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iTunes Might Lose Labels
Dreamwalkerofyore writes "According to the New York Times, the iTunes music store might have to change its 99 cents per song policy or risk losing a huge amount of songs due to recent disputes with record companies, who demand an increase in the cost. From the article: 'If [Mr. Jobs] loses, the one-price model that iTunes has adopted 99 cents to download any song could be replaced with a more complex structure that prices songs by popularity. A hot new single, for example, could sell for $1.49, while a golden oldie could go for substantially less than 99 cents.'"
good idea!
might change that 'it's new - it must be good' thingy people have in their heads..
Then I might actually consider buying music, given that I rarely buy "new" or "popular" music.
It was working so well, it was about time they fucked it up.
Great way for the labels and Apple to discourage people from using legal methods for downloading music.
If they want to make me use iTunes, they'll have to price each song at less than 0 cents...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Queue the endless whining about how songs should cost 10 cents.
Life in Orange County
But come on record lables, get itunes popular so people are addicted then when people are hooked change the prices. dont do it yet! (even though most people are hooked)
keanmarine.com
Apple goes out of its way and makes a system so that the record industry CAN profit from online media, and then they whine their not making enough! shoulda stuck with P2P, not like they're ever happy.
I'm surprised Apple was able to keep the fixed price as long as they did. I wonder if forced, if they will seek to make it easier for independant artists to have their music sold through the store (most likely at a higher percentage for google), in an attempt to offer more content for a lower price.
Do they already support independant artists (and I mean more then a token amount)? If so, then that's great. I hadn't heard.
go independent artists all the way. we don't need no stinkin RIAA.
It's just further proof of the greed of the record industry.
Making money is not good enough. To be successful, you have to make MORE money. It's economics 101.
Well, then the music industry just lost another customer... Again. I only came back to buying music because they made it affordable to me and I could get songs I wanted one at a time instead of on a cd where there might only be 1 good song I liked.
I don't bame apple for this, the music industry is a bunch of money hungry assholes. I'll keep buying apple products, I love my ipod and i love my powerbook.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
I expect that if this goes through there will be few if any songs that go down in price.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The 99 cents per song you already pay is a bit much, especially considering there is NO physical packaging, shipping costs, storefronts with employees and power bills, ad infinitum.
I really LIKE iTunes, and I *KNOW* how to steal music if I want to. I really LIKE the fact that I can buy a specific song for a pittance on a whim instead of hoping someone will upload it to the Usenet.
It's not that $1.49 is too much, but it just shows that they will try to reach a price that people will accept, however grudgingly. But the $1 mark is a psychological barrier; once they reach that, people will start to think, "Is this song worth $1.49?" and might not buy it after all.
In any case, good luck to 'em. I don't buy any new stuff anyway. Most of it is crap pushed by the payola artists.
Useless opinions, worthless observations, and more!
Like it costs so much to record a song in this day of digital recording. 99 cents is plenty.
The record labels pretty much killed CDs by charging 20 bucks each for them, now they'll kill this outlet as well.
1. Sign a busty, untalented ethnic pop diva at your record company
2. Pay radio stations around the country hoards of money to play her phony 'hits'
3. Declare 'hits' too popular for existing iTunes pricing structure
4. Profit!
The only way to sell a song online if you are a musician and want to have DRM is on iTunes.
You can't sell it any other way, it's true that there are freely usable DRM formats that are supported by every portable player other than iPod. Unfortunately, iPod has 90%+ of the market share, and for DRM it only supports Fairplay.
Sorry that people don't realize it, but independent musicians are screwed because they cant sell protected songs for the price they want.
But whatever, people will never ever see anything wrong in anything Apple does.
Even Microsoft's DRM format is more open than Apple's!
This news reads (translated from the original RIAA BS) "Allofmp3.com will be adding new servers and registering new bank accounts to deal with the massively increased demand".
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
I'm all for it -- most "hot new singles" suck. I like iTunes chiefly as a way to get hard-to-find stuff. (Incidentally, that was the main reason I used "free" music sites and programs)
I'm also all for experimenting to find a good price point. "Simple and uniform pricing" is only good if you actually have the right price. 99c a song is still way overpriced for most of the catalog, and I think they'll find that they'd make more money around 75c or 50c than they do now. With classical music, this is particularly the case -- there are umpteen different recordings of the same piece, and the current price is somewhat prohibitive to getting multiple versions to compare.
(And why do I get the feeling Lack made a proctologist joke?)
Maybe the labels will blame gas prices....
Add me to the ranks of people who are no doubt turned off from using the iTunes music store because of this. I've been considering it for a long time, but if they're going to be increasing prices for new songs, count me out. I don't listen to much "popular" music anyway, but on the ocassion that I do want a new song, I'm not going to pay a dollar and a half for it.
Looks like I'll be sticking for P2P. And, despite what the RIAA says, I tend to buy the album if I really like it.
I would like to see an automatic pricing system where the song price may range from 10c to $2 and the price fluxates automatically according to the number of buyers. A "little" like the stock exchange, but with caps on the bottom/top prices.
That way, the really popular songs (as decided by the users themselves) would inflate in price and the more obscure songs will lower in price, which could give them more exposure which may then raise the price back up.
This could work well if Apple would expose the system used to calculate the pricing and the stats for each track downloaded. It would make things interesting.
Let free-market rule!
Zoom Player Lead Dev.
Of course, this could be their goal: to make iTunes less profitable and drive them out of business, then swoop in and offer a different service... Or maybe they want to make iTunes less profitible in order to drive music consumers back to purcashing CDs... ??? </conspiracy_theory>
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
If you live in Britain, iTunes songs cost 79p, or just over $1.42 at today's exchange rate.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Let them do it. Sites like AllOfMp3.com will just get more business (which appears to be totally legal). Why would anyone buy a crappy compressed song for $1.50? At that price it costs as much (or more!) as a regular CD with artwork and no compression!
I'm still waiting for the day when the general population knows about sites like AllOfMp3, where you can download an entire album in just about every popular format for around a dollar. You can even preview an entire album before purchasing, and the selection is pretty decent. Not as good as iTunes, but probably enough to satisfy a good chuck of iTMS users.
And given all this, the record companies want to make themselves look worse? Hilarious! Let them!
I've got my own "one-price" model. And it's considerably less than $0.99. And I don't have to worry about DRM.
I feel sorry for the poor hip hop stars. Do you have any idea how much it costs to insure a Ferrari?
If this new policy is adopted, expect to see sales drop or at least level-off while piracy increases. Up until this point it has been a fair deal for FairPlay, and if these record companies demand more money for doing absolutely nothing but allowing Apple to sell the products and do all of the heavy lifting for them (and barely break even on it as Apple does with the iTunes store) they really are out of touch with reality.
They have found the sweet spot in the market and simply collect the checks. But the corprate mantra of constantly growing profits has taken over. Which is not a bad thing, but it should have manifested itself in the recruitment of new musicians, not the raising of prices for the hell of it. That of course, would take effort, and when you make more money off of an album than the artist does - after you have merely loaned them the money to make their next album - you get used to screwing people over as much as you can.
If banks worked like the music industry, you would pay 90% of your paycheck to whatever bank gave you a student loan 20 years ago - 15 years after they were paid off.
Of all the things to whine about, you chose that! It's ridiculous, since it makes logical sense! Yes, I realize that "it's" is incorrect in this case, but it's not a terrible mistake, since for normal nouns, you just toss on an "'s" to make it possessive.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Music executive: "Hey, we're making a ton of cash money without any distribution or production costs. In fact, we don't really do anything at all, and get rich. I know, LET'S SCREW THAT UP."
--- witty signature
Recording industry greed yet again threatens the viability of a successful distribution model.
Yawn. The only thing that's changed is the distribution model.
I hope Jobs tells them to stick it where the sun don't shine. The iPod army he's been building for the last few years isn't just going to throw away its iPods and replace them with players that can handle Windows Media DRM'd music-- those people will just go back to p2p to get what they want.
The people have spoken, and they're not going to put up with price gouging anymore. If they won't let us buy it for cheap, we'll just take it for free and without compunction.
Money gouging low life. Geez , I might as well pirate. I going to download my copy of limewire. Give them hell, Steve
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Not the biggest lover of Apple (the company and Jobs, not the products). But I really thought they did some good things with the ITunes store. WTF is wrong with the music lables, they have an effective distribution system, that works today better then their own POS services they tried, and they are just trying to kill it. It's not like they aren't making a killing on it right now.
A variable pricing model would be fine with me. If iTunes were to include more indies and let each artist set their price, they we would end up with a dynamic model.
It seems to me that the primary problem with the music industry is the history of price fixing.
I think most capitalist economies are dominated with companies that subscribe to this business model. Of course, with the global marketplace it's not very easy to say where our economy stops and another country's economy starts.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I can't figure out how the music industry alliance stays around. How is it that you can go to a discount retailer, and a soundtrack to a older movie costs twice as much as the movie itself? It's like that thing in Japan where artists bypassed their label to get on iTunes store because their labels were holding out for more money.. If an American band tried to do that they'd be drowned in legal action and such. 10,000 sales at .99 is more money than 4,000 at $1.49, certainly more than 10,000 at $.00 if folks give up on the whole legal download concept due to costs..
This is absolutely true. They already know that people are willing to pay $.99 for any old song.
If a cd has a average of 12 songs and the cd proce is 20-25 dollars we can count with a price per song of 1.6 - 2 dollars per song. Given the phisical media costs, the publicity, the distribution and so on they still can make a high profit using this format.
