!

contradiction

[rnd()]

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[tm2b]

If I were a professional musician, and my alleged "fans" would only pay fifty cents for their favourite track

Here's the thing. If you were a professional musicians you wouldn't be seeing anywhere close to $.50 per track on the albums that your fans were paying $15 for.

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[ebbomega]

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.

Reasons for Downloading Music

[RAMMS EIN]

``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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[AndroidCat]

Doesn't someone own the copyright to silence? :^P

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[gartogg]

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?

RIAA can't plug the analog hole

[tepples]

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.

Re:Artists: This is your cue:

[Cereal Box]

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.

What I find absolutely funny

[mcc]

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".

It's NOT capitalism.

[nathanh]

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.

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.

Re:It's NOT capitalism.

[nathanh]

Britney's "product" is unique - the total package of her looks, her voice, and her sound. The fact that there is only one single suppluer of her product is perfectly acceptable.

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!

Another alternative - http://last.fm

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure, but Simon and Garfunkel have the sound of it locked down. :-)

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[leviramsey]

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?

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[shut_up_man]

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.

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[AndroidCat]

I tracked it down. Be baffled.

Will music downloads kill what little art remains?

[beforewisdom]

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

The solution is obvious.

[Enonu]

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.

Copyright on silence

[Jayfar]

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."

Re:Copyright on silence

[guiscard]

I also like the quote:

"Mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds."

Boycott RIAA labels

[nnet]

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.

Re:Artists: This is your cue:

[black mariah]

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.

cartels

[hxnwix]

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.

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[MushMouth]

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.

When?

[BCW2]

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!

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[stuffman64]

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...

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[JoeBaldwin]

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" :)

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Fweeky]

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.

the only way is up...

[zpok]

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?

How does $0.01 per MB grab you?

[allofmp3]

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.

RIAA trying to keep dying business model alive...

[missing_boy]

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!

Isn't there a law against collective pricefixing?

[the_REAL_sam]

I believe I've heard the labels were sued for doing this kind of thing with cd's.

...and for the self-congratulatory...

[finelinebob]

Not only can you buy silence, you can buy applause -- like this, for instance. Do a search on "applause" ... there's quite a wide variety!

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[orthogonal]

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?

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[stfvon007]

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?

Re:Artists: This is your cue:

[clambake]

$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!)

Time to get real

[salesgeek]

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?

Didn't go to trial, so...

[Jayfar]

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.

Re:Didn't go to trial, so...

[Kiryat Malachi]

Everyone's heard his music.

I mean, 4'33"... who hasn't heard that? ;)

Suggestion? Don't break the law, stupid.

[Awptimus Prime]

Suggestion: make good CDs, and maybe I'll buy the whole thing.

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 /. 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.

Just because it's popular, does not make it cool. For example: Brittany Spears

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[redJag]

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.

Please stop this FUD!

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Please stop this FUD!

[MacWiz]

Equally true is the fact that they have no right to expect us to buy music if they do not meet the customer's expectations of how it exists, the quality, how it is distributed and the cost.

The customer is always right. Until the labels make something we want to buy, we don't owe them a goddamn thing.

Re:Please stop this FUD!

[pandrijeczko]

then i will be compelled to download music that i don't pay for.

You are not compelled to do anything.

Try a little experiment on yourself:

1. Go dig out the last full album you downloaded free from the Internet.

2. Decide for yourself how much the CD would cost you to buy using the normal CD retailer you would use.

3. Now start reducing the price of that CD by dollar/pound/Euro/other currency amounts until you get to a price where you would have bought that CD legitimately.

4. If you hit a price that isn't zero (in your local currency), then the price of the CD, in your opinion, is too high.

5. If you hit zero, then you would not have bought the CD anyway.

6. Now look at your PC. Imagine a friend of yours stole your PC, you found out and when you challenged your friend, he said he stole it because he didn't want to pay for a PC - because they are too expensive. Would you consider that justified?

I'm not playing the "holier than thou" card, believe me, but this illustrates a perceptional idea.

Firstly, everyone will have a different view of what is a fair price to pay for that CD. It'll be based primarily on how much they like the artist and how much disposable income they have. So what is the fair price for a CD?

Secondly, certain people will download music freely no matter what the cost of a CD is. This is because of convenience or because they don't want to part with their hard-earned money. They do it just because it's there.

Thirdly, theft is theft, no matter what justification you create for it. Just because you want something does not mean you are entitled to simply take it. To say you are compelled to do something implies that some external force is causing you to do it - I'm sorry, it's completely your choice.

I'm not, in any way, supporting the record companies. The industry is plagued with monopolistic practices and price fixing. The quality of modern music is dire, invariably plastic tunes churned out by pretty, but talentless, girl and boy bands.

But, I do not steal music. I actually go one better - I don't buy it or listen to it.

And if there are enough people like me, then record company execs will need to sit up and take notice.

Remember, you always have a choice...

Funny

[falcon5768]

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.

Re:Artists: This is your cue:

[black mariah]

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.

Re:Let's throw money down a hole...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good for the RIAA. This is capitalism at work.

[10101001 10101001]

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?

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[patternjuggler]

A Napster shill cutting and pasting from a press release or promotional brochure is +5 informative?

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?

Article seems to indicate price fixing

[Jayfar]

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?

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[StarKruzr]

"How many products in that price range deliver that kind of long-term value, besides film and music?"

Ever heard of a "book?"

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Kadin2048]

I think this is a pretty good idea. One of the things that has always struck me about CDs is how the prices never seem to go down, or go down only slightly, even after a few years after the initial release.

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.

Will the RIAA Kill Music?

