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Would You Pay 5 Cents For a Song?
irikar writes "An academic at McGill University has a simple plan to stop the plague of unauthorized music downloads on the Internet. But it entails changing the entire music industry as we know it, and Apple Computers, which may have the power to make the change, is listening."
Yet, Pearlman went further. He said that since this plan puts the onus on a massive Internet presence to distribute all the music in the world, why not have such computer companies as Apple and such major Internet companies as Yahoo simply buy up the world's four major record labels? Pearlman was careful to add, though, that he doesn't see his plan killing off demand for CDs.
.05/download we could make 10x as much if we sell them for .50/download and 20x as much if we sell them for .99/download.
And somehow this isn't a pie-in-the-sky idea? Oh give me a break! So what? Apple, Yahoo, Google, Foo buy up the companies and what happens? Their bean-counters decide that well if we can make billions selling songs for
Pearlman said that Pfohl misunderstood the idea. Then again, another record-industry type, casually speaking to Pearlman after the talk, had perhaps the most succinct counter suggestion. Why not charge 10 cents, instead of 5, and double the revenue?
Thank you so very much for proving my point.
It would also obliterate musicians' choices on how their music could be sold by conscripting them into a 5-cents-a-song system. And it would destroy record companies' incentive to invest in new acts, Pfohl said.
Somehow I doubt that most of the musicians that are under the current cartel's contracts care how their music is distributed as long as they get paid. Those that don't give a shit already allow their music to be distributed for free on the Internet.
Let's stop with the whining and bitching about the artists you sleazy fuckers and start talking from your own business perspective. Everyone and their grandmothers know that you don't give one iota of a shit about the musicians unless they are filling your ever greedier pockets with money that you can throw at more shitty musicians and sympathetic lawmakers that will kowtow to your bullshit. Someday you will lose but I'm certain that this plan won't do it to you...
It amazes me that no one looks at the successful bands that have been distributing their music for free for years and says, "hmm, why is this still working for them and we are continuing to put out class acts like Ashlee Lipsynchson and we are hemorrhaging money?"
Some of the more recent big bands that allow their music to be distributed include Wilco and Los Lonely Boys. Wilco won the best alternative album this year. Hmm and yet they allow me to download their shows. Guess what RIAA? I would buy their album ANY DAY over someone like Ashlee who lip synchs her live crap and refuses to let us hear it for nothing. I mean, it's not even her doing anything why shouldn't it be free?
Just a FYI Apple, no matter how cheap something is it is NEVER as cheap as free. Free will always win out.
Who will play me 5c to listen to the Crap that in the charts now...
Apple might be listening, but I bet you that the RIAA is not.
When the record companies sell what i want to hear. everything i pulled off of napster back in the day was 80's rock and metal stuff that has been discontinued. For god sake guys, put your back catalogues on line, (or even press a cd or two on demand) and then we'll talk. :(
In addition, a 1 per cent sales tax would be placed on Internet services and new computers -- two industries that many argue have profited enormously from rampant file-sharing, but haven't had to compensate artists.
This is the same scheme that we have today on blank CDs and the like and it is total BS to apply it to computers. I have no idea why anyone outside the entertainment business thinks that it's OK to put a music-stealing tax on every computer, or DRM on every computer when not every computer is even considered for such use. What about the company that buys 10,000 computers per year and because some 12 year old is "stealing" music they have to pay an additional tax and further have to have their computers crippled with DRM?
I'm a big tall mofo.
Apple should simply be charging 5 cents instead of 99 cents a song, he said.
The issue is not what Apple is charging, but what the record companies are charging Apple. As I understand it, Apple Computer Inc. is making essentially nothing on the sale of each song, but rather are using song sales to drive sales of iPod and thus Macintosh computers and Apple software. I am sure that Apple would be more than happy to participate in a 5 cents/song pricing scheme, but it is the record industry that is going to be the hard ones to convince. I do not understand how the recording industry can say it would destroy record companies' incentive to invest in new acts when the potential for much greater revenues can be had with increased volume and lower prices. What they are missing is that new music is what is going to be transiently valuable, but that pre-existing libraries of music are a commodity and should economically be treated as such according to all economic theories I am aware of. This means low prices and high volume.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
"Just a FYI Apple, no matter how cheap something is it is NEVER as cheap as free. Free will always win out."
Until there's nothing left to be free. Then free loses badly.
No, no and fucking no! I refuse to finance any industry which I don't have anything to do with.
When I buy computers for my business, I don't buy them for anything music-related, so I see NO reason to pay a tax, or levy or whatever the fuck they want to call it to support any music-related thing.
I'm tired of corporations and government thinking society exists for the sole purpose of ensure their profit.
AC comments get piped to
No thanks.
...just my 2 gil.