Why they can't leave with a 99 cents per song policy if the costs are simply 0 (well, they have to license the MP3 format to the Fraunhofer if they use this format. The quality of these files IS ALWAYS lower then the phisical medium, so
What tha fuck they want? More money and even less cost? No wonder P2P networks get more and more people downloading music. I could expect this to be be a good thing if not so popular artists where selling music for less then 99 cents. But the music industry is a hungry dog and i don't bet a hungry dog will sit in front of a tasty stake without taking a bite!!!
At least half of the songs that I have purchased on the iTunes music store have been old songs - my typical use case is that something happens during the day to remind me of some old song I used to love - then later I take a minute to buy it for 99 cents; paying less than 99 cents would also work well for me :-)
Ok, we're talking about cost.
What about value?
Lossy audio is not worth 99 cents, even if you own an ipod. Its only there to sell ipods to people who could tell the difference because they are oblivious to audio compression schemes, and of course make it a conveniant way to add to your ipod library, its not there to actually sell music.
.. it may push people back to p2p. Hell, 99p or cents a song is still too much for me, it would have to be 20p to satsify my cheap ass.
Phfft!
Why does every corporaton on the planet need to kill the golden goose when its found?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They're bluffing to get a bigger slice of people's money. These are the kinds of idiots that are too greedy to make money.
However they're bluffing with Apple and everyone knows they've got the lower hand.
Idiots are kind of cute, like watching a kid learning to walk.
- -- Truth addict for life.
It doesn't make sense to charge $.99 for John Cage's completely silent piece. Apple is making a step in the right direction.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
or other WMA based companies?
I think the Record companies are trying to torpedo Apple so that tehy can use the WMA stuff which is highly unpopular despite Windows dominance.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I think the recording industry is finding that people are buying 1 or 2 songs from a given album, and paying 2 bucks for it. This contrasts with the $20 people used to pay for CDs. Instead of fixing the music so that albums are cohesive and compelling (compare Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to today's "albums"), they think that they can skirt the basic laws of supply and demand.
While the submitter gave a very negative spin to this, I actually see it as a good thing.
Popular songs sell for higher prices, generating more revenue to the ones making and distributing them. Maybe this will encourage bands to create more songs that people actually like.
Less popular songs will actually be a lot cheaper. Many of my friends don't really care how new the music that they listen to is. They'll just as happily listen to a song from the 1960s as to one that's just out, if it suits their tastes. With the masses probably still going for the newer songs, my friends would probably be getting their old songs for a lot less then they're paying now.
Finally, some people are obsessed with the idea that 99 cents is all they want to pay for a song. These people will be driven off iTunes and into piracy. This way, the labels can witness the effect of price on sales in action, and this time, it will be crystal clear that their pricing policy is the cause of it.
Or, if an exodus of buyers doesn't happen, that clearly demonstrates that people _are_ willing to pony up what the labels ask for the music, and the people who engage in piracy wouldn't buy the music at any price, despite many of them screaming that it's all because the RIAA charges too much.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Dear Slashdot,
Please help us think of ways to blame this on piracy. We're really stuck on this one!
Sincerely,
The RIAA
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
Isn't this the same music industry that earlier this week said that Apple iTMS was expensive and all that?
... and most of the decent stuff to be at the higher end of the price scale.
Quite why they want to destroy the most popular source of revenue online (because people won't move from iTMS once they are used to it, they simply won't buy the music that isn't available).
iPod users are increasing by 6m every quarter at the moment. A music label would be retarded to not want to be on iTMS, even if only 1 in 10 iPod owners ever buys something from it, that's 2.4m new potential customers every year. Better than other online stores, where the potential is what? 200k new potential customers every year?
The music industry simply wants to get more money out of the consumer. On the other hand some music simply isn't worth 99p a track, and I can understand that the latest, just released, music should be higher priced. Still, I imagine that Apple will have to half-acquiesce - expect tracks to be 79p to $1.29 in the future on there
Me? I'll keep on buying good music online or in Fopp for between £3 and £7 an album, and actually getting the CD which I can own for life. No losing music to a hard drive crash, no limitations on the duration I can listen to it to (god, those services are doing *so* good, lol), no DRM, no lossy compression until I rip it to my media drive at the quality *I* want.
With the rising price of gasoline, music companies must charge more for their products in order to make up for increased shipping costs.
Oh, wait. Nevermind. Yeah, they're just jerks.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Hilary Rosen, the former chairwoman of the Recording Industry Association of America, agrees on that point [about Apple supporting WMA, I guess]. "If Apple opened up their standards, they would sell more, not less,"
Isn't that "open it up to sell more" argument the one poor Ms. Rosen went down in flames fighting against?
I'm not surprised that they are doing this. If you think about it, 500 million sales == $500 million (this is total sales). As far as I know, that is pretty much small potatoes in this industry. To put this in perspective, Apple had $3.5 billion in revenue for the 2nd quarter of 2005 alone. By rough estimate probably less than $100 million of that is from iTunes. They are going to find ways to bring that number higher. The smart way to do this is to fit a market pricing model, price each piece of music to maximize revenue. If you like B. Spears or whatever (I don't) you will pay more for your music.
Going to post this one more time...
1. Take the url to the NY Times article and do a google search for it
2. Click on the link next to "If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link:"
3. Enjoy
My guess is that this works because NY Times lets you view stories from google news without logging in.
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
I hope Apple tells them to take a hike. They are charging more than enough already, but of course not enough for the greedy bastards at the labels. I am sure that the extra $$$ won't be going into the pockets of the artists, that is for damn sure.
It will only be a matter of time before the labels bury themselves, and I say good riddance.
Eh, who am I kidding, Apple will give in, and stupid people will keep paying ridiculous prices for music.
Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. -Theodor Adorno
I won't play more than $0.99 for a song. Yes, buying online is easier than going to the record store and being able to buy only the tracks you want is a plus. That being said, I won't pay more than $0.99 for a song, period. iTunes completely got me off P2P cause for $0.99, IMHO it's worth it. You get the song you want, it's high enough quality for me and the price is right. But there is just something about that dollar berrier in my mind. Any more than $0.99 and P2P starts looking like an option again. Either that or I'll just stop listening to new music alltogather. Most of the stuff on the radio today is crap anyway and I've got enough of a library (11+ full days of music) to last a lifetime.
Some of the new prog rock out of EU will be, like, 10 cents a track. Woo hoo!
maybe they should.
The magic of the $0.99 is that its magnitude and uniformity places it on that mental shelf reserved for things nobody will bother to steal. But, if Apple starts making some nothings "more equal" than others, then that shelf and mindset become endangered...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
If the price were to get set based on other factors, like popularity, it wouldn't bother me too much.
.99 Coldplay songs.
It seems to me this latest rift is less about price and more about simple control. While one can argue well against CD prices and the industry has been cited for collusion and price-fixing, I've always felt that the industry never reacted out of worry over money, but rather loss of control -- of distibution, of demand, of need. If they lose the ability to push youngsters into a fervor over the next Gwen Stefani single, they've lost a hell of a lot more than CD sales. And, right now, Steve Jobs has managed to place himself as the frontman of the industry. So many people are buying iPods and using iTunes that he's pulling control away from the larger industry. He's the face of music.
I gotta think that scares the shit out of the industry moreso than
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
The more I think about this, the more I think it's pure and total BS. Apple has become the WalMart of music downloads. Apple accounts for more than half of digital music downloads. The record companies can huff and puff all they want, iTunes and the iTMS have become the WalMart of digital music. If they don't carry it, it doesn't sell. The record companies would be shooting themselves in the foot.
...the sad thing is people won't think twice. They'll see "oh it's only $1.50", but they'll ignore the fact it's a 50% MARKUP.
Ah well, at least things like iTunes diverts attention away from piracy for once. I still prefer newsgroups as the source for my music.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
This is internet business we're talking about, folks. Retailers can track sales minute-by-minute, adjust prices moment to moment, and tailor prices to individual customers.
Replace the 'hot new hits' smokescreen with 'anything that's actually popular' and you have what the music industry actually wants. Does 'Highway to Hell' get more action than the latest push-the-star album? No problem.. that song gets a price hike.
It leads to a state of smoke and mirrors, where all the songs that sell less than one copy a month are $.50, anything that actually has an audience is $.99, and anything getting more traffic than normal, for any reason, gets kicked up to $1.99. Even more heinous, but technically feasible, would be per-user and related-hits tracking, so if you buy a $.50 song, all the 'other songs purchased by people who bought this one' go up to $.99 for you personally. In such a system, the only way to get the low prices consistently would be to buy random selections of stuff nobody else wants.
It's a great dodge, from a marketing standpoint. The labels can come out and say that 99% of the music in the iTMS catalog is listed below $.99, while quietly failing to mention that 90% of the actual purchases were at $.99 or more. Then they can wring their hands and claim that those "few" premium-priced songs are the only place they make a profit, and that anyone who wants to take away that price tier is just a nasty mean corpse-raping villain.
Personally, I'm amused that the labels are willing to play chicken with a company that recently announced a major change in its hardware platform. Apple (or Steve Jobs) certainly has the nerve to tell one of the big labels to take a hike if necessary, and it's not like the market is just flooded with other venues where the labels can peddle their goods.
The game theory of the situation is interesting.. if all the labels bailed at once, it would hurt Apple a lot. But if only a few labels leave, the ones that stay will probably do better business, since they'll have less competition. The more labels that go, the better the advantages for the few that stay. So basically, all the labels are in a position where they want someone *else* to sacrifice profits and teach Apple a lesson, while they personally stick around and glean the benefits of both the smackdown and reduced competition. But nobody wants to be the hero who dies for the good of everyone else.
