Slashdot Mirror
MP3 Download Prices to Rise?
OBeardedOne writes "The major music labels are in talks with music download services attempting to get them to increase the price of music downloads. " Sounds like there is division in the ranks of the music companies, but something to watch.
All of MP3 http://www.allofmp3.com/ already went from $0.01/MB to $0.02. This is old news.
Linky no worky
They are all rich, greedy bastards. Nothing to see here... move along.
you mean we're supposed to pay for mp3s?
Spiral out. Keep going...
Haven't we already gone over this a few months ago. They wanted to raise the prices but were not able to because they already signed long term contracts which restrict the price to be where it currently is? And wasn't the base price of the song 90 cents... with the distributor getting only a dime for every download? I remember reading that somewhere.
Regardless, all this ruckus about music download prices increasing stinks of FUD from the non #1 music download stores who want to push their music subscription services.
Cost too much for the rest of the characters in the url.
--- CatsCradle
More people will resort to piracy and I'll be harder to catch... :P
working link[clickability.com]
Why the hell do they need to be that greedy?? Damn music industry!! This site has more on this, and posted before slashdot: Holy-Self-Defeating-Greed, Batman!
Bits of News Giving you the latest bits.
I've never heard of this "404" record label. Or are they a group representing record labels? And why is /. affiliated with them?
Wow. A single-link story with a broken link... and _how_ did this make it onto the front page? Seriously, all during 'the mysterious future' it had the broken link, and now you can comment on it, and it _still_ has a broken link.
Here's the link -- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/28/downloads_ price_rises
Hmmm.
From my standpoint, the piracy fire has not been put out yet. Increasing the cost of music is just going to push people away from paying for music.
If this isn't the very reason we have anti-trust laws here in the USA, then I don't know what is.
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
I guess the music companies still think free music is taking away from their profits, even though it isn't free anymore...
Here's a link to CNN article.
linked article. Or did Hemos /. slashdot?
Never paid for it in my life, and I'm not about to start. I guess I can be proud of that.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
First, since the article appears to be a bum link, here's the text of it:
Music companies seek larger chunk of online music revenues
Dow Jones
Published on: 02/28/05
LONDON -- Leading music labels are in talks with online retailers to raise wholesale prices for digital music downloads, in a bid to capitalize on growing demand for legal online music, the Financial Times reports Monday.
The moves, which suggest that the labels want a bigger slice in the fledgling market's spoils, has angered Steve Jobs, the Apple Computer chief executive officer who is behind the popular iTunes online music store, the newspaper says.
But music executives expressed caution about their ability to push through unilateral price increases, the report says.
Among the biggest groups, Universal Music and Sony BMG are known to be particularly reluctant to disrupt the market for downloads.
One top label said it would not raise wholesale prices now because the market wasn't yet mature enough for a price increase, the newspaper reports.
This is typical bean-counter logic. Let's see... 1 million sales at $0.99 = $990,000. But 1 million sales at $9.99 = $9,990,000! Wow, that's 10x better!
I'm a big tall mofo.
Given that I downloaded all of Ray Charles' Genius Loves Company for only $4, I'm not surprised. If there was something of value in the disc package besides the music, I would have been willing to buy it. But the extra $15 (to get to the recommeded retail price) just isn't worth it.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/28/downloads_ price_rises/
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
Music companies sure do know how to put a stop to piracy!
Music Download Prices To Rise.
Smooth, editors, very smooth. Somebody had to have submitted an version article that had a working link.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
I just clicked on "View Source" to find the missing link. As it were. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/28/downloads_ price_rises/
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
Working Link
Sheesh - that sucks. Right when I was about to start using ITunes, too. It's too bad - they finally find a product the consumer wants, and they squander it. All in the name of keeping bad artists in business. Let's face it - the talented and popular don't need higher prices. This is to support the one-hit-wonders that never sell a cd because their only good song is mixed with 10 other crap songs, and no one will pay $15 for it. Instead, they just pay 99 cents for the one song that was good. Good job, RIAA. Good job.
HighSchoolForever.com
> The requested URL (%3CA%20HREF=) was not found.
> > Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
Percent three, with a Cee-Ayy percent,
Nothin' for you to see here.
Percent twenty, Aitch-Arr-Eee-Eff,
URL wasn't found.
Slashdot editors makin' no sense,
Nothin' for you to see here.
Least it wasn't a duplicate H-ref,
Time to move along.
(If the article was workin' I'd know how much to charge you for reading this. Sheesh.)
Because the cost of manufacturing has...
Er... Because they have to hire more employees to handle the purchasing load...
Er... Because the Britney Spears needs a new swimming pool for her poodle... yeah!
Isn't it time we just declare the RIAA a monopoly and start regulating it because, obviously, there is no competition.
As of this post, the link points to "http://slashdot.org/%3CA%20HREF=". Does this mean the editors don't even read the submissions or check what they post? A completely broken link on, say, CNN.com would be kind of a big deal and grounds for reprimand to the webmaster.
Well I'm glad I don't pay for my mp3's :)
I wouldn't pay more for legal downloads than what they already cost. If it costs the same as a CD I'll buy the CD if I want to be legit. A CD is lossless and comes with the little booklet anyhow. Plus, no (non-laughable) DRM.
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
Inflation happens, I have been expecting something like this for a while now.
If they raise prices they'll be even less competitive with the price of $0.00 that I currently pay per song.
He who sups with the devil should use a long spoon.
sulli
RTFJ.
Like here for example. Not to mention you get your choice of formats: ogg,m4a,mp3,wma. And at about a dime a song you can't beat it.
Slashdot... the place to come and read articles with shifty headlines about ipod's shuffling order... clearly fake threads from forums about firefox being spyware detected... or articles with no working URLs at all! God I love it
I don't know of any online music stores that sell mp3s. So let the prices rise as high as they want them. When they start raising the prices on Protected WMA and Protected AAC I'll start to care.
Dick #1: "Man, this piracy thing is still a major pain in the ass!"
Dick #2: "Yeah, maybe more lawsuits will stop it."
Dick #3: "Ok, on to the next agenda. We need more money."
Dick #1: "Oh, how about rasing the rates for the MP3 download services?"
Dick #3: "Capital idea! Done and Done."
Dick #2: "Great! Now, shall we get back to beating puppies to death?"
Dicks: "Huzzah!!"
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
Wasn't the recording industry nailed for trying to force retailers to up the price for CD's. Wouldn't this be just as illegal for Mp3 downloads?
Its all part of the strategy of destroying MP3s.
raise the price til no one will buy them. Ta-DA! no more MP3s!
I still think this would be a more permanent solution though:
no more music piracy!
air and light and time and space
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/28/downloads_ price_rises/
and text:
Music download prices to rise
By John Oates
Published Monday 28th February 2005 10:24 GMT
The market for downloaded music is strong enough to take a price rise, according to the major music labels.
Several big labels are in talks with online music retailers to get them to increase prices,according to the FT. The labels are looking to increase the wholesale prices shops pay for tracks. Sites in the US typically sell tracks for 99 cents each. The wholesale price is currently 65 cents per track, according to the FT.
Universal and Sony BMG are less keen to put prices up. EMI and Time Warner refused to comment on the FT story. Some observers are concerned that increasing prices would push people back to peer-to-peer networks and dodgy copies of songs.
The music industry is apparently unhappy with Apple's increasing share of the market - the firm sells about 65 per cent of songs sold online. The arrival of cheaper iPods is likely to give the firm an even larger share of the market. Apple refused to comment on the FT's story but Steve Jobs is reportedly deeply unhappy with the attempted price hike.
One suggestion is that labels want to introduce variable pricing - so they can charge more for top selling tracks.
Meanwhile it was confirmed on Friday that the European Commission is investigating allegations that British consumers are being ripped off by Apple's iTunes service because it charges more for downloads from the UK site and does not allow punters to buy tracks from other country's iTunes sites. ®
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Sorry, but all your links are belong to the /. editors.
mp3 prices are rising
wendy's trimmed their dollar menu and added more money on their combos.
oh my freaking god, the world is coming to an end.
NEWSFLASH TO RIAA: People are paying for MP3s right now because they are affordable. If you try to raise the prices, you'll end up making LESS money since more people will say to themselves, "Wait, why am I paying for this? $0.99 was no big deal, but now... especially when I can download them for free elsewhere..."
I suggest the group change their name from RIAA to MPEC - the Music Professionals & Entertainment Cartel.
I refuse to donate to the industry.. so why should i care they are raising prices?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think it was Steve Jobs who said Apple has contracts with the record labels to sell songs at .99. These contracts, if I remember correctly, were for at least 5 years. The same rumors happened last year in may. But, I guess we'll see what happens.