To a certain extent, he's somewhat right. It would substantially lower the bar and you'd have far more impulse buys (and drunk song-buying binges wouldn't hurt as much. Fear the drunken one-click shopping spree!)
However, I am not such a big fan of his idea of taxing PCs. However, the last line of the article is THE MOST INFORMATIVE OF ALL:
These guys don't even get *OLD ESTABLISHED CONCEPTS* let alone "new fangled concepts." Pearlman's response is that if you double the price, you cut the sales by more than half, so you actually DECREASE your revenue.
They just don't get it. [I'm not saying Pearlman is necessarily right with the
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
Mr. Pearlman seems to understand economics pretty well, but not IT. Here's the breakdown of an ITunes purchase of $0.99:
Label(s): $0.55
Apple: $0.34
Artist(s): $0.10
Now, let's chop that down to $0.05 instead of $0.99. Let's break it down this way:
Label: $0.03
Apple: $0.02
Artist: $0.1
So, when a customer goes to ITunes, they'll surf through several (large)-database-driven webpages to find the songs they want. They'll make a purchase against their already-paid-for credit through ITunes (of probably $10 increments), then download the 5MB song.
So, Apple now has to run power-hungry servers with a large staff of IT guys making sure they're patched and running correctly. They gotta hit customers' credit cards and give probably 5-10% back to the credit card company.
All of this... for $0.02 per song?!?
His model makes sense, but maybe for $0.25 per song... there's no chance Apple would make money by giving up that much bandwidth.
just my $0.02.
McGill academic has a plan to end file swapping and save the music industry
File swapping isn't just music.
it's movies, TV series, software and ebooks too...
For a DRM-free, lossless, flawless copy of a song? Absolutely! I'd buy songs by the boatload. 100 songs of my choice for $5? Score!
PLEASE. While I agree that several patents are whacko and I am a big advocate of Open Source, music and movie copyrights MAKE sense. After all, people actually work making the movies (it looks like many Slasdotters don't) and they need to sustain themselves. I wouldn't waste my time watching "free as in freedom" movies
If one can decide on several encoding formats (including lossless formats like FLAC), *and* one can also listen to it as many times as one wishes, I'm in!
"...Pearlman was careful to add, though, that he doesn't see his plan killing off demand for CDs."
*BLANK* CDs maybe.
i mean $.05 x 13 songs = $.65
factor in $.25 for a blank CD and voila, that's still under a dollar. Unless they plan on *severely* reducing the price of retail CDs, I don't quite see that working out.
This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
Here is a site that tries to give more information on our favorable laws
The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Much like the scheme presented in the article, please remember that the "free" file sharing networks requires a broad base of participants to make them run. The utility of the "free" networks improves or deteriorates based on the numbers of people engaged in the activity of sharing freely:
even at US$.99, I would bet there has been an affect on the quality/quantity/availability of music on the "free" sharing networks. Presumably, that would deteriorate further if "legitimate" online services appealed to an even broader audience (as some or all of that broader audience would likely participate less in the "free" networks).
That's the best part. At 5 cents DRM is meaningless. Why bother copy protecting something that no one is stealing?
oooh the left wing!
yuck!
socialism! oh my god! that's like one shade away from Red isn't it!
you are a tool.
Look, when I download something online, it is out of convenience more than simply because it is free. If you ask me, the music and movie industries have made their products inferior to that of the so-called "pirates". That is, if I purchase a movie from the store I have much less freedom with it than if I downloaded the same film via bittorrent. I'm not trying to rip anyone off. I have a subscription to netflix, I purchase DVDs and CDs regularly. I will buy music and movies because I feel bad not supporting artists. However, if I want something that is gonna play on a handheld media player, or keep me from having to change disks repeatedly and skip through advertisements, I would much prefer a "pirate version" to a legit copy. At this point, I think 99 cents is a bit much for a per-track fee. 5 cents certainly sounds reasonable. Compare 99 cents for a DRM protected copy that is still restricted to 0 cents for a copy that I can play whenever I want on any device. Which would you choose???
Again, the music an movie industries are peddling inferior products compared to that of pirates, that is why they are losing this battle.
5) High fidelity sound - iTunes only has songs encoded with lossy codecs
6) No DRM - can rip a CD to a format that is sure to work 10 computers later
7) Selection - iTunes doesn't have 95% of the bands I'm interested in
8) Still the same old RIAA model - why not let indie bands post their own music and get a 50-70% cut instead of having to go through a major label (maybe they already do this and I haven't heard about it?)
9) Liner notes, lyrics - offer full resolution liner notes and lyrics - and how about even setting the lyrics up to scroll by karaoke style as the music plays on an ipod
however, if i could download 15 songs for only $0.75, so why should i ever buy a CD again?
;)
Personally, I'd rather spend $12.99 on a CD I can play anywhere I take it than spend 75 cents on songs that are DRM'd and can only be played on my computer or iPod.