All told, I hope.. and expect.. that Apple will stick to its guns on simple, flat pricing.
Most comments I see posted responding to this article use "99 cents" or $0.99. To make a cent sign in Windows, hold Alt while pressing 0162.
On a Mac, press Alt + 4.
If you want golden oldies on the cheap check out your used CD store or your library.
Sorry Kids, the RIAA needs more money to your lives more misearable and useles then what they are right now. Apple has nothing to do with the price increase its the really recording industry trying to racketeer more out of the consumer.
I'd pay considerably more than $1.50 for a hot single, especially if I get to keep her! Though I'm not sure why music labels are getting involved in dating services.
It is time that more artists start putting their stuff directly on iTunes without these idiots from the RIAA as middlemen. Explain to me, again, what exactly the function of a company like Sony is anymore?
1) Create incredibly popular legal download service
2) Load gun
3) Aim at foot
4) Pull trigger
5) Profit!
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
How about instead, Popular songs sell a lot more, generating more revenue to the ones making and distributing them. Maybe *this* will encourage bands to create more songs that people actually like.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
You mean people are still paying for their music? that's soooo 80's!!!
This is why people don't give a damn about how the record companies feel. A good business model exists, the record company makes money, but then they get greedy.
Sometimes that "filler crap" is the stuff the artist thinks is their deep and meaningful contribution to the music world. Jefferson Airplane called their hit album the "Worst Of" with the assumption that big media filters to the lowest common denominator.
Most the time it is just filler crap.
Personally, I want a low enough price per song so I can afford to get the less popular tracks. As it stands, I've downloaded one iTunes songs so that I san say I downloaded an iTunes song. As it stands, I am priced out of their fixed price model.
Buying a cell phone ringtone version of the same song will cost $3.99
Which one does iTunes sell?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Go capitalism, yay publishers. I'm not buying from iTunes.
$0.98!
A bargain discount for that classic old tune you just hafta have.
myselfmusic
The price of 99c + DRM was already waaay too expensive for something that doesn't even come with any extras. 99c period, perharps, but still a bit too much. 50 cent for a song, no stupid DRM, and we're talking.
So what's best? Selling ten songs at 50 cents each or one or two at 99-1.50?
The biggest mistake they make is that they think we don't want to pay for our music. We do. But we don't want overprices and we want freedom to use our products. And we don't want to support the labels as much as the artists.
Neither the labels nor Apple gets this. They suck.
So, I continue to download my music and instead go to conserts, buying t-shirts or at the rare occassions the opportunity presents itself, I buy cheap and DRM-free music (as CDs or as OGGs).
Of course I'm not really expecting it by shouldn't the model make rarely bought tracks cost $0.30 or something?
Actually I don't really like any of the ultra popular tasteless rubbish that would likely get a price hike anyway.
http://www.pearljam.com/news.html#082405 Not a perfect deal mind you, but for the price, what you get, and considering no DRM is involved, at least the shows I do get I'll feel like my money was well spent.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
If they were to do this then it would even be cheaper to buy the packaged CD (and its included costs)?
1 song = $1.4910-15 songs per album
1 CD ~ $15
(even less if on sale; looking at the ads plenty of CD's were generally less than $12 dollars)
10 * $1.49 = $14.90
There's no way in hell I'm paying more for DRM'd mp3's than for the CD that I can rip and copy.
The music industry has been coming down from historically high sales for the last few years.
There was a huge sales burst when CD players became commodity items and people rushed to convert their old vinyl collection to CD for many reason (storage, perceived sound quality, etc). Most of the CDs that sold in that period were back catalogue LPs that had already made their money back and CD sales were almost pure profit for the record companies.
During that time we saw the rise of manufactured pop bands where real musical talent was overlooked in favour of a good looking band and studio trickery.
Now that the great format conversion has tailed off to nothing and people realise that the vast majority of new pop is being produced by talentless nobodies with the shelf life of a pint of milk in a broken fridge, record companies are scrambling about trying everything in their power to preserve what were windfall profit levels.
The sooner record companies get back to producing real music from artists with talent instead of manufacturing pap on the cheap the better for everybody.
Demanding that iTunes charge an unrealistic price for garbage will just drive ordinary listeners back to the P2P networks that record companies are still trying desperately to shut down.
If I had to advise the record companies I'd say take what you can, a small profit is better than no profit and huge legal and congressional fees.
This has been a rumor for quite some time now with no results to show for it. Why does it keep coming up? Every time there has been a new player in the downloadable music marketplace this rumor comes up with different justifications but never with any results.
Good But they still also need to make it so that it's easier for American's to buy songs that are right now only in international stores. And they need to make it easier for independent bands to get their music up there, because right now the selection of music is pretty pathetic. Fine if you're into the most popular music but something a bit more obscure (not even that obscure mind you) and they don't have it. Still havn't found what to use my free download I got for trying a pair of pants on at the gap on -_-
Furthermore, while the "put sale stickers on old impopular stuff" works for physical media, the costs don't scale the same way with downloads. This is nothing more than a way for major labels to leverage price increases...
There's no 'on' position on the Slacker switch!
From TFA: At the price of 99 cents a song, the share of the major labels is about 70 cents.
So 70% of the money from iTMS purchases goes to the labels, not to Apple or the artists.
How do they get artists to buy into this ridiculous scheme? And what do they want, 80%, 90%, all of the profits to go to them?
It's time for some supply and demand to kick in. exactly. the supply is infinite. the demand is dynamic, but never anywhere near infinite. the sipply:demand ratio is therefore constant, implying constant price, no?
copyright © 2005 Flamsmsmark the ravings of a melancholly i
I really agree that the music shouldn't be uniformly priced. Music is not a commodity. The idea that all songs were the same price was ludicrous, and completely detached from reality. Different songs have different aquisition costs, and different popularity. Just like in real life, they should've been able to lower the cost of songs which weren't selling to try and capture at least a few sales. It was ridiculous that classical music and the latest overproduced pop music were the same price given the hugely different cost to produce each. If their prices were more appropriate, I'd actually consider buying music off of iTunes.
You might be tempted by $0.25, "unpopular" music that constitutes 99.999999999% of all music not hyped by the top 40 payola machine.
better stick with web radios
I'm not going anywhere near non free music distribution. I tip the piano player, I'm not giving anything to a dirt bag who thinks he owns him.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Quite honestly, maybe the time has come when people realize that while listening to a good songs is a nice thing, but doesn't deserve the insane amount of respect and money it gets today. I just don't see the significant contributions to society of a rock-star that justifies the insane rewards they get... I know that plenty of people are sheep enough to idolize people to the extreme, but maybe the golden ($$$) era for music is over (independent music anyone) and the record labels just can't deal with the fact that they wont make these insane amounts of money anymore.
Deal with it, making music has become a lot easier and created new competition in the field!
$1.49 or make even $2.50 a track, this must be that "price flexibility" I read about last week. No, this is not price flexibility, it's a price hike, the only thing flexing will be the pockets of the record folks as they will with even more money. They already get 70% of the sale someone else makes, what more do they want, apparently a lot.
"But think about the artists!" I have no idea how their contracts work. Do they get a set amount or a percentage of sales if they don't get a % of sales, I don't want to hear the RIAA whining about the artists not getting paid, esp the ones with million dollar lifestyles.
Maybe if we put it in terms the general public will understand people will(might) listen. An increase from 99c to $1.49(at least) is a 50% price increase. People like 50% off sales, how about at 50% more sale? If they want to raise prices, maybe they can improve the track quality. The reason I don't buy downloadable music is the bulk of it is only 128kbps, but about increasing that by 50%, more would be nice, but that would be bad for someone's profit. The ipod doesn't 'have' to hold X thousand songs, yes the higher number is better for marketing, but lets be realistic.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Sony owns the most important label in this tiff with itunes. Sony dominated the personal audio market for a lond time and it is no secret that they have no love lost for the ipod. Withdrawing support from itunes helps sony chip away at the entire ipod-ituness experiene. Once itunes becomes just another service, sony will find it more easy to get a major presence in the digital music business. After all what is good for the customer and/or the industry need not be what's good for sony
Andrew Lack, the chief executive of Sony BMG, discussed the state of the overall digital market at a media and technology conference three months ago and said that Mr. Jobs "has got two revenue streams: one from our music and one from the sale of his iPods."
"I've got one revenue stream," Mr. Lack said, joking that it would require a medical professional to locate. "It's not pretty."
I really love how Sony, of all companies, is bitching cause Apple is making money from their iPods. Sony has never profited from the sale of portable music players have they?
Its not explicit like, "You will screw artists and prefer the dead to the living" but its in their 'product pricing' structure.
Corporate culture also screws things up for artists with the enshrining of the artist as a 'bitch-god(ess)' with whom its never about what its explicitely about (or some such clap trap.) This way they can keep up the mystery around the industry.
Satch'mo never went for it and, being black, they never went for him, 'cause he was just a dope smokin' 'nigger' and would never amount to much. SURPRISE! His sheer talent snuck in under their radar, (not hard since they don't know talent unless it hits them in the back of the head with a 2x4,) and he survived the killer, rat & roach infested, high colesterol, pace of life he had to live in order to pay the rent.
But they still held all the recording contracts so they didn't care.
There are books, lots of books, written about how shabbily artists have been treated over the years. Its not just a shame; its a crime.
And the people committing the crimes are doing so systematically. The music publishing/recording industry __hates__ musicians.
Sad, isn't it?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I enjoy Bob the Angry flower's method of grammar instruction.