From an analyst quote over at CNN:
"If piracy was somehow stamped out, the environment could support a price jump, but that's irrelevant so long as illicit downloading is alive and well,"
To put it in human terms, piracy is keeping the price of songs low.
Can we please put to bed the myth that piracy drives up the cost of software and content? It doesn't.
Dear iTunes et al,
We want more money because we are greedy corporate money mongers. Raise your prices or we'll drag you to court and prevent you from selling our hip, fun, energetic teeny pop music.
Sincerely,
The Recording Industry Association of America
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
Why are they even complaining? They almost certainly get as much money from legitimate online sales as they would from CDs, especially since the cost of distribution is passed onto the likes of Apple, Napster et al.
It looks like the industry are willing to do their best to kill the golden goose as a gosling. 99 cents is a very powerful psychological pricepoint with consumers. I would guess raising prices above it at this early stage in the online legal music game would make many people think twice about downloading and paying for it.
It seems the music industry is determined to continue to gouge customers. They never let CD prices fall significantly as production costs fell, and it looks like they are going to be just as thick headed with a nascent industry that needs support to continue to grow.
Great job guys!
How is this not collusion and price-fixing?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Here's one at CNN International.
Labels are like OPEC...there's no competitive pricing among providers, just THE price for the product.
Currently bidding on sig
The files sold being referred to are mostly protected WMA, AAC, or Real files. Maybe some non-tech idiots think that all digital music files are MP3s, but these are the same idiots who think that all picture files are JPG's and GIF is a kind of peanut butter.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Are any of the services they discussed actually distributing in mp3 format, or have the Slashdot editors just become too confused by all these "technical" terms? Online music seems like a reasonable alternative description.
Not making any claims about right and wrong here.
With prices on the rise and the cost to legally fill an 40GB iPod in the 5 digits, the Napster trick looks better and better every day.
M
AllofMP3.com went from .01 to .02 per meg.
What REALLY pisses me off about this whole sham, is the fact that digital downloads are already pure profit for the labels. No packaging, distribution, or printing. Pure profit. And it's just not enough to fill their bloated CEO's coffers. Sue your customers for downloading illegally, but charge them an arm and a leg to do it the "right" way. Piss off, RIAA. You'll never see another dime from me.
"Everything You Know Is Wrong" was originally an album by Firesign Theater, 1974.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
It will no doubt change as competition (i.e. Walmart, et. al.) enters the market. It's one of the most common fallacies in business to raise your prices to make more money (or conversely to have a sale). It takes careful research and testing to determine the correct price point to maximize profts. You can't just decide to raise more prices to get more money.
I've made up my mind and now I've got to lie in it.
The services discussed there do not sell MP3's. How does raising the price on non-MP3 files negatively impact MP3's?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The prices of songs via mp3 are already maintained at an artificially high price. This ensures that the price of downloading an album via mp3 is roughly synonymous with the price of purchasing the album in a large retailer. Since the user is paying for "shipping", and packaging and materials are non-existant, it seems to me that even dividing the pie between the distributor, the record companies, and the artists, there's more than enough to go around as is. There's no justification for asking us to pay more for mp3s. Perhaps if they paid for our cable connection...
The problem, as the established media companies see things, with these new electronic outlets they have problems excerting their marketing influences to pimp their latest one-hit manufactured artist.
If they can put the breaks on things until *they* control the market then this is better for them. Its not really an issue concering margins as all the big players seem to be reporting big profits.
I was hoping to see the end of the album format, with the exception of concept albums or soundtracks or long classical works and such. Artists would just release a new song when they had one worth peddling.
Actually I wonder what kind of contract Wal-Mart has with the major music labels? I would suspect that any increase in fee would first require voiding or extensive reworking of the contracts that are outstanding.
My concern, if the labels get an increase in their fee what is too stop these retailers silently increasing their "costs" behind the scene?
Frankly the labels get too much of a slice of the fee as it is. I would like to see how much is actually given to the artist per sale. I would suspect that a lot of older music gives less than a cent per sold song to the original artist.
Higher than 99 cents? Only if I can get it in the format and quality I want. Only if I have a permanent right to have the song at my disposal. Get near 1.99 and it they can kiss the business model good-bye - which may be what they are after so later down the road the can release their own services.
All this begs the question, if the per song fee increases what happens to the all-you-listen-to sites like Rhaposdy and Napster?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Napster still has unlimited DRM free music downloads for $10 per month. =)
Apple doesn't sell MP3 files, only AAC & Audible.
btw, the link doesn't work either
I don't know if people agree with me, but here's my rant.
Currently on iTunes a whole album costs $9.99, now I can walk into a music store and get the actual CD for $14.99.
Personally, if its only five bucks, I'd much rather have the CD. You get a pernament backup, the song lyrics and all of the other extras.
If you buy it on iTunes, you have to make sure to burn it yourself or lose it forever, and you don't get the liner notes etc.
Now, if the price per song increases, I'm guessing that the price of an album would increase as well. So that brings the price of buying the album online very close to the price of buying it from a brick and mortar store. So the arugment for buying online is even smaller.
It will be interesting to see what happens here.
redune.com: The World 3.2 Megapixels at a time
I read an article about this. It seems one of the reasons for the cost increase is to compete with ringtones. Ringtones are going for 2 or 3 dollars each, or you can get a subscription for 3$ a week.
This of course is insane. 2 or 3 dollars for a ringtone out of my tiny cel phone speaker is barely even something you can call a song.
Anyway, that's the logic behind it. Ringtones don't target people who want music. They target people who need to be hip and with the pop culture, so clearly people behind this are missing things.
No.. it works... The /. comment system automatically puts a space when pasting links like that. Remove the space and it works!
Hmmm.
Has anyone ever stolen an MP3? I mean, it is possible to have something that meets the definition of theft (copy the original against someone's wishes and then delete the original to meet the "Taking" part of the definition of theft), but it has to be really really rare in practice.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Hate to reply to my own post... LINK
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
... but why title this "MP3 Download Prices to Rise"? Can you actually legally download MP3s these days? Allofmp3.com sounds decidedly illegal and everyone else offers various flavours of DRM restricted shite. Surely "online music stores to increase prices" or something would be more accurate?
They just want us to take their word on this one, there was no article.
Nothing to see here, please move along.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
I saw nothing about rates going up here.
Sure this could drastically decrease their count of their catalog, but the labels might get a clue: 20% more of no sales is $0. Then they'd be begging to be added back with the old price.
AC comments get piped to
IMHO, the prices are too high already, at least for me.
At a buck a track, I *might* consider buying 'em if they were losslessly encoded at at-least CD quality, and included metadata, "liner notes", etc... basically all the goods I can get at roughly the same price in a physical CD.
But in a lossy, DRM-infested mess... why the hell would I pay the same amount?
If they get the price down to 25 cents... or maybe even 50!... then I might consider it. Until then, it's back to the used-CD bins at Amoeba for me.
Yeah, but its dead simple for a lable to state they won't sell the hit song except as a part of the entire album.
Quite a few artists do this -- I've seen a number of albums where I needed only one, but to get it, I need to buy everything. Sometimes it doesn't even make sense because the song thats listed as Album Only isn't even a popular one...other times its obvious its because of licensing issues (for instance, one of the labels I'm consulting for is putting out a greatest hits of some older acts -- some of the artists on there only licensed the songs to be for that particular compilation and not to be distributed any other way -- their biggest concern would be that we sublicense this out again to another label with a product they didn't sign in for, and their management wants to control their image -- but all in all, we are allowed to put these online as part of the compilation).
But back to the point, the very first incarnation of the iTMS allowed for lables to force Album Only and this new contract as nothing to do with this.
the article:
What? Thanks largely to Apple, the "music industry" now actuall has a market. Without iPods and iTunes, and the Apple Music Store, this money -- 65 cents/song wholesale times some HUGE number -- wouldn't be going to the "music industry" at all.I'm not sure if this would be a smart move, the way I see it, it may discourage many from buying MP3s. Myself included, since I like having something "tangable". As long as the price is right, though, I would be willing to buy online. Perhaps they could offer incentives, like bonus songs that you can only get if you buy, say, an entire album of MP3s online.
"Ok, our distribution costs have been reduced to pennies on the dollar, and we have all but cut out the middle man, (the traditional distributor/record store paradigm) but we want to raise prices"
Give me a break. Piracy is down, costs are down too, now you want to steal from consumers to make up for your "lost revenue" due to piracy, punishing honest music purchasers with increased prices.
