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RIAA's Nasty Easter Egg
Bruha writes "It appears the RIAA is being very low key about the fact that the five major labels think that 99 cents per song is too cheap, and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song. I was a huge fan of the 99c per song, but if they think that they can raise the price on me just because I don't buy full CDs anymore, they've got another thing coming. Suggestion: make good CDs, and maybe I'll buy the whole thing."
Are there only four songs on the album? I'll pay $.99. I won't pay $3. Listen up, RIAA.
When you download you just get the tracks you like.
I think the music industry is afraid thier "bundling" days are over!
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
well, the worst deal i've found on itunes has been .99 for a 4 second interlude track (janet jackson, i think). the RIAA needs to either make better music, save money by stop paying off radio stations, or die. well, it doesn't need to, but it would be nice.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
Well, the RIAA, like every other cartel, just wants to charge what they think the market will bear. People don't pay $20 odd per CD anymore, or at least, they perceive the price to be too high.
So, after the initial offering, they'll try to gouge more money out from the consumers of online stores. Why don't you think that for some, $1.25 is still going to be worth the price ? If you don't like it, vote with your wallets and don't buy it.
What, you don't think CDs started at $20 a pop, did you ?
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
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)
the worst deal i've found on itunes has been .99 for a 4 second interlude track (janet jackson, i think
... Brrr!
Thanks God, It could be much worse: imagine 3 minutes of Janet Jackson
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.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
Can someone (that doesn't work for the RIAA) please explain to me how this isn't price fixing and at all legal?
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2B1ASK1
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.
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.
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Power to the Peaceful
On another tangent, they may be shooting for the first reverse discount I've ever heard of: Since online distribution is competition to CD sales (their traditional business), they need to make CDs appear to be a better bargain. By increasing the price per song online, they have given CDs a discounted rate without ever really discounting them.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Why not make the prices fully variable and a function of the rate of downloading. All music would start at 0.99 per song. If the rate of downloading is high, the price would creep upwards until the rate of downloading slows. If the rate of downloading is low, the price would subside. Maybe the good songs are worth 2.99, maybe the sucky one are worth only 0.25 -- let the rate of downloading set the price.
And if you really want to use a market mechanism, then let people put in bids. When the price of the song drops to the bid price, the bidder gets the song. If the bidder wants the song sooner, then they will have to up their bid.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
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.
What you and too many others here don't understand or realize is that it is NOT that easy.
Let's figure up the average for recording a full-length CD. If you get a deal cut for the studio time you might get 3 days at $1200, which would be $50 an hour. We'll assume that mixing is thrown into that figure to simplify matters. Toss in $500 or so for mastering, and it's time for artwork.
You could do it yourself, but more than likely you want to get someone to do it for you. For a quality CD layout with a multi-page booklet you're probably looking at $300, maybe more. We're up to $2000 and haven't even started duplication...
Which we'll do now. Printed CD, not stickers. Multi-page color booklet. Standard jewel cases. Figure $1200 total for 500 CD's (including extras. I got this figure from oasiscd.com).
$3200. That's a fucking FORTUNE to most people, let alone guys that spend 18 hours a day in a van moving from gig to gig hoping that the manager of the club they're playing tonight doesn't fuck them out of their money so they can eat and gas up the van.
It's not as easy as 'Just do it yourself' all the time. Most artists HAVE to have a label to forward them cash to produce recordings. End of story.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
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
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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
And I bet he didn't even get to see a tit.
The existance of copyright law prevents it from actually being a free market. As I'm sure has been pointed out several times, a single song is a unique commodity, there are not multiple sources. So sources cannot compete, and without competition, the price will not necessarily decrease to the minimal possible price the market can bear.
that cannot happen, the way they have XM radio set up currently.
Actually it can.... even on broadcast FM. Think Tivo for radio. You'd have a lot of persistent storage in your car stereo -- a 4 GB Flash drive would hold 1,000 songs' worth -- and a smart, low-power-drain receiver that would seek out and record the songs you've told it to listen for.
Skipping commercials and idiotic station-ID blurbs (buzz beep buzz Q102 FM ROCKZZZ!!!!11!! buzz buzz orchestra-hit beep buzz sound-of-toilet-flushing beep buzz) would be pretty easy, too. The receiver would be equipped with a long-term correlator that would basically say, "If I've heard this segment of audio within the last 24 hours, don't record it."