[Mean_Nishka]

Just when you thought things were settling down with the RIAA, the fools are at it again! The Motley Fool and other publications report that the RIAA thinks .99 cents per song online is not enough. They are actively researching ways to charge more for their music.

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.

Does the RIAA even understand economics anymore?

[weedenbc]

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?

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Technician]

"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.

Do they care?

[ScrewMaster]

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.

No Surprise

[MacWiz]

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.

Well, almost true . . .

[SEE]

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 guess they haven't learned...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why your head is in the clouds

[Grym]

"What happens when nobody can sell anything anymore? Why do people ignore the inevitable result of this?"

I'm sorry, but commerce existed long before the idiotic idea of "intellectual property" ever crossed anyone's mind. The inevitable result is what should have been apparent all along: intangible objects will cease to be sold like they're anything similar to tangible ones.

Music existed long before the RIAA and copyrights. I have no doubts that it will continue to do so if both disappeared tomorrow. Musicians, such as yourself, will always have a place in society, and the good ones (think: Mozart, Beethoven, and so on) will always be at the top. It's only a matter of understanding that you're a performer, not an entrepreneur.

In a world where anything that can be seen, heard, read, or thought can be copied and then distributed worldwide at little to no cost, how can you honestly expect the marketing ideas of 100 years ago to work?

-Grym

$33 CD = hello increased filesharing!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Business Is Business - Hit Them In The Wallet!

[pandrijeczko]

I assume most people on /. are in regular employment. Those that are in regular employment are there because we make money for our respective companies - that is, we make the company more than it costs to employ each one of us. Likewise, every one of us would feel aggrieved if we lost our jobs through redundancy because our companies were no longer making money.

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.

Price hikes survive when people pay them

[Blitzenn]

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).

Supply and demand per track

[bmf033069]

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.

Re:Why your head is in the clouds

[squiggleslash]

Yes, he's for real, as are most of us who think it's reasonable to set up a system whereby people can be compensated for the work they do.

You argue that an artist is forcing you to buy his or her work. No, they're not. They're merely making a deal with you - if you choose to use the work that wouldn't exist if that artist hadn't created it, you pay them (or otherwise listen to it on their terms.)

That's a reasonable contract.

Nor is he fighting capitalism. It's quite simple: people have to eat. If you can't earn money through creating art, you'll work in a factory or whatever instead. Goodbye creative time, you'll not have it. If you continue to take what artists have produced without compensating them, then the market for artists will disappear. Strikes me that you're killing capitalism.

You want to argue that the current copyright laws are extreme, go ahead, I'll agree with you. But to argue there should be no copyright laws, or more specifically that artists who expect to be paid for the work they do that others use are in some way being unreasonable and not genuine, is something I can't go along with.

Excellant demonstraion of lack of insight there.

[krunk7]

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!"

David Lee Roth disagrees

[Quila]

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."

Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit

[Rande]

The programming he does for love (OSS) _is_ free.

The programming he hates (his daytime job) he does for the money.

30 second sample of a 4 second interlude

[abb3w]

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.)

Re:Why your head is in the clouds

[amplt1337]

Nobody cares about the consequences anymore. What happens when nobody can sell anything anymore? Why do people ignore the inevitable result of this?

Have you thought about the result of this? If "nobody can sell anything," because it's all available for free -- then that sounds like an incredible world to live in. I'll need no money to buy food or housing, because they'll be available for free; I'll be able to sleep as late as I want and spend all my time in creative endeavors for which I will earn the recognition of my peers. That's the life, my man. And that's what I'd like to see us work towards as a society -- apply the economics of peer-to-peer networks to the corporeal world. The result would be a world of abundance the like of which is unprecedented in human history.
We'd still find a way to muck it up of course, but it sure sounds nice, doesn't it?

Or are you operating under a more narrow definition of "anything" than me?

Real fans buy their music

[Caiwyn]

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.

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?

Re:Why your head is in the clouds

[pqdave]

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.

I can't speak for the original poster, but I'd like to see a system where the artist can decide how much their songs are worth, how and when they will be released, without worrying about cutting into sales of an artist more popular with the record company.

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.

It should take real talent to survive as a pro musician. Most musicians shouldn't quit their day jobs. What I think most of us want to see is a way that lots of good musicians can make a living, instead of a very few able to make millions. I'm sure that there are plenty of musicians who would love to survive playing club dates.

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.

This is an(other) odd situation, where the people paying for the book have no say in the selection. Another non-free market. My father is a college teacher, responsible for textbook selection. It's incredible what the publisher's reps are willing to give him, if he wants.

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?

I'm not that worried about music. There are enough people able to do it for the love and exposure that there will always be good stuff to listen to. Textbooks--Probably Podunk Community College will use the MIT courseware or similar, instead of a beginning psych book that rearranges it's chapters every 2 years to kill off the used market. Novels kind of scare me. We won't lose writers, but we will likely lose editors, and that will really suck.
All the things you mention are limited by old distribution methods rather than supply.

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.

No. I don't have a right to make a living as a geek, either. We both have the right to try. The current label system does nothing positive for musicians, with a few statistically insignificant outliers.

* 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 .50 or free. You know, to "show the RIAA who's boss." Because that makes it all right...

I am upset about good musicians not being able to cover expenses, but I think the RIAA is a big part of the problem.

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.

I'm not working as a writer, because I predict that I'd starve, even assuming I had enough talent. Geek is a close second, and I can eat and be happy with my job, so that's what I do. If nobody wants to pay me, I have to find something else. Declaring myself a writer, or musician, or whatever has nothing to do with it.

You should hope the same for anyone else trying to eke out a living in this economy, especially people who try to make music and sell it in a world where it's become a "wink-wink" joke to rip it