Don't even get me started...
l8,
AC
As I ( and most people who know me ) don't use any music services, this won't affect me.
What we do do, right or wrong, is rip CDs and share them between ourselves. So person A buys a CD, rips it, we all share it.
The kicker is, we have so much music, it's likely the same song is ever played at the same time at two different locations.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Since iTMS came to Canada I just spend the 99-cents (that's about 82-cents US, by the way) -- it's much quicker, easier and instantly satisfying.
But if they bumped it up to, say $1.20 per song -- I'll probably go find me an eMule client -- not that much more money, but psychologically 99-cents seems negligable. Above a dollar? That's real money.
Sam
...although I prefer "shadowy cartel" myself...
You charge people $.99, and you use the marketing research that says, when people see something ending in 99 or 95, they tend to round down. Take a tag that says $9.99, show it to enough people, and you'll get an amazing amount of "that costs $9", because lots of people won't round up when they read it.
.99 down probably round $1.09 up, and they'll think they're being overcharged by a dollar every time they download.
Jobs knows that if you charge $.99 for a song, people who round up will say "A dollar for a song? And no lawsuits? Not bad..." People who round down will think "These things are almost free" and think they're getting $1.00 off every time they download.
You push that extra few cents, and people stop doing that magic rounding trick. Now, because it's $1.09, I'm gonna take a wild guess any say the same people who round
...there is an Anandtech form post.
Linky
For everything else, there's mastercard.
Even 100% would lead to 0 for me.
The music industry is apparently unhappy with Apple's increasing share of the market - the firm sells about 65 per cent of songs sold online. The arrival of cheaper iPods is likely to give the firm an even larger share of the market.
I do not understand the music industry's complaint here. Someone (Apple) is selling their music online and they are unhappy about this? Were they complaining when Virgin, Best Buy, and Tower Records were gobbling up the physical CD market?
What complaint could the music industry have against Apple? As long as the music is being sold, what does the music industry care? They agreed to Apple's contract.
Cheaper iPods will also lead to Apple selling MORE songs. That is the reason that Apple will have more of the market. Yeah, the music industry definitely has a right to complain - one of their resellers will be selling a lot more of their product. Gotta hate it when that happens.
Meanwhile it was confirmed on Friday that the European Commission is investigating allegations that British consumers are being ripped off by Apple's iTunes service because it charges more for downloads from the UK site and does not allow punters to buy tracks from other country's iTunes sites.
I always thought that a Brit's inability to buy from another country's iTunes store is because of licensing restrictions. That is, that Apple is not allowed to sell a song to a Brit that Apple only has the French distribution rights to.
I suppose the EU is supposed to rectify a lot of these problems, but I daresay that the contracts between Apple and the music industry follow the older, country-specific licensing agreements.
How much of this could also be chalked up to England still using the Pound, and not going over to the Euro? Will the EC only be happy when it costs EXACTLY the same in England (with the pound) as it does in France, with the Euro? Would Apple have to change prices daily to keep up with the exchange rate?
(Yes, I realize that English iTunes is still way too expensive in comparison and should be brought down. I am just not so quick to blame Apple. Maybe the contract the music industry came up with in England just charges Apple more per song?)
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
If the labels increased prices, all those who made the online music business happen - especially Apple - would quit. I would like to see how these label jerks, microsoft and realnetworks want to run music stores without Apple to show them how. So far, all online music stores that sell label stuff have borrowed heavily from iTMS: The $0.99 pricing, the 30-sec listening test, even the user interface.
Moreover, if people return to piracy, things will be a hundred times worse. Now, everybody can get powerful xDSL or cable, and there are peer-to-peer clients that much better technically than Napster ever was, and much more difficult to shut down. It's Napster on steroids, all the way. Are these label people really that dumb?
The governments who have so far helped enforce copyright might back off and refuse to go after kids just to satisfy the greed of the bosses.
You might be exaggerating just a LITTLE bit. Clear Channel only owns about 1,200 radio stations out of 20,000. This small percentage (6%).of control leaves 18,000 radio stations not controlled by Clear Channel. Little different from "20 or 30", wot? Yes, this misperception is common. So many claim that CC has a monopoly.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The FedEx truck hasn't even delivered my new iPod Mini yet and they're jacking up prices already.
God, this one is almost a year old.5 9
Editors please......
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/07/15192
Why are you attaching this to Apple: when it will clearly affect the entire music download market?
It must be costing too much to distribute audio via the Internet versus standard distribution means. It is so cheap to mass-produce physical media, ship them overseas to outlets like WalMart, and then to sell them to end users. Having end-users simply download over an expensive wideband link to a very expensive server must be killing their profit margins.
Now it's obvious that Slashdot editors don't even click the links. Maybe that's their way of remaining free of liability - they don't know what it links to, so any results are the liability of the submitter, or the clicker. :p.
They've got a lameness filter that castrates some expressive posts, but they can't even validate linked URLs for syntax?
--
make install -not war
That's why we have Rhapsody. $10 a month for unlimited music streaming (and they just broke 1 million songs). Its an amazing service.
Ah, at last, a music thief who not only admits it, but is proud that he steals music!
Hurrah!
I just whistle and hum my tunes anyhow... who cares what "downloads" cost...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
This statement right here says it all. One might initially read this as a bit of sane thinking from one of the labels re letting the industry grow, however when you think about what it means you see that the greater plan is more stifling prices.
The only current cost increase that the RIAA could justify is annual inflation. Their distribution costs are taken up by the online reseller (iTunes, etc), their printing costs are essentially zero, just convert a master song copy to digital format and deliver to online distributor once. And their advertising costs remain the same since they are not (to my knowledge) producing any advertisements that forward online music buying specifically.
The only explanation for the price increase is that they simply want more for the same or less service. And the wording of the one abstaining record label here says it all: not yet mature enough. i.e. They planned to milk consumers for all they possibly could once it caught on, but most of them have gotten tired waiting for the plan to come to fruition and have jumped the gun. In other words if they had waiting another X years/Y% user increase/[insert marketing threshold here] then everybody would have been on board for this as they'd planned it all along.
Could someone who is a lawyer or has the time to research the appropriate links please explain how the RIAA in doing this is NOT acting as a monopoly or cartel? As I understood it, price fixing by an industry that is not justified by some external cost increase is explicitly illegal, regardless of whether it's a smokey back-room deal or done in the public eye under the guise of an "association".
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
...what I always post to these stories: EMusic, DRM-free, high quality VBR MP3s from a range of labels. Subscription works out at under 25c/track. Definitely a fan.
.99 isn't even that low of a price. The labels still believe they can win this time where they lost before. They've got all the legislators money can buy.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Given that there are 12 tracks on that album, are you saying you paid $.33 per track?
The only way I can imagine you did that was by getting it from allofmp3.com, which is about right.
You DO know that allofmp3.com is illegal, don't you? Even in Russia? That makes you a thief.
Have a nice day.
I am only sharing music, especially after having my credit card number stolen on iTunes.
Dear RIAA
For every artist you represent, there are 1.000 artists you don't. If we are not allowed to sell your music, we will start taking all unknown artists into our store and let word of mouth decide. We will do this after buying Apple Records and make deals with every lable we can get into this. See those white headsets aroud the city? Each one of those are connected to one of our customers.
Yours faithfully,
iTunes Music Store
PS: we are going to sell the music of unsigned and independend artists no matter what you do, so follow the bandwagon or miss the concert.
If the price is too high, don't bitch. Just don't buy the crap. Jeeezzz...
$1 per song sounds OK because it's at that magical price point where most people will just say to themselves "Ahh, it's just a buck". The thing is, $1 per song is a bad deal. Let's assume the average number of tracks (songs) per CD is 12. If you wanted to get the full CD, that's $12. Except now you're getting it in some lossy format (AAC/MP3/WMA) that may be DRM'd (I'm thinking of other online music retailers like Wal-Mart, which I think uses Windows Media Audio (not sure if it's DRM'd or not)).
I know that not everyone wants every track, but when you're getting it in a lower quality format and at your own expense/time (bandwidth/time taken to download) $1 is a bit of a rip off.
If anything, the price should be dropping to $0.50 or $0.75. That'd actually encourage people like me to use these online services. And you'd think the music industry would like it because it's less physical content they have to manufacture and ship out to stores.
Hiking the prices just goes to show people that they can't trust the music industry, and that any trust that was fostered was misplaced.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
You could ping them for price-fixing and collusion. That happened already in the late 1990s; they were fined some hundreds of millions of dollars. Unfortunately they played the "for the kids" card, under which they dumped an equivalent (inflated) amount of "free music" (i.e., remaindered copies of the Glitter Sountrack) on a bunch of schoolkids.