However, you have to reference Strunk's Elements of Style to find the rule for this one. In this case, "it" is a pronoun, and with other pronouns, we don't change him to hi's or her to her's. It's just plain hers, his, and theirs. So a possesive it becomes "its".
- passion
Its not about costs. Its got nothing to do with economic rationalization. Its got nothing to do with success. Its got nothing to do with market forces.
Its got EVERYTHING to do with CONTROLLING prices.
They are the ultimate supply-side economists. They don't care what the Hell happens to the rest of the economy; the demand-side, market driven world the other 99.9999% of the people live in because 'they' want to be in 'control', of something that isn't theirs in the first place.
They don't understand creativity. They don't understand the urge to make something new. They can only squat there, lapping it up, like vampire bats at a neck wound, and use accounting tricks to enrich themselves.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Anyone else remember when this was news? I'm glad the NYT, for once, is behind on reporting, as opposed to Slashdot. I'll state this, since I didn't last time. If they adopt a different pricing structure, expect pricing to exceed $2.50 within 2 years for singles. To show some latitude on that price, the labels will get the artist to throw some crap B-side songs on there, which will probably be part of the same "track" download as the single. Probably pretty similar to the HipHop mixtapes that iTMS already gives away for free. We'll be stuck in the same boat all over again like we've been with the RIAA and CD's.
As a rule I don't pay for music and I don't pay for movies or software, either!
Information is Meant to be Free and I won't have it any other way!
You are either a free man or a Slave to the System.
So what if Apple just let Sony and Warner go. If they want to raise the rates and they pull their music, fine, let them go. It might present an opportunity for other labels and indie bands. With so many iPods out there, it's not like iTunes won't get used or will lose a massive amount of popularity. It's just too easy to use iTunes with an iPod. Maybe if Sony/Warner walked away from iTunes, other music labels would make gains as the iTunes hordes continue to use the service and buy other music in place of Sony/Warner.
Ah, then again, this probably wouldn't make Apple investors very happy.
1. Supply & Demand is all about being able to produce a product and deliver it. The cost to produce a product and great demand for the product; forcing it to be harder to get increases the price. i.e. if you can't supply the demand the price goes up.
2. Market force is competition, yet music labels sign an artist and all the distributors pretty much have the same price for the product. So no real competition except for exclusive deals like Garth Brooks and Walmart where the only place you can get the music is from Walmart. (Disclaimer -- I hate country music, so no Garth for me).
The trouble is that after the studio costs and promotional costs are paid, the electronic cost to duplicate and distribute via iTunes is practically nil! So sell enough songs and it's paid for, the rest is pure profit. This is how software works as well. So yeah, the music industry is just plain getting greedy!
What's different is that electronic distribution is now within the reach of just about anyone! Musicians can now produce studio quality recordings in their garage or basement (with some rather easy sound engineering modifications to the walls, etc. -- think recycled cardboard egg containers stapled to plywood walls). Along with computers and software, you've got something just as good as a professional studio! Then you digitize the media and upload it to a service like iTunes and wait for the dough to come in.
(an off-topic related issue is blogs and the way they are changing the mainstream media scene. Just look at all the watchdog issues raised by blogs that then exploded into the MSM once the noise got loud enough. The MSM would have ignored it due to bias but the blogs demand the topics gain attention and if the MSM won't cover it, then it runs the MSM over like an 18 wheeled semi-truck! Just look at what happened to Dan Rather! Left or Right, watch out, blogs will bite you in the ass someday!)
Where does that leave the music labels? Out in the cold, I say! They have been screwing artists and the general public for years and years. The only advantage is their promotional power which they abuse by manufacturing piss poor artists and target the largest group of music buyers (young teenage girls). Sorry, but Spears, Simpson, etc. are not real artists, they are sluts with a microphone and the deep pockets of the music label.
The music industry must adapt or die. They must make money on booking large tours and drawing huge crowds from their promotions.
I don't have any answers, but I know that things will continue to change until it balances itself out. Change is the only constant. Those who keep up will survive those who don't will die in denial. I haven't bought music CD's in years but I do buy now and then from iTunes. However, I have passed the age of 30 so that means I wouldn't be buying CD's anyway. As a person ages, their tastes change and the promotional new music is just noise. The older you get the more you start looking for more interesting music. I've developed a taste for Jazz and other music that I didn't pay attention to when I was a teenager in my early 20's.
Indie artists should band together in the blogosphere to promote their music and sell it through iTunes or a whatever the future may bring. Apple should embrace the Indie and I am talking truly Indie, anyone should be able to subscribe to iTunes and upload their music for a reasonable startup fee. Apple will make more money from Indies then they will from professional music labels.
you greedy greedy greedy sons of bitches. Pay attention, THIS is why we hate you.
start buying vinyl, it's a lot more rewarding and wholesome.
This would suck. Though I said it would suck 6 months ago when this exact conversation was had, and Steve Jobs said it was rubbish, funny thing is that other news sources quit talking about it, then on August 27th, the slash comes along and reports it..
i seem to remember that there were concerns when itunes first rolled out taht the **aas would allow apple to sell low at first only to jack up the prices once they had sufficient market penetration. seems those concerns where quite valid [as per usual]...
this reminds me of the way the kept cd prices in the stratosphere for 20 years [and were sunsequently convicted of doing so illegaly]. their arguments are always misdirections for their own greed. with an average of 12 songs per 'cd', and two 'hits', you are at or over the cost of purchasing the physical cd in a store, but you don't get any of the things that supposedly kept those prices high [media, printing, design, distribution costs, etc].
i won't get into the now ubiquitous bonus cd/dvds you also won't get with your downloaded album.
sum.zero
So let's say that Jobs told them to "go to hell." I doubt all the record companies would back out instantaneously, one would have to lead the way more than likely. So the first one leaves.
It's such a short time that very little changes and the others back out, as they had all pledged they would do.
Jobs, with his brilliant marketing, begins to appeal to the radio by screening songs from new bands that only go through them and hand-picking songs from bands before they have a chance to catch a major label. He offers their songs to the radio stations, and the songs are spread.
People probably won't forget about those big labels anytime soon, as they still have a lot of weight to be thrown around and have contracts with talent that will last them quite some time, but new talent becomes more and more scarce for them, as many rush to post songs on iTunes.
So that leaves the tours . . . the major labels still have their hand in that, and that's where the artist makes it big. I used to be thrilled with Napster doing various tours, they had a very good thing going there and I really felt they were giving back to artists what their software had taken from them, and perhaps gave them more. Maybe Jobs can gather those who organized all this for Napster and eventually edge the labels out completely.
An example of how this could work:
Some supposedly 'hot' artist comes out with a new album.
For the first week, only 10,000 copies can be bought at a dutch auction. The second week, 20,000 copies. etc... This would show what poeple are actually willing to pay for music. It would also mean it's price is completely based on it's popularity.
Does "Autumn Wind" by Proletaryat, with total running tome of 00:00:20 or so cost the same $0.99 as Mike Oldfield's "Amarok" with running time 01:00:02 ? One is just a tiny plug inbetween two concert pieces. The other - a whole album composed of a single song.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Heh, get ready for that good old 'golden oldie' "Ice, Ice, Baby" for the amazing low price of $0.98!
"The labels price things based on what they believe they can get -- a pricing philosophy a lot of industries have. But we like to price things as cheaply as we possibly can, rather than charge as much as we can get. It's a big difference in philosophy, and we try to help other people see that." - WalMart senior VP (entertainment) Gary Severson.
WalMart pushed the labels into a $9.97 retail price for CDs. Then they started signing deals with artists on their own. WalMart now has exclusive rights to Garth Brooks.
It's hard to cheer for either side here. But from the music industry's perspective, WalMart is scarier than Apple. Apple needs the music industry. For WalMart, audio CDs are a minor business. WalMart sometimes threatens to cut back on audio CDs and devote more shelf space to DVDs and games. And Apple doesn't care about content. WalMart imposes censorship on both music and cover art.
Let's not forget they're working diligently to make sure you cannot rip and copy a CD. (ObJibeAtRIAA: Is it any wonder their sales keep going down?)
Seriously, there needs to be a "this mod was so stupid, no Slashdot, one year!" metamod option.
The only way to sell a song online if you are a musician and want to have DRM is on iTunes.
Um, WMA? Hello? What do you think Buymusic.com and Wal-Mart use? Or if you hate WMA, there's Real's online store as well.
Even Microsoft's DRM format is more open than Apple's!
So you DO know about Microsoft's format? Then wtf is wrong with you?
Which songs/ablums can easily you find pirated copies of on the Internet? It's the popular, new stuff. If prices increase on the new releases for popular music, I'm guessing less people will legally buy this music. However, if somebody is having trouble finding a pirated copy of something, then that person would probably be willing to pay more for the simplicity of a quick download from iTunes.
Right?
This is slightly off topic as it doesn't really address the issue of the cost of music; however, here is my soution to the issues of file trading and DRM:
---
Let the file trading networks do their thing with
one rule:
* if songs are compressed into a
specific format
they can be traded freely.
* any other format incurs a trade fee.
---
The free format will be some specifc, low resolution format.
If you want to trade for free
it has to be in this
low res format.
If you want better quality
you have to pay.
All the music industry has to do is sit back and let the money role in. They may want to monitor things to make sure the rule is being adhered to and that they are getting paid the correct fees for the paid trades. This is should be far less overhead for them.
My objection to itunes is the cost and that the music is restricted with drm. At a dollar a song it is arguably more expensive than buying a cd:
lower than cd quality audio
no artwork
no freedom
In this scheme, drm is less import because monitoring the trading networks for formats and fees is the key. I would think that the monitoring should be easier than putting drm into every piece of software and hardware.