Something like this would have the potential to make radio not suck... which in this day and age would take nothing short of magic.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
"99 cents a song is a pricing model designed to protect CD sales, and not one designed to move people into a new digital music marketplace," senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation Fred Lohmann told us recently. "If an iPod has room for 4,000, does Apple think people are getting to spend $4,000 filling it with music?"
Why is the EFF even asking a question like that? That's economics....that's business....that's marketing. That has nothing to do with My Rights Online.
(Yes, I'm an EFF contributor, but they shouldn't be worrying about how much a music track should cost...)
This wouldn't surprise me. Although a service like iTMS doesn't turn much of a profit for Apple it's certainly very successful, and definitely doesn't help the RIAA with it's argument that online music sales won't work and that piracy is killing their business.
An alternative is that perhaps the RIAA has seen that online music stores can work and they want to kill the opposition by raising prices before introducing their own service.
The "pirating" we are seeing is only popular because
...IT'S FREE
I was thinking of converting to paganism, but where the hell can you find sacrificial virgins these days?
First off, the summary:
Suggestion: make good CDs, and maybe I'll buy the whole thing.
I'm sick of pointing this out--kids today LOVE the music coming out. The fogies at Slashdot think that their niche opinion represent the majority. Today's computer users aren't downloading music because they don't like the whole albums--they're downloading because it's free and available.
Well, considering that the RIAA still hasn't figured out that the ridiculous prices CDs sell for is one of the major reasons why illegal filesharing became so popular in the first place, I'm somehow not surprised that they don't realize this point, either.
Same thing. Illegal piracy isn't popular because of "ridiculous prices." It's popular because it's convenient and everywhere, and it lets you rip off albums for free. They RAR up whole band discographies now and stick 'em up on eMule.
Slashdot wants you to believe that piracy is justified because CDs are overpriced (they're $12.99 at my store...that money covers a lot more than the pressing of the CD), that the RIAA is somehow bad for going after copyright infringers (which is exactly what Slashdotters were saying they should do when Napster was being sued), and that they somehow rip off artists even though artists willingly sign their contracts, shit on gold toilets, and never asked you for your "help" in ripping them off.
The anti-RIAA propoganda around this place is so annoying. Look at the headline--raising the price of downloads by a dollar is suddenly a "nasty easter egg." Slashdotters think their niche opinions represent the majority. You guys need to get off this site and see the rest of the world. ADMIT THE TRUTH--those millions of traders aren't using Kazaa to "sample" albums, they're not using it because they have some sort of righteous opposition to something called the "RIAA"--they're using Kazaa to download music without paying for it. People have yet to offer a valid legal or moral justification for ripping artists off.
But go ahead and post another anti-RIAA article, then after that another anti-Microsoft article. Recycle, repeat.
Nah, I doubt it. I remember seeing a sig somewhere once that said "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" ;-)
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.
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.
Your last paragraph shows how little you know about what it's like for touring bands.
First, not all labels are corporations. The OVERWHELMING majority of labels are simply people that are involved in the local scene that have a bit of money. To these dudes, putting $3000 on a credit card and paying it off sometime soon is feasible. They can afford to go long-term because they know they'll get their money back.
But for the bands? Most of the bands out there have a hard time even making their rent. They have to find new jobs when tours are over, then quit them as soon as the next tour starts up. Vans are usually borrowed, sometimes they're owned by one of the band members. Equipment is something you have to have before you even consider touring. That's something you get out of the way before you hit the road. But once you do, money is tight. Putting $3000 on a credit card is out of the question. For a lot of these guys, that's a year's worth of rent.
Two shows a week? Uh... no. If you want to do stupid shit like EAT and sleep someplace with a bed, you're doing five shows a week, MINIMUM. We're talking about traveling across the US, not England. Texas alone is bigger than most countries. Van mileage sucks, and gas isn't cheap. On a recent tour the band High on Fire drove from Houston to Austin to Fort Worth to Austin to San Antonio to (IIRC) New Orleans. That's about 2000 miles of driving in 7 days time. Also, good luck selling 10 CD's at a show. One to three per show is a much more realistic number. Maybe someone will buy a shirt too.
The fact of the matter is, it is NOT a realistic alternative for the majority of REAL, TOURING bands to completely fund themselves. Some can do it, most can't.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.