Microsoft did the same in its anti-trust settlements. Their "punishment" was to donate "a billion dollars worth" (retail, of course) of MS software to schools.
My advice: Unplug your radio. Throw away your TV. You don't NEED these assholes.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
Any time you are using a single source/vendor for all of your music needs, you are at the mercy of their management (directly for profit motive or indirectly through the negotiation skills with the RIAA). Oh well, all the fanbois will praise Apple and claim it is about time they raised the price! Now we can pay the same as a real cd in the store even though distribution, packaging, storage, and inventory costs are not required for the digital copy. My god man, think of the artists.
Yes, exactly. My first thoughts on reading the article.
::cough:: libertarians swallow like Jonestown Kool-aid). What they want is a locked down market that they can manipulate at will. This is just like Enron, except for the music biz.
This is proof that corporations aren't really interested in capitalism, free market forces, or any of that empty rhetoric (the nonsense rethugs, and rethugs-lite
Mod parent up please.
(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!)
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
For what one gets with Napster, Itunes, and MusicMatch etc 99 cents is too much for lossy compressed, DRM encumbered file. This isn't surprising for pigopolist, consider they've been convicted twice for price fixing and the fact CD prices have stayed high despite decreasing technology costs. I guess they never learn their lesson. They jaked up CD prices and drove someone develop Napster, now their sales have started to increase after a slump and what do they want to do? Go back the practice that got them in trouble the first time. Idiots.
The main idea is to milk the market. Have a bunch of recodrings for every major age group, from youngsters, teen, college students, 25+ , 35+ etc... and make them pay $15+ for them.
And then charge the group with the most demand inelasticity the highest price, this is even more than the $15 ammount. The RIAA does not understand that the the music industry is changing; or believes they can still stop the change and it is a matter of time before they change or be changed. They will fight tooth and nail so they can reap their profits.
After all record companies make money from borrowing money from financial institutions. And these institutions charge them interest rates, and these institutions want their money not matter what this includes the 10% interest etc...
Also due to the extreme large spectra of artists the quality of music has gone to the euthanasia clinic. Way too many young inexperinced people playing the tune of the music producer. Most people listen to this stuff because they have no alternative choice; for background music. Let the RIAA milk the market, it is time we put a cieling on the price of music. I say no less than 50cents and no more than 99c. And have certain protections for the consumer. I mean there are two ways to make money, charge a higher price or sell more units. Selling more units that is to create demand is hard when all you have to sell is crap so they do option number 1) ; which is to raise the price.
It is time most consumers got smarter and said hell with the current distribution. The RIAA is nothing but a conglomertation to give people the illusion of happiness, after which they will milk you for your money.
Let them raise prices and let's see what happens... there will be less songs sold.
Sorry, color me suspicious.
A Financial Times article on "music labels" in "talks with online retailers" and their specifics consist of "has angered Steve Jobs" and no mention of the other umpteen online music retailers?
IMHO, this is a non-story meant to encourage some longs to sell post-split. MM's are so predictable.
after finding out that i am not the only one who had his credit card info stolen through itunes i don't think i'll BUY any music again.
"Steamboat Willie" wasn't even that good a cartoon!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It sure won't be the starving artist signed to a one-sided restrictive indentured servitude contract.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
they use allofmp3.com
Amoeba is awesome! Do you go to the Telegraph one or the Haight one?
I'm sure they will eventually try and up the prices until the price of buying an album online (mp3/aac) are the same, around what 15.00-20.00?
What do we expect, they want all the money they can get their hands on, and well, if a song is only 99 cents, and the equivalent price of buying a cd would be somewhere around 1.25-1.50 depending on the price of the song.
I can just hope that apple and the other major legal music download services will stick to their guns and not succumb to the music industry.
Last month Allofmp3 raised its prices from $0.01/MB to $0.02/MB.
Highway robbery, I tell ya.
Copyright violation and theft are different things. The parent can be a bad person without being a thief.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Please tell me you don't think Britney Spears is the most talented, most exciting artist out there just because she seems to be one of the most popular.
...because if they don't, the music biz will work, and they can't get lawmakers to criminalize customers anymore.
In a few years, those managers will look just so stupid (after they've been fired).
Record companies wont directly get my money...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
They want me to pay more for a lower than CD quality download. In essence they are penalizing those that chose the least costly distribution method. In other words they are trying to turn downloads into their big profit center. Why would I pay more for less quality and no physical package? I support digital distribution, but this is just sad. How much you folks want to bet the artists would see very little if any of this increase? Last, but not least I thought CD sales were up recently? Wasn't part of that attributed to extra exposure from peer to peer sharing of music?
Since the Register is rarely correct about anything, and this line of talk has been discounted several times by Apple, I wouldn't believe it.
Apple signed a multi-year deal.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
"Listen guys, we've been over this a thousand times before. We don't really want to sell music, we want to screw people, and you guys selling popular music at reasonable prices really cuts into the number of college kids we can sue for downloading music!"
It's been a long time.
because they are too expensive, and way to little goes to artists. MUCH too much seems to go to "distribution".
Yeah, Im gonna pay MORE on a digital download. Where "distribution" can be almost cost-less. Sure. Uh-huh.
Unfortunately, it sounds like what the record companies want is to just raise prices on the popular songs and keep the 99c price on the older songs... I don't think that would be a smart move. There are enough people who think 99c is *barely* an acceptable price for a single song, once you go over the dollar barrier I think they might see sales drop enough to balance out the extra few cents. If they lowered prices on older songs (even only ones, say 5 years or older), though, they'd probably make it up through increased sales on that music.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
You mean like when someone insists that "rape" is not the same as "arson"? No, I do not buy your argument that insisting that certain crimes be properly described and not confused is "trying to rationalize behavior".
" it has become useful to describe such activity."
How is it useful when it does not fit the requirements?
"Intellectual property is considered just that: property, and taking such wrongfully is stealing. So get over it."
Thanks for deflating your own argument by even mentioning the "taking" requirement of the definition. When a copy is made of something, that something is not "taken": it still remains.
Get over it. Stop wasting time. Get a dictionary.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
No you haven't. All you have done is commit the crime of counterfeiting. You are attempting to conflate the definition of theft beyond all meaning where any activity possible can be called theft.
"In the same way, when a portion of folks take someting they are not entitled to"
Now you are off-topic. Duplication and taking are very different things.
You are caught up in a fallacy that "if it is illegal, it is theft"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Get back in the bottle! Our CD sales might one day dry up!
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
I just don't understand this controversy...
JoloK
RIAA should be disbanded because all they are is greedy lawyers. As with every business in the world, costs of production and distribution goes down with time. RIAA keeps trying to state that its business model the prices increase.
.25$/song, i would be buying tons of music. I have bought a total of 3 songs from itunes so far. And that is because the .99$/song is right on the edge of what i consider 'trash' money. If it were way lower, I personally don't care for a quarter, so i will spend it on whatever.
Frankly, I don't understand how RIAA can exist. Its not a company, they don't produce anything, the only thing they are there for is to try get all producers of music to behave the same way. This in turn creates a 'monopoly like' setup, where everyone benefits that are part of the monopoly.
I can personally say that if songs on itunes would drop to
I might buy 4 more songs from that stupid pop artist because i want to see what other music they have. I might buy more songs from artists i do like. I might even complete some of my collections of songs that i would like to own.
You raise a good point. However, to continue with the analogy: is it stealing when you get into someone's data files with permission and copy them? As in nabbing those Pantera files from "kewlKazUser4005"'s hard drive on a p2p service after he has shared them for your benefit?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
What complaint could the music industry have against Apple? As long as the music is being sold, what does the music industry care? They agreed to Apple's contract.
Put simply MS is very cosy with people like the RIAA. MS have much more clout and money than Apple and don't like being left out in the cold floundering with 10th rate products that nobody uses. That is why.
I always thought that a Brit's inability to buy from another country's iTunes store is because of licensing restrictions.
Well not quite. More to do with the artifically inflated prices for different world zones. If you have seperate localised iTunes stores you can charge more in those local zones. 75c is nothing for English people, and they don't want you purchasing music for America for cheaper. Remember the case with Tescos buying up Levi jeans and selling them for the price that ARE in the rest of the world in the UK ? Levi was furious because it supposedly 'tarnished their image' (real reason, they were not getting the inflated bullshit UK price)
That's not Apple's fault though, that is the music industry.
How much of this could also be chalked up to England still using the Pound, and not going over to the Euro?
It's nothing to do with the Euro.
http://www.walmart.com/music
In the common law, theft is usually defined as the unauthorised taking or use of someone else's property with the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use."