The advantage to the music industry for file trading is that the users provide the infrastructure over which the trading occurs and they provide the files that are traded at no cost to them since users do the ripping, the encoding, provide the bandwith for trading etc. All the music industry has to do is keep doing what they have been doing: make and sell cds, dvd-audio or whatever other formats come along. If they want to, they can distribute the music on-line just by signing onto a trading network just like everyone else and inject the high res formats.
Of course, no drm leaves open the issue of physical trading. I.E. people making copies of cd and giving them to friends. However, this is issue of quantity. Its easy to trade thousands of songs on-line but hard to trade thousands of cds. Trading cd's in this way, as long as it is kept in low quanties should fall under far use.
Eliminating drm this way means that we can preserve the music that we love for the future - a process that drm could very well interfere with. Low quantity trading of cds can go on, but so can the on-line trading. The old music that gets preserved can be traded for many years to come in both low and high res formats. The music industry get income from the high res trades for a very long time into the future without the overhead of a distribution method.
Wasn't there once a story about a goose and a golden egg that had people as stupid as the record industry execs in it?
Indies can still charge what they see fit. MPAA may be shooting themselves in the foot.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
this is just pure greed. $0.99 is already a high cost for a single sing IMHO - and its cost that causes piracy in the first place. by sticking it to the punters - asking for exaggerated costs - especially as theres no media costs or normal distribution costs! - is just showing how greedy these labels are.
No, that is not the case. Quality of product and presence of alternatives, along with various other market forces, affect demand as well. However, you are right about one thing. Artificially increasing price will push demand down. Rather, it will not affect demand, but it will force the economy's position on the curve to the left, which means that a lower quantity of purchases will be made.
Good. Let the Market dictate the price. If an "oldie" starts to become big again raise the price. If some stupid modern song (like all of them) have fewer buyers, lower the price.
Let them go.
I haven't bought a CD in a very long time. They're too expensive, and I'm not willing to run the risk of some critically broken DRM that's going to keep me from ripping a CD I just bought.
I'll continue to use iTunes because it's cheap and convenient, and these record labels can go on to blame piracy for the revenue they don't get from me.
I might regret not having an album here or there, but I'll survive.
OK, I'm posting AC because I actually work in this field to some extent and don't want to have any of what I say come back to me and bite me in the ass.
This will take some time -- the record labels are generally horrid when it comes to data management if you ask me. Besides, iTunes isn't their only customer. If they try and pull this with iTunes you can bet that Apple is going to scream bloody murder if the labels don't force their other customers to use this flexible pricing system. It's going to take some time for all of the other customers to implement such a system, guaranteed.
Back to the data management. Record labels operate through two different doors. There's the publishing/making deals side that would force such a change, and then there's the other side that actually makes it all happen. They never talk to each other it seems. The side pushing out data to customers has no idea what's legal and what isn't. It's up to the customer to figure that out sometimes. This does tie into pricing, as I see there are frequently issues with how you're allowed to sell the music. Since we stream our content to users it gets even hairier -- for instance some artists will only let you purchase their entire album on iTunes. You can't really enforce that rule with a streaming system, and labels are often unsure of what we're allowed to do with certain artists.
I've actually had people at a record label tell me to reference iTunes to see if we should have digital rights to it. If iTunes didn't have it we shouldn't. Turns out iTunes didn't have it either. Some days I think that the Apple iTMS team is bigger than all the record label's geeks squads combined. Seriously.
If the labels aren't even sure of what companies are allowed to have -- how are they going to enforce a dynamic pricing scheme? That's going to take some time, and it will be chaos as other customers of the labels tattle on people that aren't toeing the line and honoring the new pricing scheme.
Further, it's not too uncommon to get sent something by a label with data saying that it is legal for use, only to get an email 2-3 days after deliverying saying not to actually push that one out on the system. Just an email, saying "Sorry, our mistake. Don't let people have that content yet." Dynamic pricing? Pipe dream at this point. They can't even get a binary decision to send or not send right 100% of the time.
Granted, high profile artists would receive special treatment by everybody involved. That much is for certain. Still, there's some issues there, and we're back to policing their customers again; or, more accurately, the customers policing other customers.
However, for all my negativity, I can say that labels are really picking up the ball on how to manage/publish all this data. If the pace continues I could see the dynamic pricing happen in the future, but it won't be overnight. Maybe in 12 to 18 months if I had to hazard a guess. If it does happen the 1st out of the gate WILL be Sony. That beast is the leader in digital music if you ask me. Watch what they do -- the rest will follow.
If you're reading this and think, "Hey, I might work with that guy!" Well... I have one esoteric thing to say: "Don't slam door on nachos."
What is this!? I've not paid for a single CD since Napster came about. Then I learned about IRC, Gnutella, and on. I guess if the worst case comes to fruition, I'll just go back to recording songs off of the radio. :)
Illegal downloads? No, that was a symptom.
The sickness was overpriced CDs.
Here we go again. These idiots can't get around their own greed to see a good thing when they have it.
Note to Steve Jobs: you can lead a music industry horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
"Apple will never resort to airing its dirty laundry in public, at least not while Jobs is in charge."
must be good kool aid. try telling that to ati, wiley [publisher], ibm, motorolla, and everyone else who has ever gotten themselves into jobs' bad books...
sum.zero
It's just astonishing how ignorant the music labels execs are.
The labels have simply reached back into their old bag of tricks again. Back around early 2000, the major labels were sued by 40-plus states for price fixing; entering into illegal conspiracies to raise the price of prerecorded music to consumers. Among the defendants: the two labels mentioned in the NYT article who are now "furious" at Jobs resistance to raise the price of songs.
Seems like these guys just never learn. They were wrong when Jobs first pitched the idea to them (the labels didn't think it would work, and they were far too preoccupied at the time with keeping their music off the internet anyway) and they're dead wrong now. After almost three years, and more than a half-billion songs sold, and the jackasses who run the labels still don't get why it is that iTunes works.
And they don't seem to comprehend what the ramifications for them would be if iTunes doesn't work.
Not likely, for two reasons:
- Digital sales are still a drop in the overall music market.
- The greed of the record industry is only rivaled by their stupidity.
Here are some nice quotes to demonstrate #2: The other main battleground in Apple's coming confrontation with the industry has to do with "interoperability" of services and devices. Mr. Jobs has so far refused to make the iTunes software compatible with music players from other manufacturers, and he has prevented the iPod from accepting music sold from competing services that use a Microsoft-designed music format...Hilary Rosen, the former chairwoman of the Recording Industry Association of America, agrees on that point. "If Apple opened up their standards, they would sell more, not less," she said. "If they open it up to having more flexibility with the iPod, I think they'd sell more iPods.Apple already dominates online sales, so opening their format and their players are just going to lose them money. They make almost all their money on iPod sales, so they'd probably lose money if they increased their song downloads by 50% if it cost them even 5% of their iPod sales. And increasing prices, the way the record industry wants to do, is not going to increase sales. Andrew Lack, the chief executive of Sony BMG, discussed the state of the overall digital market at a media and technology conference three months ago and said that Mr. Jobs "has got two revenue streams: one from our music and one from the sale of his iPods." "I've got one revenue stream," Mr. Lack said, joking that it would require a medical professional to locate. "It's not pretty."Excuse me? You pay for nothing in disutribution costs, pay for no part of running the store, get 70% of every sale as pure profit, and this "doesn't look pretty"? You fucking whore, Mr. Lack.The record industry has seen that online sales do pay off, but now their letting their instiable greed get in the way of basic common sense, and even good business sense. If Jobs tells them to screw off, they're very likely to say "okay", and proceed to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
CDs are $15.99 (or whatever the MSRP for a standard single disc has been - haven't bought one in two years) and old / bargain bin / remaindered stuff gets discounted.
They simply want a bigger piece of the pie, and they think the market has enough elasticity to withstand a 50% increase. Few elective markets do - gasoline obviously does. I'd bet music does not.
Though the question remains did Apple get CD buyers to buy at lower / piecemeal proices, or did they get freeloaders to pony up? If it's the former, the record companies may poison the well. If it's been the former, they might get away with it.
And contrary to the BMI exec quote, they do really have two revenue streams - mylar and digital. They better think of them as two, because they play against each other.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If I could get paid for the rest of my life for work I did this year!
...and no other kind of labor gets any protection at all! Hauling lumber gets you a paycheck for a day -- not a lifetime!
...but copyrights today are such an incredible intrusion on the free market that they can only have a negative effect. I have no idea how otherwise hardcore capitalists will mouth-frothingly support government handouts in the form of 90 year copyrights.
I'm a sysadmin/network guy. That cluster I set up? I think I should get paid royalties on it forever! Every person who builds or uses a cluster like mine should pay me royalties for the next century! They won't have a choice, because the government will enforce it!
Oh wait, for some reason only music and movies (and books and paintings... though that's becoming less important in a McEntertainment society) get that protection.
Even if I somehow created an incredible invention -- say a food replicator or something that could feed the entire planet... I'd only get a patent on it for 20 years. Although then I'd probably be sued under the DMCA for enabling the duplication of valuable edible intellectual property.
Why are movies and music so goddamn special? Inventions get patent protection for far less time...
Copyrights are corporate welfare. Welfare is sometimes a good thing! Government intervention in capitalism is a good thing sometimes!
but it remains that the supply is infinite. each individual has a certain amount of desire for each track. lower prices to increase sales [and customer satisfaction] while decreasing profit per sale. increase prices to drop sale numbers while making each sale more profitable and customers less happy. and less happy customers increases piracy. sounds like the most profitable option, as well as the one that gives least piracy, and most satisfaction, is the former: low prices.
copyright © 2005 Flamsmsmark the ravings of a melancholly i
That's good, because most all "hot new singles" are crap! I'd rather pay less for older music that actually had some style.