But that's just my 2 cents -- there ya go, and don't blow it all on music, ok?
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
Illegal downloads of music is mainly there for us to have music 'on demand' in our preference as we like to hear it. The fact of the matter is, that unless the music industry can start charging us say, $10 a month for unlimited downloads, free music will always win out.
The $.99 they charge now is pretty much the equivalent of a CD. I can go buy a CD with cover art and all for $12 bucks... if there are 15 tracks on it (some of the BETTER bands have that many), you win out by BUYING THE CD!!
That's why I subscribe to Yahoo's Launchcast service. I can listen to what I want, skip songs, and it's cheap ($35 a year). It learns my preferences and finds me new music.
If they could roll that into portalble devices as well as internet service (with better quality than Launch provides..) it would be a killer service.
Besides, artists don't make money from record sales unless they suck (ala nSync or Backdoor Boys), it's from prolonged touring.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Yes really. I'm Deaf, why should I have to pay extra for my computer gear to finance other people's music habits?
Well, since everyone is bitching about the CherryOS code getting "stolen" and their rights "violated," I guess Slashdot has now taken the position that P2P piracy is wrong. Suddenly, they see what it's like when someone's material is copyright infringed, and they don't like it. They're even talking about suing them...just like the RIAA does with individual infringers.
So I guess the answer is yes, Slashdotters would pay five cents for a song rather than pirate music. Unless they are either hypocrites, or extremely cheap. But it seems suddenly Slashdotters' positions have changed overnight on copyright infringement, all because instead of a faceless corporation that has contracts with starving artists who don't get paid when you rip off their music, it's some GPL project.
The hypocrisy here is sickening. Posting anon because I have a feeling this could get modded down for speaking out...but I just had to speak my mind. Thanks.
The subject line is facetious; I listed to a couple of tracks and they sounded pretty good. If you were playing my local club I wouldn't suddenly feel compelled to go outside for a smoke.
But I wouldn't call the marketing machine a BFD. It's the difference between you doing this for kicks on evenings and weekends and becoming a multi-zillionaire, making videos, playing stadiums, getting a heroin habit, and eventually your own biography on E!.
Seriously, it's a matter of to-each-his-own. You wanna make music, go for it. You don't care about the RIAA, and they don't give a rat's ass about you. But it appears that an awful lot of people listen to the marketing, and buy the music. They get rich; you get to have a day job.
Yeah, most of 'em lose. I'm in the same boat: I'm a part-time actor and I don't want to participate in the Hollywood machine that could make me famous and give me all the parts I want (.0001%) or suck my soul and leave me waiting tables (99.9999%). But Vin Diesel gets to work with Judi Dench and I played a house with 4 people the other night.
So don't dis the marketing machine. It's not that they'll come down on you. They'll do worse: they'll ignore you. If you like it that way, more power to ya.
Me? I like club music in clubs. No matter how good a band is it doesn't have any energy on a stereo, no matter how much you spend on it. So if you make it to Nation in DC, I'll see ya. If not, keep on it.
I would pay the 5 cents per song, but I would not pay a 1 percent tax on internet services or computers. Although drastically reducing the price of a product usually does not make sense, it does in this case. I'm sure the music industry would make a lot more money than they are now... then they can sue people for $150,000 because they illegally downloaded $50 in music.
Although computers are used to illegaly download music doesn't mean that we need to tax them to help offset the loss to the music industry. By this reasoning, we should be charging a sales tax on vehicles because they may be used in robberies as a getaway car and send all the proceeds to banks. We should also tax copiers because they may be used to duplicate books.
We really do not need any taxes like this. The music industry does not need an automatic subsidy. What they need is a additude adjustment.
The point is that the RIAA aren't a monopoly any more. They are competing with "free" downloads.
The other points are that "free" downloads are not free. You need to spend time searching for songs, wading through the crap, learning new tools as the RIAA fight the old ones, and there is a risk of getting caught, etc.
The final point of the article is that legal music distributors can regain the advantage if they offer a cheap, quality service as a competition to the eDonkeys of the world.
Hence there is competition going on, and as long as the RIAA doesn't understand it at that level, the situation will not improve for them.
I don't know what the giants like Google and Apple pay for bandwidth, but assume it's way better than what you and I pay, and maybe it's 50 cents a gig. OK, a song is 50 megs ... do the math and just letting someone download it costs the company 5 cents. Bang goes your 5 cent model.
Assume their bandwith costs are half that. You're still paying out half your revenue before even starting to cover any of your other costs. Insane.
Now, if you built the model right into a peer-to-peer sharing network that would still collect the cash, you'd spread the cost of downloads onto a diffuse group of users/clients, and therefore maybe be a little more do-able. But then, of course, you introduce all kinds of new issues with security, payment, etc. etc.
Again, the model is not crazy. The price is.