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
is this a percentage increase? any percent add on to zero still comes out to zero. is bittorrent going to charge me now or something?
oh wait, they're talking about the -pay- sites. why would i ever chose to use those?
viva la free market!
So, you think that the record companies, who are already in a frothy panic because they think they're losing all their profits to those "p2p pirates" are going to suddenly become magnanimous and cut you a break by lowering their profit margin?
*chuckle*
Let me guess: you also swallowed that line about how the government will restore those pesky civil liberties you used to have once the War on Terrah is won.
Yeah, right.
How can the music industry justify charging more than about $0.05/track?
I get my DVDs through Netflix, and pay about $1 per DVD (the whole thing, with any extras that may be on the disk). Netflix recently lowered their price (so now I pay about $0.90/DVD). Those are regular, effectively unprotected DVDs to watch anyway and on any device I choose (I sometimes rip them and watch them on my PDA).
Blockbuster and Walmart are competing for the same customers, and they charge even less.
CD music costs a lot of money to produce, but it doesn't cost 100th as much as a major movie (probably less than 1000th). Why are people paying so much for so little? Where is the perceived value?
I stopped buying major label CDs a few years ago, but increased my DVD rentals dramatically. There's no value in pirating DVDs at those prices. Studios are even moving the DVD release data closer to theatrical release (to reduce their costs).
While movie industry seems to be adapting, the music industry seems to be engineering their own demise. Not that anyone will miss them. Independent artists seem to be where the good music is these days, and they are much more reasonable in pricing their product.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
You know, I would totally pay $1 for a song that I like. I'd probably pay $1.25, maybe $1.50. There's a lot of CD's where I'm not interested in the whole album. I have yet to buy a single song online, however, because of the stupid DRM crap. If can't manage my music the way I see fit, I ain't buying it. I can live without those songs. I can stick to buying CD's I really like and ripping them, so I can listen wherever I want and just use the disc as a backup.
I'm probably reading this wrong, but when iTunes and Napster say I can copy the music I rent (as far as I can tell it's more like renting than buying) up to 10 times, I think, "Great. So I have to buy my music all over again every 5 years?" I typically reformat my PC once a year, copying all of my music to a file server, then back. Either the flunked the grammar section while they partied their way through business school or it's a bum rap. Given that we're talking about the music industry, my instinct is to assume the latter.
There is something wrong, when my musican friend in malaysia can produce an album for under $10,000 while its almost impossible for a major label to produce it for less than $150,000. Yes there are ecomonic diffrences, but last i checked, it was not that great.
Listening to his album, most of the songs are good. When is the last time you bought a major album with more than one or two good songs? I thought so.
Record labels go for quanity, not quality. If they can get an artist to make an album with a couple hits but mostly filler, they can save other hits for other albums. Then they get consumers to pruchase all albums when they were only going to listen to a couple tracks.
Single downloads kill this model. Because now its possible for consumers to download the hits, and just leave the rest of the tracks be. The idea of raising prices is to get the album revenue out of just the hits.
This may work if they take an adaptive pricing model. They charge alot for the hits, and less for the misses.
The music industry is changing. Label, relying on album sales and licencing revenue, are in a bad postion. Artists dont make much money off of album sales as it is, but it helps promote them and thus increases thier other revenue sources such as concerts and sponsorship.
Label will have to move from an album sales company, to a promotional/financing services company. If they dont, they will become insignificant. But on the other hand, if they still can keep getting musicans to sign stupid contracts and keep funding and create another revenue source by sueing pirates, they might be around longer than they should.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
I wrote a RealBasic program that grabs a random selection of my MP3 collection and puts them onto a CD which I then play in my car. The latest version even searches for smaller songs near the end in order to fill up those last few megabytes. :)
But do not forget to get her Poodle a Bently Turbo R so after a dip in the pool, the dog can be driven to the groomers/doggy day spa for a facial and pup-i-cure and then off to the social club to hang around with the other mutts, er uh... I mean presigious celebrity purebreds. Then you gotta pay for the driver, gas and all that other stuff... So they will need to triple the costs to 2.98 or so, make it 2.97 and call it a bargain. And offer 24.99 deals per 10 song or more album. Save almost 5 bucks and line our greedy phat pockets. ZionCity --- C'mon,.. wen are we gonna do a one day boycott of these greedy fat slob bastards, I have not bought a real CD in over 5 years.
The reason I believe for the price increase is generally in 1 full album, there's about 12-16 tracks and only about 2-3 of them are worth listening to. The others are just mainly crap, which comes along w/ the package. assuming that these cds cost about $12-16, it comes out to be the same amount of money per track like iTunes and other downloadable music services. However since people are allowed to mix and match now and aren't forced to buy the entire album, hardly anyone will buy a full album, unless there's a lot of good tracks on it. Assuming the guestimate I provided above is true, intead of making $12-16/album now, they're only making $2-3.
HD Trailers
doubled it's prices every year since it has existed, so lets see thats 2^7 * ohh wait...
If you complete the referral for me in my link, I'll reciprocate. I got the Xbox and the Ipod free - it really does work and it comes pretty quickly (hardly the 4-6 weeks).
You can email me at mattatbraynarddotcom. Good luck.
Matt
this fits in perfectly with their previous business strategies:
1 - monopolize all areas of production and distribution
2 - aggressively reduce costs
3 - raise prices
and everybody goes home happy. well, everybody that isn't the customer that is...
sum.zero
However, to zero in on music, I looked here, and found about 15 Dallas music radio stations.
If you search for Dallas at www.clearchannel.com, you will find 5 music stations they own. That's a 33% ownership percentage of Dallas music radio stations by CC. You are familiar with Dallas radio, I am not. Was that first list accurate?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Sure, a lot of people are like you and prefer to buy the actual CD. There are however also people like me... if i buy 10 albums in a store it costs me 150$ while it would only cost me 100$ on iTunes. But if i were to buy them in the store, i would also have to take the time go to the store to pick them up, and after that i'd have to rip the CDs so i can transfer them to my iPod. After that, the CD are put away and the next time i'll use them is if i want to rip them again. So for me, iTunes is not only cheaper, it is also more convenient than buying actual CDs because it takes me less time, and i don't have a bunch of CD's lying around. I also take weekly backups of my iTunes music library on a seperate harddrive so the possibility of losing my tracks is rather small.
oh and yes i know i can only listen to my iTunes tracks on 5 concurrent pcs... but seriously, i only have the songs on my iMac and on my iPod. So that only counts as one Authorized Computer because iPods don't count towards your authorized computer total. To me, the DRM is not an issue and if it was, i could remove it with Hymn
And EC !=EU
"I would like to see how much is actually given to the artist per sale. I would suspect that a lot of older music gives less than a cent per sold song to the original artist."
artists, new and old, rarely make money on cd/record sales. in fact, they often end up with royalty bills at the end of the day as a result of the recoupment of fees by the labels. artists make money on touring and merchandise sails primarily.
some quick links:
link
link
janis ian also gives her take as a musician on her website
sum.zero
sum.zero
Okay, moderators, gimme that hivemind luvin'...
Back in May of last year there was some noise very similar to this, and at the time I believe Apple pointed out that they have a 5 yr contract. The RIAA is probably floating a trial balloon again to gauge public outcry (and how many people bring up SEC violations for collusion).
MSRP - Tax, Title & Licence Extra Your Milage May Vary
If they change the price on the iTune Music Store, I'll just go right back to downloading illegally, thank you very much. $1/song is that magical price point which I'll accept...
I've already crossed over that line and bought a few whole albumbs for $9.99 that I could have got for $14 or so in stores...
For me I think the line of valuing the extra quality of the CD is around $1-$2 more. For some cases where I really trasure the music I still spring for CD's, but that is growing smaller.
ITunes is helping by making interesting products like iTunes Originals, a set of music with commentary tracke inbetween. I have no trouble paying $9.99 for that even if I already own some of the tracks in the set.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This story really shouldn't be filed under Apple at all, but it caused me to (once again) think that the headline was quoting Apple Computer Inc. I know Slashdot is determined to be the most asinine useful web resource on the net, but why do section stories under Apple have headlines that misleadingly attribute quotations to Apple?!
What are you talking about? Stealing or downloading music? The two are very different.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Thief, thief, thief. By posting your insightful post, you STOLE mod points from me, since there is a chance that some moderator would have spent time modding me up instead of reading your message.