And I have bought a lot at $.99. But if they were $1.49 I'd stop buying downloaded music though I'd probably still download it. I'll let the record labels figure that one out.
'Same speed C but faster'
I love the concept! I don't have to go find what I want, or mail order it... But frankly, I still buy my CDs burn them into iTunes uncompressed, and trade or ditch the CDs. Yes, I'm the labels nightmare in a sense, but I don't steal songs, and I don't trade. Friends generally get the spent carcass.
I look forward to the day when I can buy say a higher quality AAC file and I have the right to move it about as I please. Until then, I'm a copyright criminal! Though, I am also in the top several percent of music purchasers, so why feel bad.
Jobs isn't exactly known for calm, quiet, polite negotiations. Companies that have crossed him tend to suddenly be dropped by Apple.
Suppose, just suppose, that he tells one of the labels to get lost. Will Apple break first (at the loss of sales of a major label), or will that major label break first (at the loss of sales from a major outlet)?
They should know better than to mess with Steve.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
The internet has provided a way to eliminate the middleman, for so many industries, including the music industry. Of course the record companies are scrambling to do whatever it takes to survive.
I don't understand the labels' position. At the labels' wholesale price of 60 cents a song, that's somewhere between $7 and $10 per album. Walmart pays $7 wholesale for a physical CD. So in the case of iTunes, the labels are making the same or more than what they make on the sale of a physical CD, only they don't have the associated manufacturing costs? Am I missing something here?
New iTunes songs: $1.49
Kazaa: Free
Sticking it to the screw-the-buyer record companies once again: PRICELESS!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
At the price of 99 cents a song, the share of the major labels is about 70 cents
Apple needs to get their profits from the iPod, since most of the 99 cents is already going back to the record companies. What's so hard about this for the NYT to understand?
The other main battleground in Apple's coming confrontation with the industry has to do with "interoperability" of services and devices. Mr. Jobs has so far refused to make the iTunes software compatible with music players from other manufacturers, and he has prevented the iPod from accepting music sold from competing services that use a Microsoft-designed music format. As a result, songs purchased from Napster, for example, will not play on an iPod.
Ah, now we know the real reason why Sony is unhappy. Won't play on Sony players either.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
iTunes is becoming like Walmart for a lot of people, if they don't carry the album, people don't realize it's available.
I've stopped shopping at brick and mortar shops entirely for music, and the comment holds true for me. The other problem with CDs now is many are getting copy protection schemes that are far more troublesome (ie: Sony). With CDs it's becoming a crapshoot, at least with iTunes I know what I'm getting, my restrictions, and a way to get around them if needed.
If a major music company leaves because of their pricing greed, they'll soon realize they have nowhere reasonable to peddle their goods online, especially as more and more customers start purchasing music online.
If you think about it, 500 million sales == $500 million (this is total sales). As far as I know, that is pretty much small potatoes in this industry.
Actually, that isn't the RIAA's problem. The problem is that
500 million songs sold == about 50 to 100 million LESS albums sold == 0 dollars. (or worse...see below)
($500 million brought in, minus the $500 million in lost record sales, assuming the low end number of 50 million lost record sales and a low end price of $9.99 an album. Assume higher numbers of lost album sales, or more expensive albums, and iTMS is a LOSS for the labels.)
Every time I pay 99 cents for the one song off the album I want, I'm not spending the $9.99 to $14.99 that the album would have cost me, and the label loses 9 to 14 bucks. While better than the 10 to 15 they'd lose if I just pirated it, I would hope people might understand why this would make them unhappy (whether or not you agree with them or not).
They don't want to price the songs higher so they will make more money off them...they want to price the songs higher so they will make LESS money off them, because people will just not buy them and instead buy the album. That, or begin "renting" their music, which seems to be what the other services are offering. And if they choose to pirate instead, they'll just sue them into bankrupcy (or try).
Do the record labels require the user to pay a spesific amount, or do they just want more money? It seems like apple could pay the record companies more for some songs, and less for others, while still charging the consumers a flat rate (maybe more then 99 cents).
But, yeah.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
and don't give a flying fuck about iTunes or anything else. Economic arguments are totally wasted on people who have been utterly against ALL innovation since the player piano roll. They have fought, and lost, against EVERY innovation, because they feel threatened.
Its about control. Complete, total and absolute control of something that they have no control over, creativity.
WAKE THE FUCK UP! THEY'RE FUCKING VAMPIRES. AS LONG AS YOU HAVE AN OUNCE OF CREATIVITY IN ANY FIELD YOU'RE A TARGET.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I think it's sad that the parent post was modded flamebait. Copyright in its present form is not ideal, but the question of why someone who invests the time, money and effort to create a work shouldn't have the exclusive rights to it is a very good one. The rest of society didn't create the work, and has no moral claim on it without giving up something in return. Sadly, few people in these parts seem to grok even the basic significance of this argument, preferring to chant "Information wants to be free!" or mod (-1, I Wish It Weren't So).
That said...
The problem is that large corporations now take advantage of the legal definition of copyright to pervert the original intent. They, who themselves put little effort into actually creating the works, reap huge profits. At the same time, the authors, singers, songwriters, performers, software developers, artists (in the graphical sense) and so on -- the people who actually create the work and bring it to life -- get relatively little. The collective power of the megacorps has left artists (in the general sense) with little choice but to surrender their copyright in exchange for distribution: try getting a book published without giving up the copyright to the publishers and see how far you get.
At this point, copyright is breaking down. The system is not securing long-term benefits for the originators of the work -- something I have far less problem with, since getting a work released at all is normally better for society than nothing -- but instead is allowing the transfer of those benefits under duress to the distributors who are just glorified middlemen.
IMHO, a better rule could be as simple as this: a person or group who themselves create a work can retain the copyright over it for an extended period, but the moment that right is transferred for compensation, the copyright reduces to a limit of a few years at most. That's still enough to make it commercially worthwhile for someone commissioning a work for hire or distributing someone else's work, but in the interests of society it denies ever-lasting, profit-making organisations (rather than individuals) the ability to keep intellectual property away from society so they can profit indefinitely themselves.
Fortunately, the game is swinging massively against these megacorps anyway. Most (sometimes all) of the value they add is in the advertising and distribution area; they rarely do more than arrange editing and presentation of the content itself, if that. These days, anyone with an Internet connection potentially has an equally powerful resource for the distribution and, with a little thought and good word-of-web-page publicity, for the advertising as well.
With a little technical knowledge, or help from friends (or even paid staff) who have it, the artists and supporting people who actually work to create the material could publish just about anything directly via the Internet. Even books can now be printed economically in small runs via specialist print-on-demand shops, and combined with places like Amazon you've got a self-publishing channel that offers returns approaching 50% of cover price for the authors and their immediate support, rather than the 5-10% you'd get going via an old-fashioned publishing house.
This is going to be big, and in the end, the megacorps will either adapt (for example, by providing actually-useful "portal" services in the sense that Amazon provides a link to the world of books) or lose out to individual artists and their supporting crews who have far lower margins and won't need to give up their right to fair compensation for their own works. I'm looking forward to the day when this is the norm; I think it will help to undo the unwelcome trends recently where a few big record labels, a few big publishing houses, etc. have been essentially cashing in the benefits for others' work, on the back of what's basically a loophole in the way copyright law is set up.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I wish NYT would have expanded into the subscription area and how this might be affected. Does anyone have an opinion on this?
Most articles I've seen say Yahoo has an above avg reputation with Hollywood. Same with the music labels?
I use Yahoo Music Unlimited (beta), and am pretty pleased with the $5/mo unlimited music, and it works great with my cell phone (which has a 1gb miniSD card)
They also have the option to buy at $.79 flat fee (and much discounted for the full album) - although who needs to burn a CD anymore?
So back to the question, any insight to affects on subscription services?
As far as I'm concerned, any price is too much when you can't get a CD quality copy of a song. I mean how difficult would it really be to offer a 192kbps, 256kbps or a 320kbps option too?
A variable price system might put people off though... one of iTunes appeals is it's simplicity. Also people might not like checking to see a song's price, whereas with the current system they already know the price, probably leading to more impulse buys.
You are trolling. If you had bothered to use google, you would know that it is not legal.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
If you would stop trolling and read the copyright laws, you would know that the service is illegal.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Then post a link that definitively says that AllOfMP3 is illegal and explains why it is illegal. And no, I'm not talking about the editorial pages using words like "probably" and "maybe," I've been through those.
If you have a link, post it. I'm not defending their site, I am only attempting to get a hard answer.
N/T
Post a link to this comment. I work for an indie music distributor, AllMyMp3 or whatever sells music on labels we exclusively distribute both physically and digitally. Yet, we, the labels, and the artists are never paid a dime. We have contacted them, and the Russian agency that supposedly makes this legal, and they have not replied, and I'm sure they never will.
It's illegal, deal with it.
And as far as the radio stations go, the stuff they schedule is just oldies as filler between the ads. (The same with TV.)
I haven't gone into a record store since 2001 (I used to drop into Sam Goodies at the WTC before the fuckin'g terrorists pretended it was an airport.) I haven't listened to an entire album in years.
My iPod playlists would drive anyone nuts but they filled with what I like, and nothing but. If the RIAA doesn't like it, they can start delivering on music I DO want to hear. (As if. That bunch of vampires is totally talentless.)