John Koetsier
http://gilgamesh.ca/
I refuse to pay ROYALTIES on HARDWARE and INTERNET SERVICE simply because the equipment is capable of rendering music and movies. It's as silly as being forced to buy "music" branded CD-R media to run in a dedicated audio CD recorder simply because the machine is capable of recording something that I may not have original rights to.
We should be turning our attention instead to finding ways to reverse the legislative abuses placed by the industry. The greater issue is how the Industry is abusing society with unreasonable copyright and distribution dominance.
Not only are theoretical and applied research being destroyed in the name of profit, but also our creativity in art. This is not a legacy that will perpetuate society over the long term.
These laws are, quite simply unsustainable.
Well, I don't know about you, but my perception is that the music industry is way over to the right of the "sweet spot" on the sales-against-price graph. I hardly ever buy CDs these days, because I hardly ever see them for a price I'm willing to pay.
When Mute Records released a sizeable chunk of their back-catalog for under $10, I sent in a $150 order--as opposed to a $0 order while the prices were $15 and up.
As I wrote to a record store owner who was wondering how he could stay in business: I could easily put together a list of ten CDs I'd buy tomorrow if they were $10 or less. But they're not, so I spend $0 and wait for a sale.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Therefore, there's only one option open to me.
Do without?
From TFA: "In addition, a 1 per cent sales tax would be placed on Internet services and new computers"
I don't care about downloaded music. I don't bother with it. I shouldn't have to pay a sales tax to the RIAA for product I am not using. My company has hundreds of computers and CERTAINLY shouldn't have to pay the F*ing music industry for their workstations!
Can you imagine telling Citibank, Exxon, Chase, IBM, etc. they have to pay the RIAA a tax for every desk?!
This is the stupidest idea since... well since paying a tax on every blank CD sold.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Hi. I'm a songwriter and recording artist.
/hard enough to make a living already
Do I still get my 6 cents every time my song is played commercially? Since this 5 cent price applies to "private" downloads, then I'm guessing it's probably just regular sales royalties that are "affected" (and by that I mean "wiped out").
Anybody know?
Pearlman is on to something. Though, his plan will effectively create a monopoly, a single system for distribution of music. He even proposes that the major music labels should be bought by computer manufacturers.
I believe I have a better plan. It is a simple add-on to the Creative Commons NC-license which says something like: "You may use this commercially if you pay X % in royalties to the copyright holder trough the Open Music Service". The Open Music Service collects royalties worldwide and gives it to the copyright owners.
The goal is that anyone may start their own online music store and sell music at whatever price they seem like (royalties always beeing in percentages). A completly free market for music distribution in which the artists gets paid. Likewise, artists would simply have to make a contract with the Open Music Service and "click" you are distributed world wide.
Q: Why would people pay for music they may download for free? (AKA "competing with free")
A: Because it is more convient to go to a site dedicated to music you like and pay 5 cents for a download than to search trough the p2p networks. The dedicated site may even help you find new music you like, something the p2p networks can't do on their own.
I also believe this to be more realistic than Pearlmans suggestion as you don't need the major labels to start with. Just get the self-distributing artists and some indie labels to sign on (they would definetly get more income with this system) and you have an established alternative.
That's the barebones. As I've been working on this idea for over a year, there is of course more.
Actually, I've been meaning to start a company based on the idea, but haven't gotten very far. If you want to get involved, please drop me a line.
Evolution is just a scientific theory. Creationism is not.
And there are even more people that will refuse any price, no matter how low.
People who download music now are used to getting it for nothing. How do you propose to convince someone to pay for something that they are used to getting for free?
After downloading music for the past 8 years, I find it a much better way to get my music, & apparently most of the world seems to think so too.
.com revolution.
The RIAA lost its Monopoly of its industry, they spend a good 4 years writing off music downloads saying it wouldn't work because not one of the idiots thought about inventing a new buisness model to adapt to the changing technology, their current buisness model didn't fit so they decided to write it off.
They were so blind in doing so I don't understand for how much those guys must pay their strategic planners they completley failed to miss the
Move ahead to now & they are still trying to work it out, their own stupidity in trying to maintain a monopoly they no longer have is effecting their music sales, not Illegal downloads.
People no longer care about particular songs, music is the new fast food, u listen to it, get bored of it, chuck it out & get something new. WHen will the RIAA realise that, if they make songs 5c each people would dowload many, constantly, thats what the P2P netoworks do, no one is downloading music going "hehe sucked into the RIAA", they are downlading it because its a service that gives them what they need.
The IPod is proving that theory with people not concerned about what songs they put on there just as long as they can fill it up & with the IPpod shuffle now out playing completley random tracks it just show's that people don't really care what they listen too, they just want a lot of music.
The RIAA needs to wake up to themselves, they have lost the battle, its time to accept defeat & start re-inventing themselves