No matter how you try to rationalize your immorality, you, sir are a thief!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
However, in this case, there is almost unlimited capacity to scale the operation. Why not take advantage of this new market condition like Vanderbilt did when he revolutionized the steamship industry. He sold tickets for a lower cost and padded his slim margins by adding value and revenue to the trips by selling food and drink. The record labels wouldn't even have to sell other services because they easily cover their operating margins.
The record companies are in the unique position to lower the cost of a song to say, $0.75 and take advantage of almost costless scaling. Why wouldn't they?
The simple answer I can think of is that the quality of the product that they offer is so poor that exposure to this music will lead to less return business. Take a tip from the late, great Sam Walton and discover the power of discounting.
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
My girlfriend downloaded a legal DRMed copy of a song recently so she could learn it for a karaoke party. She asked me to fill a CD with it so she could play it on her way to work.
:\
Not knowing how many times she could copy it (she didn't know when I asked) I opened windows media player, created a playlist that filled the CD and clicked 'burn to CD'. The program began happily converting the tracks to the CD format until it reached the burn limit at which point I got an error message.
Here's the kicker:
I hadn't actually burned _anything_ - it just converted the format for the burn. When I adjusted the playlist, I couldn't burn anything. It had already marked all 10 burns that she paid for as done. DRM is _great_.
I ran a line out from the sound card out into the mic input and recorded an mp3 for her with a command line utility I have, then burned that to CD instead, but what a pain in the ass.
Now they want to charge her more money... omg.
You can buy a used CD on half.com for $8-10, delivered to your goddamn door. That's uncompressed, un-DRMd audio, and the booklet is included, too.
They should sell the stuff they're smoking instead, it's apparently very strong.
I speculate that the RIAA and Associates would like to narrowly define the recordings as property when it comes to their ownership. Then, when you buy it, it's not property, but a license to play. And when they exert complete control over it, it's not a commodity, but intellectual property.
Is that a monopoly? Am I missing something here?
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
this is downright insightful! i never thought about it that way. given that, i'll have to buy an iPod just to help Apple hold onto their bargaining power. i myself prefer to buy CDs, nothing like having a "proper" physical backup. but all the same, if the price of itunes downloads goes up... what's to stop the price of CDs from going up too. ouch.
not to mention i think it's absolutely ridiculous to raise prices on a digital download... it costs the record companies nothing to offer downloads, it's Apple that has to put up the infrastructure costs of running the store and serving up the downloads, and if they say $0.99 is enough for them to run the store without going in the red, then $0.99 is a reasonable price. shame on the music companies for trying to screw the customers!
The precise reason that illegal file sharing of music has been so popular is because music has been overpriced for a long time. Once these labels recover the initial production costs of the album, it is nothing but profit. Most concerts are organized for the artist to make a buck, but even then the labels take the lion's share. The labels seem to enjoy profiting at the expense of both the listener and the artist. People who avoid buying music at all costs simply see through this. The others don't, which is why you see a bunch of crap on the Billboard charts and particularly the iTunes "Top Downloads". Who is buying this crap? Not anyone with a brain
It works very well.
Is every song $0.99?
For the most part, yes.
Do they offer a special if you download a full album?
Yes. Downloading most albums will only cost you $9.99. Occasionally you will pay more for a double album or box set.
Suppose you want a full CD, and the first track is a 20 second intro. Does this track still cost $0.99?
You have the option to purchace the whole album for $9.99 or the individual tracks for $.99 each.
Give em an inch, and they want the whole yard...
It was only a matter of time honestly.
Insert Sig Here
Through out the article FT is mentioned, example "according to the FT". Does anyone know what FT stands for?
Problem is, $0.99 songs expose 10 song $18.99 traditional CD's as outright ripoffs - if we know that they're willing to sell us the music for $9.99 and still turn an acceptable profit, where's the other $9 going? The packaging? The material cost of the CD itself? Yeah, maybe $1 of it. The rest is raw profit.
At $0.99 per song, the record companies are undercutting their own highly profitable product and loosing out on around $0.90 extra profit per song that they get on a regular CD. I imagine they want the price to be in the $1.75 - $2.00 range per song in order to see the same profit margin, and that's not counting the fact that iTunes lets you buy only part of an album - again, a huge dent in their sales.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
Take a commodity: sugar, say. If I sell sugar, I can do so for any price I wish. I can also sell sugar of any type or condition, provided that a) it's safe for human consumption, and b) I'm honest about what's in it. I can choose to sell for a ludicrously high price, but that's okay because someone else down the road can sell for a lower price, and unless I can provide people with a genuine reason for preferring mine, they'll buy his. So it's a free market; it tends to regulate itself.
Music isn't like that, though. If I want to buy a track from an RIAA artist (legally, in my country), then I have to buy from an RIAA-approved source. I can't go and get the same track from another source. So it's not a free market in the same sense; it's more like a cartel. Under those conditions, maybe it's not quite so just for the cartel to choose whatever price it likes?
Music is also different in another major way, as discussed in other comments: if I steal some sugar, then not only do I get to have it, I'm depriving the original owner. But if I copy music, although I get the benefit, the original owner doesn't lose anything. So copying music is only like theft of physical objects in some ways; in others, it's different.
These two reasons make me think that although music copying is wrong according to the law, it's not a wrong of the same type as physical theft. And maybe it's a wrong we need to reconsider.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
...the fact that MP3s (128Kbps 44.1) are 10 times worse in quality than original CD, which in a lot of cases costs about the same as an album on MP3s.
First, I like the music.
.
Second, I decide what price (if any) I want to pay for the music.
Third, It's about 1/3 the price of "label" music.
Fourth, the artists get HALF the money.
You can find it at www.magnatune.com
You can play the various tracks you are interested in and if you like them enough to pay, then you can get some quality music knowing it's a good deal for the artist and it undercuts RIAA's business model.
I'm happy with the site as you can tell!
maxo-texas
The parent is paying $0.00 for music. So is General Ulysses S. Grant. Why aren't you blaming the dead too? Are they causing music prices to go up because they are not buying music? Are you going to blame the Martians next?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
RIAA-loving CEO: Sure...sell the songs for $0.99. Noone will buy them, people prefer a CD, plus we can justify a larger profit margin when we sell CD's.
RIAA-loving CEO: Amazing...people seem to actually prefer downloading their music. Increase the profit margin on it!
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
Russian Mafia or RIAA... Russian Mafia or RIAA... damn. This is a hard choice.
Well at least the Mafia is honest about being criminals. They get my dollars!
I think if the music industry is so fond of price fixing, they deserve no protection against bootlegging.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
And you'd think he'd have lots to spare.
If you sell only 1 track, yeah, it does cost more than 65 cents per track to create (unless it's all done by volunteers). Can you honestly claim that the albums that go platinum cost more than 65 cents a track?
Overall, a given album may or may not cost more than 65 cents per track to create. The median album probably costs more, because more than half the albums made probably do poorly. On the other hand, the few that do really well pay for the losers.
Not that I expect them to do this, but say Apple decided to change the iTunes policy and sell all tracks for 25c. Would you be completely unable to find good music on Apple's site? You'd probably find no britney spears or john coltrane, OTOH there are thousands of extremely talented artists who would love to have their stuff up on iTunes, even at only 25c a track.
I hope any price increase drives more people to p2p networks. I don't think copyright infringement is a very serious crime, and would love to see the music and film industries get a rude awakening.
It's along the lines of when someone 'steals' a db full of personal data from the bank. The bank still has the original copy, so nothing has been 'stolen', right?
What happens in that case is, someone illegally 'accesses' a computer system, illegally 'copies' sensitive data, and then illegally 'steals' money using that data.
Saying that the data was stolen is convenient, but you're right when you point out that stealing isn't really the appropriate concept in that case.
WTF is this article doing in the Apple section of Slashdot?
Oh, that right, everyone who uses mp3 online services uses iTunes and iPods these days [/sarcasm off]
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
if anything, music downloads should get cheaper, if the business model is to remain viable. I mean, what is a digital music file worth, if anything, at all? It has no residual value, unlike a CD. Digital music is Disposable music: it is only as good as the media on which it is stored. Therefore, it should be cheap, dirt cheap. In fact, if you want me to listen to your music, you should pay me a dollar a track, per listen.
Yeah, I have a 40G ipod, but none of the music stored on it has been purchased from itunes, and none of it ever will be. Paying for downloads is like burning your money, only the whole process is digital. My preferred media for aquiring new music is used CDs.
We call it riding the gravy train....
Does that mean my Vorbises will now be comparatively cheaper?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
There was also some speculation as to how consumers could deal with this.
Mainly, they can sue. It's called price-discrimination, and it's illegal.