I want to hear real music, not the 'artiste' of the week and her back up band. (What's with all the 'formerly poor' girlies with the fashion looks, no talent, who can barely hold a tune with both hands and who think a key is something that lets them into their squat?)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
...so the record company songs will be more expensive than the oft better (these days) indie music?
I say let them shoot themselves in the foot, once again...
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
If they force a different pricing model with higher prices, I will pirate my music.
I have purchased 201.78 CAD (168.87 USD) since the opening of iTMS in Canada.
Before iTMS, I would buy a CD per year at the most. Most years, I would not buy any music. I'm not interested in complicated prices models, differing DRM rights per song or subscription services.
I'm a mac user and none of the other services support my platform and music player. I don't blame Apple for that at all but rather MSFT and their desire to trap everyone on windows.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Stop asking for links, use your brain and do your own research.
They charge money for something they don't own and they do not compensate the rights holders. Explain to me how that is legal.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
RIAA twisting their arms, eh? Why don't they adopt this policy themselves! T Why don't record companies deeply discount their older stuff and truly follow this policy they so zealously want to apply to iTunes? I guess they do to an extent, but I still have to pay $15.99 to replace my old Cracker CD...oh wait, I'm re-licensing it....I should be getting it for free, no?
Let them pull their catalogs off of ITMS. Do you think the legions of iTunes users are all going to stampede out and start buying CDs again?
I only buy my music from two places, iTunes and AudioLunchbox.com. If I can't find the music I want on one of those two sources, I just find some other music I like. There are some singers, and some songs which aren't on either yet, but they're not worth the price of a CD, or the headache of some other music sites.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
I love the interoperability argument. iTunes is the only music store with DRM that works with anything other than Windows. It seems the labels are in cahoot with Microsoft to force Windows upon us. If Apple loses its dominance in Digital Music, everybody will believe it was because it was "a closed system". Nobody will remember an orchestrated campaign to help a monopoly.
I'm reading a lot of "here go the greedy bastards again" and get the feeling folks would be happy if the labels died.
I'm no fan of that segment of the music industry. I do think they screw most musicians, they thing listeners/consumers are dolts and tend to cheat, steal, lie their way through most their enterprises.
But, I just don't see them going away or falling under the weight of their own incompetence/greed/evilness. Giant companies rarely just die, they need to be replaced. Oil lamps to light bulbs, horse and carriage to automobiles, typewriters to computers all had HUGE business that were completely eliminated by an improved product.
The recorded-music industry creates product that is unique in that it includes a service can be reused. The labels are most vulnerable to changes in the delivery of the service, yes? Clearly the Internet has changed that delivery a little, but apparently not enough to spawn a new industry to replace the existing one. iTMS is just an adjunct to the main delivery system. The labels still control almost all of the production process to be affected by a change in the delivery method, even though they are losing some control.
What brainiac is going to dream up a new better, anti-label way of "producing" the music -- finding musicians, developing them, promotion, concerts, recording, licensing?
With all apologies to smart, independent bands who've broken out from that cycle, until the "production" end of the industry is vastly revolutionized, its going to be same-old, same-old.
the future is here, it is just not evenly distributed - w. gibson
I get it off p2p. I'm not going to go buy a cd because a record company or an artist is too snobby to provide the music in a medium I want. That would be like me going to a car dealership and them saying "you can only have this car if you buy every other car on this row." Yeah, no thanks. It might be stealing, but price fixing and making terrible packages only available to the consumer is victimizing the consumer. Make the music available easily to purcahse, and I'll give you money. Don't, and I'll take it from you.
best college pickem site ever: pickem.terrbear.org
First, thanks for the kind words concerning my post.
I believe Walt Disney himself created those characters and therefore it's pretty straightforward that his corporation should be allowed those rights.
I do think things should drop into the public domain when no longer actively marketed. But I don't see why an author who creates a work should not get royalties forever from that, even if it's big business that gets most of it. He still gets some, and I haven't noticed any reports of J K Rowling's imminent bankruptcy or starvation. Didn't she just buy a castle or something? Obviously the pathetic crumbs she got from the megacorps weren't so pathetic.
Is it really better for the megacorps to be able to publish her work and take all the money for themselves, instead of giving her her pathetic little royalty? At Barnes & Noble, I see nice editions of lots of copyright-expired works, and nobody gets the money from them but Barnes & Noble. Does that seem right or fair?
Now, it's perfectly true that many old works build on the creations of others in the past. But copyright is pretty strict about it being the specific words used or the specific character. If I created a cartoon rodent that looked nothing like Mickey Mouse (or any other cartoon rodents), no problem.
I think the reason I'm willing to stand in support of copyright is that it encourages originality. I'd love to see copyright law enforced against the people who compose "music" based on sound samples from other popular songs, for example. I want to see new popular songs based on fresh ideas, not songs created from old popular songs, using the familiar images from them to evoke emotion that the "author" of the new song cannot do on his own.
In short, I stand for creativitiy and originality, not mindless theft of other peoples' work. I'd like to see more of the former, less of the latter. And I'm very curious now what you think of that stance.
D
"Excuse me? You pay for nothing in disutribution costs, pay for no part of running the store, get 70% of every sale as pure profit, and this "doesn't look pretty"? You fucking whore, Mr. Lack" you rock for that quote+
When will the labels figure this out? "Dear God! Those heathens are stealing our music! They must just be a generation that is more evil than any before!" NO. They are a generation that is being lied to and exploited more than any before. CDs should not be $15 EVER, and especially not $23. When CDs were released, the RIAA insisted that the new format cost pennies to make, and that the inital higher costs of the format were just to overcome the expense of the switch, and that CDs would quickly drop in price. Years later, the median price is substantially higher than tapes EVER were. They are gouging customers for music that (as revealed in a Playboy interview about a year ago) is regarded even by the artists as low-quality shit that is only good for radio sound bytes. Most 'artists' don't care about the real quality of their music, they only care about making big money from radio-friendly CDs that can sell big for a few weeks. How many tracks do modern bands throw away because they weren't up to snuff? Not a whole damn lot. How many did Led Zeppelin throw away? I've heard that as many as two-thirds of the stuff they recorded for some albums was never released, because it's wasn't good enough. People used to get together and talk about music.: really talk, not say they liked this or that song, but discuss album ordering and prduction techniques. How often does this happen any more? Damn near never, because music is pretty much all shit. RIAA: Release music worth spending a little money on and charge us a less offensive price per album; for the next format you realease, don't destroy every possible use of the music by protecting the hell out of it like you did SACDs. I guarantee that you will have sales climb. You can't depend on the latest technology to save your ass, despite attacking it as unethical and evil like the last two did (tapes and radio, by the way).
"Fight for lost causes. You may discover they weren't."
See (or not):
Nice album! I think I'll buy it. I hope you get many more sales from your plug. No shame necessary.
i hope you're listening recording industry:
you will never get a single penny from me. you've done nothing but screw everyone involved and you won't stop here.
i haven't purchased a new CD in years now. and i won't go with iTunes either. when i want new music i'll just continue to go to the local used stores and drop 7 or 8 bucks on a used CD that sounds just as good as it was when it was first bought. only this time - you're not getting any money (at least until the RIAA starts to demand payup from places like used CD stores - i wouldn't be surprised if it happens).
so go ahead - dig your grave even deeper still. that's fine. eventually you'll drive all the artists into pressing and selling their own music. and when that happens maybe the music industry will take off again.
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
Just to point out that there has not been one cridble study released that has shown that "piracy" of music online has had any detrimental effect to the music industry as a whole. By piracy i am referring to filetrading via BiTorrent or Kazaa like networks.
--My signature is six words long.--
I live in Canada where downloading music offa P2P is not illegal. Allofmp3.com is kinda like p2p except the audio quality and selection are superior.
I'm not advocating breaking any laws (it's copyright infringement anyways, isn't it?) but Allofmp3.com is awesome and anybody who doesn't use Allofmp3 is a knucklehead.
That pricing scheme insures that we'll be mining the back catalog while the 'popular' stuff get zero play.
'Popular', meaning the latest 'artiste du jour' that they're warping into their 'sound', ripping off by making 'em pay for the studio time, the recording tame and material, the 'pressing' facilities, the 'cover art' and the promotion.
They're committing an internet suicide. You can't seriously do this without a broadcaster (and payola) structure. The buzz of an internet is completely counter to this.
When you (and I) can record, produce, publish and promote music at little or no cost, it makes no sense to go with a label.
This will mean the death of the ASCAP who will hate to start tracking playtime by song on an hourly cycle. And with an iPod shifting time, the results won't mean a thing anyway.
These **AA guys just love to shave by holding the straight edge razor against their necks and pressing down HARD.
They fuck up iTunes and I can predict their death as coming quite rapidly.
I can just see the ITMS front page:
"No non-indie songs anymore because the 'major' labels don't want to sell through us unless they can impose some nonsensical pay scales on us.
Indie music for sale at $.99 a pop."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
If a song is not popular, it will be hard to find on a P2P network, and you may well have to wait for it if/when you do find it. Certainly you'd pony up a quarter or two to get it from iTunes.