Now, proving it using the Robinson-Patman Act (1936) is not the easiest thing in the world to do. There's loads of exceptions, sort of thing. But nevertheless, public outcry and a highly public case against the first person who tried this sort of thing would likely be enough to put a stop to it.
Amazon.com tried something like this several years back, didn't they? Different customers got different prices. They dumped it, I think, because of all the attention it got when people noticed it happening.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
then have a look at the development of wikipedia and encyclopedia britannica over the next year.
" you're assuming that the record company has already recovered its costs."
Damn straight.
I just spoke to Elvis yesterday, and he said he's not going to record another song unless he gets more money.
"equivalent to irrationally hating Jews or black people, "
So...let me understand. You're saying that if think record companies are ripping people off, its the equivalent of the holocaust or slavery?
Let me guess... your daddy works for the record company?
I take it that nobody in music fairly land has any economists working for them? Price optimums in supply-demand curves, Econ 101, yes?
"In the drug industry, R&D costs are enormous"
This sounds appealing, but is wrong.
R&D costs are only 30% of the price of drugs. Another 60% goes into marketing.
So what exactly was your point?
"See it on iTunes with Tegan and Sara"
If this is the future of music, I'm jamming pointy sticks into my ears to save myself some pain.
Singles were produced PRIMARILY for juke boxes.
My best friend's dad owned an amusement machine company back in the 60's and the 70's, and they would buy hundreds of singles for jukeboxes.
When the jukebox died off, so did the single.
It had nothing to do with new options, it had to do with removal of older options.
They run specials once a month. I get all the CD's I want at $8 each shipped to my door.
i-WHAT?
Its a bad deal.
Oh wait. Its a good deal for the masses who have the attention span of a chimp.
I prefer buying CDs. But CDs can only be found in specific stores. Furthermore, they usually don't have the CDs I want, so then I have to special order them (from the store, or cdnow, etc). They take DAYS to arrive! What is this, 1980!?
Hey! The internet will save me! I can download music! Oh, but the popular site won't let me do things that any normal user wants to do, like transfer music between devices without interfering. What a pain in the ass.
But wait! I can download them with a P2P app! So long as I feel like babysitting downloads all day long. Or waiting a few days for them to come in. At that point I could've just ordered the freakin' CD.
Price has nothing to do with it, music is an inconvenient thing to have no matter how it's priced.
Lately I've just been playing shoutcast streams, but internet radio doesn't quite cut it when you know exactly what you want to listen to.
*sigh*
I'd probably be an allofmp3 fanatic since they offer a lot of different stuff without copy control restrictions, but their frontend is way too slow.
Won't capitalism please think of me?
What's new about this? I do not buy "popular" music and mostly buy from small labels (indy, dance, industrial) and from stuff I have seen live. Without any attempt to confuse them, music companies just keep releasing an unrelenting stream of bilge that makes me want to stick bamboo skewers through my ear-drums.
Listener: "hahaha!!! I shall punish you by throwing money at you until you are confused!!!"
Record co: "Woe is me! Hit me! I'v been really bad! Hit me!"
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
"this is buying"
No, its not. Its licensing.
If it was buying, you could sell it when you were done.
I'm not just being pedantic. A license should be a fraction of the cost of buying. If I buy a CD, I can rip it, but it in any format, sell it to my friends or anybody.
If I license it. I can play it on my iPod, on my iTunes or burn it to CD. But that's it. I'm not licensed to do anything more with it, and I can't resell it.
So if a CD costs $12, each song is worth $1. If I no longer have the right to sell it when I'm tired of it, the value goes down to about 1/10th that price.
But some idiots will spout "OHHH what a great deal. Thank you jesus for iTMS practically giving away music! Lah-dee-dah!"
"You can buy a used CD on half.com for $8-10, delivered to your goddamn door. That's uncompressed, un-DRMd audio, and the booklet is included, too"
I just bought 6 CD's on BMG Music last night for $45 shipped to my door.
They run a special once a month.
Plus as a result of my buying 30 albums at $8, I'm entitles to 10 free, plus $2.50/each for shipping. So I'm getting 40 CD's brand new for under $300.
Their selection is fantastic, but it crushes iTMS.
Its the best deal going.
Not a problem. Before I even read the rest of your post it occurred to me that I just form a co-op with about 50 other people of diverse tastes (including their teenaged star-obsessed kids), and we buy music for each other based on who gets the best deal.
That's where copy restriction and DRM come into play. You can only buy for you, I can only buy for me. Your tracks won't play on my devices and vice-versa. However I think the negative publicity from "differential pricing" would outweigh the money they'd make, so it's probably unlikely. It's much more likely that everything will just be *slightly* overpriced (like CD's now) so the profits would turn out about the same.
Freedom: "I won't!"
You're paying $0 per song, plus taking the small but not hugely small chance that you'll get caught and have to sell your car to pay the RIAA extortion fee. That's what the lawsuits are for.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Can we have some kind of a limit to the editorial content in these summaries? Often times they are either highly biased, or just idiotic:
there is division in the ranks of the music companies, but something to watch.
Division in the ranks would be an industry trend, and obviously something important to keep an eye on; interesting even.
So that sentence says "It is something interesting, but something interesting to watch."
Maybe it means some interesting things aren't worth watching, and this is. I dunno.
That episode where he does a skit about the internet, and the pay download music site, all calm like a library with a few quiet people. And then the free p2p sharing site? The sirens going off, tons of people running out with their arms full of stuff? Uhm yeah. Raise prices. If they weren't such greedy self-serving control freaks they'd have more customers. But no, this is capitalism. Whatever. I'm going to help my fellow humans, even if that means letting them duplicate a few various bits from me.
Let's compare, Leo.
If I'm Jewish or black, and you hate me on those grounds, "irrationality" barely begins to explain what's wrong with you.
If I'm an entertainment conglomerate habitually signing artists to deceptively one-sided contracts, playing Congress like a fiddle whenever I want copyright extended, using payola to ensure that radio plays my product to the exclusion of others, and so blatantly fixing prices that even my own bought-and-sold poltical representatives are finally unable to pretend otherwise, and you don't mind, but in fact go on to confuse criticism of my tricks with racism, then...
It seems like these companies are just trying to squeeze as much out of this time period as they can. In other words, soon it will be common to have a small device that's persistently connected to the network, playing streaming music from a server that has a terabyte library of songs for a flat monthly fee.
I, for one, welcome our new Napster overlords.
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
Many popular CD's are at K-Mart, Walmart, Best buy, etc...
Discounted already, and then on sale (like $2 off for buying 2 CDs) you can usually average about $0.20 ~ $0.80 a song anyway...
iTunes autoconverts CDs to MP3's and you don't have to worry about the DRM of the songs downloaded from iTunes.
A CD provides higher quality (160, 192, 256 kbps) files, better sounding than the 128 kbps files from iTunes.
So, you can still buy CD's - on sale - and you'll usually get better prices than iTunes' expensive $0.99 a song.
You guys -- by which I mean schmucks -- always seem to overlook the definitions in 101. But they're controlling, so like it or not, that's what applies.
(Though I'd be prepared to argue that processed sugar has drug-like qualities for many people living in the Western world...)
Especially for you brits (no disrespect). I was reading lately that you guys (generally, again nothing personal) consume more sugar per capita than anywhere else. Maybe that's just anecdotal, but I know where you're coming from regarding 'drug-like qualities'.
Anyhow, cheers.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
If I recorded a song played over the radio/webcast/at a concert, NEVER sold or redistributed it (let's ignore the whole peer-to-peer thing for a moment) does that count as 'theft'? After all, the radio broadcasters/webcasters/band still has the original copy so nothing has been 'stolen' right?
The Record labels are scared to death of iTunes, and they would kill it if they could.
The Labels depend on their pool of successful artists and big hits to make their money.
The technology is readily available for someone like a Madonna or Metallica to go jump in the studio, cut a single, and put it out for sale in a matter of hours. These groups have loyal followings that would eagerly purchase these newly cut singles for $0.99 USD by the hundreds of thousands or the millions.
No Label is required in this transaction. It scares them to death. As an "organism" that is in jeoprody of perishing, they are fighting back.
The only thing that has me wondering is why we are not seeing the major artists do this now!
I sit alone and watch the lights, on my PC for several nights. And ev'rything I want to load, I find it on the net, you know
You gave us all those boyband stars. Their CD price -- a total farce. You made 'em sing - which made us cry. We just want all those bands to die
RIAA
You'll just become some background noise, suing groups of girls and boys, who just don't know and just don't care, about your new idea of "fair"
You had your time, you've had the power. You're going to have your final hour
RIAA
All we hear is, RIAA bastards, RIAA sue you, RIAA wankers.
All we hear is, RIAA retards, RIAA blah blah
Peer to peer is new. RIAA no one now needs you!
We taped CDs - we dubbed the stars, off radio for hours and hours. Now we swap files amongst our peers, The tech just changes through the years
Let's hope you leave 'cause you're no friend. Like all good things they come to an end. Don't stick around, as we won't miss you. We're growing tired of all your bullshit
You had your time, you've had the power. You're going to have your final hour
RIAA
All we hear is, RIAA bastards, RIAA screw you, RIAA smacktards.
All we hear is, RIAA wankers, RIAA losers, RIAA ha ha.
All we hear is, RIAA retards, RIAA blah blah
Peer to Peer is new. RIAA, no one now needs you!
RIAA bastards, RIAA bastards, RIAA bastards
RIAA
You had your time you've had the power. You're going to have your final hour
RIAA
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Yeah - check out http://www.808records.com/
Libertas in infinitum
> There is something wrong, when my musican friend in malaysia can produce an album for under $10,000 while its almost impossible for a major label to produce it for less than $150,000. Yes there are ecomonic diffrences, but last i checked, it was not that great.
The music cartels owns most of the studios, so that leaves the artists paying for everything. Read about artists recouping their loans for more information.
> Record labels go for quanity, not quality. If they can get an artist to make an album with a couple hits but mostly filler, they can save other hits for other albums. Then they get consumers to pruchase all albums when they were only going to listen to a couple tracks.
This is called Bundling, and Bundling is very profitable, especially in a cartel. Want to pay for just a few TV channels? Can't, either pay for 5 with only 1 good and 4 sucks, or don't pay.
> Label will have to move from an album sales company, to a promotional/financing services company. If they dont, they will become insignificant. But on the other hand, if they still can keep getting musicans to sign stupid contracts and keep funding and create another revenue source by sueing pirates, they might be around longer than they should.
The music cartels are loan sharks and were for many decades. Again, read more on artists getting "paid" a million or two up front, but then they have to recoup the money to pay it all back with insane interest rates. Most "musicians" only see the glitter in their contracts, until it's too late.
Since the music cartels own majority of studios, where can the artists go? Moreover, the music cartels own most of the distribution networks, which include TV, radio, retail stores, etc. If you don't sign with them, your chances are very low. The music cartels create an expensive barrier to entry to keep "artists" to sign with them. Once again, most "musicians" see past their noses, when it's too late.
Non profit downloaders "piracy" is just another excuse to report lower profits, thus, pay less royalties. Before the internet, consumers were encouraged to swap tapes. The real "piracy" is people selling cheap counterfeits, and DRMs are meant for the consumers, not the determined. DRMs work on the clueless masses.
The only change should take place is the consumer. There's no way the music cartels would change without competition and consumers keep buying their products.
So don't buy it. There is plenty of good music from independant labels, and many smaller bands give their stuff away for free on the internet.
Don't those independent labels have to pay royalties to songwriters and their publishers?
Fair use is a defense against a civil violation. It's not an entitlement.
What about the opinion of the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft, that the fair use defense is one of the things that keeps copyright from violating the First Amendment?
We grant artists limited monopolies over their works in order to promote artistic creation.
How does granting a limited monopoly after a given artist is dead promote artistic creation?
I'm pretty sure that by "contracts", AC meant "contracts involving an exclusive commitment greater than one year".
Plus, if the CD is successful on its own
No CD is successful on its own; it needs some sort of record label (traditional or otherwise) to prop it up. Like any other venture capital firm, a label is nowhere near perfect at predicting which albums will be hits and which will be flops; part of the wholesale price of a hit album can be interpreted as the cost of insurance against losses due to flops.
In this day and age we do not need the RIAA. We (musicians and supporters) could create music, market it, distribute it and advertise tour dates via cheap internet resources.
Without the resources of a label, how would you organize paying royalties to the songwriters and the publishers who own copyright in the songs that your musicians record?
well either way, i have no sympathy for the record labels...they thought it was in their best interest to sign it to begin with, so now they should live with it. if they didn't like it they should have never signed an exclusive commitement. and even at $.99 i think itunes is overcharging.
the music industry is just trying to kill off legal downloads, because they figured out they don't make money from singles, they make all their money from albums that contain songs people don't want. and so increasing prices is merely a temporary bandaid, not a real solution to their problem. the real solution would be to actually start selling people what they really want.
It is technically, legally, and morally impossible to engage in theft by copying files at AllofMP3.
However, under some interpretations of Title 17, United States Code, it is technically and legally (if not morally) possible to engage in copyright infringement under United States law by copying files at AllofMP3. I hope you meant "copyright infringement != theft" rather than "allofmp3.com is unquestionably legit".
This isn't apropos of anything, but the price of drugs do, in fact, drop precipitously when the patents expire. Haven't you heard of the "brand vs. generic" thing?
Some prescription drugs never go generic because their manufacturer lobbies for them to be labeled unsafe just as the patent is about to expire. This happened with the antihistamine Seldane (terfenadine), which was obsoleted in favor of Allegra (fexofenadine) at about the same time that Allegra was first made available for sale.
Do you think professional audio equipment is free? Do you think talented recording engineers work for nothing? Of course recording studios deserve their money. They work for what they receive, just like you and I do.
They also "work for hire", meaning that they retain no share of the copyright and collect a flat fee rather than royalties per copy.
The RIAA is not in any way exclusive. It's merely an industry association made up of the largest record companies.
It's my understanding that only these largest record companies have the clout to negotiate with music publishers to get the rights to musical works for the label's artists to record. In fact, some of these record labels own music publishers.
As phones become media players, the ringtone can be anything you already have as an electronic file.
Until phone network providers start locking the phones so that they play only ringtones purchased from the network provider. I believe Verizon has already done something like this with "Get It Now!".
Coins aren't real money.
Try telling that to Monex. Though both coins and paper currency are fiat money, backed only by government debt, coins come closer to "real money" than paper ever will.
Cory Doctorow wrote: "What Mako is saying is that just because you bought the CD doesn't mean that you should expect to have the ability to listen to it on your MP3 player, and just because it plays on your MP3 player is no reason to expect it to run as a ringtone."
Except here, the music publishers have a point. Unlike a performance of a CD, which is likely to be either within a private residence, within a private automobile, or on headphones in public, a ringtone is meant to play in public. The music publishers like to charge extra for the privilege to perform their musical works publicly, which copyright law already handles separately in 17 USC 106.
CD music costs a lot of money to produce, but it doesn't cost 100th as much as a major movie (probably less than 1000th).
Unlike recorded music, movies have an extra source of revenue, namely theatrical exhibition. Many also come out on video at "rental price" (roughly 100 USD or more per copy) before the sell-through release date.
Why are people paying so much for so little?
Apparently, people value entertainment that can be played in the background whilst doing other things (recorded music) more than entertainment that requires the full attention (DVD movies).
See, for example: Airlines and hotels routinely charge seventeen rates for service which is objectively identical at the same day (for example, rooms 4501 and 4503 which are the same in every way might be getting $120 and $70 a night depending on how much the hotel thinks they can get from that customer -- hint, don't look like you're a business traveller). Use of coupons allows price-discrimination between low-income and high-income shoppers -- high-income shoppers choose not to clip coupons, which is a time-consuming activity where you essentially value your time at $8 an hour or so. Mail order companies routinely sell exactly the same product to different customers at different prices. Its legal and widely known in the industry, although of course we don't advertise this fact to the people who are being charged more (we certainly do to the people who are being charged less!) For example, if you are a customer of a hypothetical Paperclips Inc, and you buy a 12-pack of hypothetical CIB Pens in one of their brick and mortar stores, you pay approximately $2. If you buy it from their website, $1.80. If you buy it from a particular subsidiary (same pen, same fulfillment center, different name on the shipping carton), $1.65. If you buy it from that subsidiary's educational catalog (we only mail it to schools -- same pen, same fulfillment center, same name on the carton, different item number in your order sheet but hashes to same item number in our database), $1.50. If you buy it from their Summer Blowout Special flyer, $1.55. If you are the Big City Public Schools, $1.20 because otherwise one of Paperclip's competitors would have outbid them. Oh, sure, you CAN sue -- good luck trying to find a lawyer to take the case, because it will be laughed out of court.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Problem is that most albums do not recoup production and promotion costs.
I call bull. The movie industry has the exact same sob story as the record industry, probably for the exact same reason: so they can avoid paying royalties.
I call bull. The movie industry has the exact same sob story as the record industry
You disclose a better method to correctly predict flops vs. hits, and I'll believe you.