But once a fair number of people have done that and found the song is greatly underrated, it will get passed around. Pretty soon it's on the very P2P networks that failed it the first time around (even if only 1 in 10 buyers strips the DRM by some means)... and legal download demand goes back down. For truly good product, this isn't going to stop that many people from buying it. For stuff on the fringe it isn't either. It's the mediocre but broad-market corporate pap that's going to eat its own lunch when it shows up on Soulseek. Certainly the record labels won't like this -- they really don't care what you're buying, only that you buy it. But for the artist, it cuts both ways. The great but undiscovered will benefit from such a model. The great and promoted (rare that they are) will lose slightly but not catastrophically -- though they could perhaps compensate by trimming the ad budget. The awful might actually see a few pennies pitched their way where they didn't before, or even become the next William Hung. It's the Average Clone Band (and there are an awful lot of Average Clone Bands) that are going to be pirated. They'll have the critical mass to stay on P2P networks, but not be good enough to be on most buying lists.
For the listener, this is a net win, as it greatly reduces the financial incentive to be just another Average Clone Band. Some still will be, either because that's all they CAN do, or that's all they WANT to do (for reasons other than money). But a bit of the current bored session player crowd will find it worthwhile to try and make something original for a change, which is good for everyone in the long run.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I think the point of the record companies effort is to raise the price point of the *buy* to a point that forces the *subscription* model to become a viable alternative and thus on going, recurring revenue for the fat cats...
if so, it sucks big time....
So this "problem" means I'll be faced with the choice of the newest Britney or Good Charlotte single at $1.49, versus classic Stones, Zappa, etc. at (maybe) 79c.
Yep, I can see this being a BIG problem. Score one (more) for the baby boomers
There is one thing that really pisses me off about Apple's “one size fits all” business model: it's only reasonable for certain styles of music. What about contemporary art music, progrock, or jazz (styles of music I listen to heavily) where a 15-20 minute track is not an uncommon occurence? Hell, some of my favorite CDs have something like 3 tracks ($3) and 50 minutes worth of music. Are you telling me they're worth less than a punk album with 20 tracks ($20) and the same amount of actual music? As a composer, most of my works are 8min+, how does this benefit me? Had this price model been around during the mid 70s, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin would have gone broke, or would have been forced to put out cookie-cutter 3 minute tracks like every other shitty pop artist. Under this price model, punk artists become millionares, and art music professionals go broke. I've devoted my entire life to learning about, and teaching myself how to write better music; spending, litterally, THOUSANDS of hours on my own or in conservatory. Why is this suddenly a bad thing, and shunned by both popular culture and the corporate model?
Apple, I love you to death, but fuck you're business model; price by the second, not by the track!
Also, don't get me started on “The Death of the Album”, I couldn't be unhappier to see artists forced to write soully on a song-to-song basis because chances are that listeners won't buy their whole albums. I was just getting really happy seeing artists coming back to writing whole albums that work together as one body of work, to see it destroyed by the new revolution.
Sure, this model puts pressure on artists to raise the level of quality from a song-to-song basis, but it also gives them an incentive to write MORE and SHORTER songs, since, “if I split the track in two, I'll make more money,” right?
—EricMultiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I will never buy a song or two off an album. If there are only two songs an album worth listenting to, chances are the group/musician/whatever doesn't deserve your money. I usually just put on a CD(or rip from the CD to ogg or mp3), and listen to the album from start to finish. There usually are a few songs not really worth listenting to, but that's ok. The majority of the songs on any given album should be good, but the opposite seems to be the case on most mass marketed albums. Not that there's anything wrong with good promotion.
"Labels might lose customers" especially if they are going to jack up the prices more and more. I think 99c per track is my threshold, other wise I can always return to my immoral and sinful ways. Wonder how much that will help the music industry?
"However, it is very easy for people to buy music from a different store than iTMS."
Easy in a the sense that they would have to get rid of their iPod and stop using iTunes.
Perhaps people now understand the lock-in that Apple has achieved? I think they've done a great job of execution, and I can't fault Apple. But people using iPod with iTMS are locked in to Apple. They cannot leave.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
How 2004. I get all my music from here and pay about $10/gig.
GG
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
They've had us over the barrels for years, and they just don't like it that once again, Jobs has found something that really people want, people will buy, and that is an option to the obsolete path that has locked us in for the last 60 years. If they pull that BS, I'm dropping Apple, and not because I don't love iTunes, I do... I love the interface, I love the selection, and even though I hate the DRM, I like that it supports just about everything. Nothin' else does that. WMA sucks so much ass, it's ridiculous. *grumble*
I haven't pirated music since the demise of Napster back in the day, because I didn't believe in ripping off the artist. Then ClearChannel and the payola scandal... on top of the damn labels taking 60% of the profits is screwing them too! When will the artists start producing the albums themselves and releasing them themselves? They can do that today. I'd support it.
Jho
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
" This is exactly what the record companies don't get. If albums sold for $5 a piece, I'd buy 4 a week. But since they coust $15-$20, I only buy 1 or 2 a month. 4x4x$5 = $80. 1.5*$20 = $30. Volume sales can replace the money lost from reducing prices. I wish record companies would realize that."
Maybe they make more profit from $30 for 1.5 albums, than from $80 for 16 albums.
Vote for Pedro
" AllofMp3 does not pay a single cent to the labels or artists. how can you call that legal?"
/., that's considered "the cost of the big time" for artists and most of us are okay with it.
Well the RIAA affiliated labels generally do not pay a cent to the artist either, but here on
Now that Russia is doing that same thing, you suddenly get a conscience?
When I go to a record store or large retailer, the new releases are always being sold at a special discount price. Later, they go up in price, not down. Why would the record companies be pushing something that is inconsistent with the way they sell the physical CDs. One other other point: if prices are going up I want higher quality tracks. $1.49 is way too much for 128kbps.
allofmp3.com has no contracts with US record labels. Therefore, selling you songs by US record labels is a violation of US copyright law.
Vote for Pedro
"Isn't that "open it up to sell more" argument the one poor Ms. Rosen went down in flames fighting against?"
No.
Vote for Pedro
Time to go back to sharing; screw the RIAA (and the MPAA too), greedy bunch of bastards.
I hope that Jobs doesn't cave in to this, but Apple already gives perks to labels that indies like me don't have.
Tracks on itunes from a major label can be browsed by genre, but indies aren't. The only way an indie track comes up is if you search it by name. ITMS has other positioning-perks for labels too, and these count for a LOT when you're competing for cyberspace. I don't think the perks would exist unless Jobs wanted to curry the labels' favor.
if itunes totally goes away.
_ F.shtml
they can take their drm ridden crap and put it and the DMCA where the music doesn't play.
at least with a cd I can take it and rip it and put on as many devices as I see fit.
I see itunes going away in the future because I think artists are getting sick of the record companies and now with the internet they can distribute their own songs that people will buy and not be DRM ridden.
I.E.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050826/0920259
I hope all the other artists out there see this and tell their record companies and their lawyers to get screwed. I think they will realize that they shouldn't treat their fans as automatic criminals.
Instead treat them like honest hard working people that will pay for their music on their terms and not some lawyers.
Wrong:
and as a result music from those Sony BMG albums cannot easily be transferred to iPods
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
When you are losing market share (like the record companies are) the last thing that you do is raise prices. It's not a wonder that the recording industry is having such a hard time.
BTW....The government dictating content and album art is censorship. A company such as Wal-Mart dictating content is not. If you don't like it start your own damn store or buy from somewhere else.
Sorry about the Anonymous Coward post. If I start posting more I'll open an account!
And therein will end mine and many others experiments with itunes and swtich back to the good ole p2p networks.
independent musicians are screwed because they cant sell protected songs for the price they want.
Independents seemed to survive just fine in the world of CDs, with unprotected songs at whatever price they wanted. Hell, considering the cost of pressing a few hundred/thousand CDs, an indy these days should be able to make a lot more cash with online distribution. Assuming getting rich is your game plan, which is laughable at best.
Sorry, but as a former indy, anyone who is actually concerned about DRM on their music has only one name: whore.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
run "xev" from an xterm. That'll bring up a little window. Any time you tap a key, it'll print information about that key. Hit the key you want to be Compose. It'll print out a couple of lines, one of which says "keycode XXX", where XXX is a number. Then run the command 'xmodmap -e "keycode XXX = Mode_switch Multi_key"' -- you now get your very own Compose key.
You all knew this was coming...
And that illustrates nicely the difference between X-Windows and OS X.
Just because you can doesn't mean you should be happy about having to.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So tell me - you're an independant musician trying to sell songs. You decide to use the "open" MS DRM.
So how do you encode that again? How do you encode the DRM and host the servers needed to authorize the file?
Oh that's right, you don't - you go through a middleman who pays you whatever the hell they want. How much do you think artists are making from the yahoo yearly deal?
How is more free to accept less money from a wider set of people, that you also have no control over? Where is the freedom in that you stupid RIAA stooge?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
OK, history lesson:
Late 1980s, a company called "Personics" figured out how to compress music by a factor of 8x onto CDs held in a large jukebox. They installed these into music stores where people could order cassette tapes burned from the jukebox catalog into multi-artist mix tapes at a price-per-song similar to itunes or the like today. At 8x compression a full 60min tape could be cut in 8 minutes or so while the customer waited. Music made it onto the jukebox by record company permission; each night the music-store machines were polled by modem for sales and royalties assigned.
So why did the music industry kill them off just as they were getting successful a couple years post-startup (and were beggining preparation for the switch to CD burning for the user vs. cassette)?
It wasn't just about money. It was about power.
The music industry is a "gatekeeper of culture". It costs money to retail package media. To get to where they'll do it for you, you need to kiss up to them (if you're a startup artist) and give them a killer contract.
Personics had the ability to change all that - some garage band could cut tracks themselves with the gear that was getting better and cheaper all the time, send the master to Personics, they include it on the latest jukebox set, and presto - no more middleman record executive parasites.
I-tunes has the same possibilities, multipled because the distribution system is even cheaper. If itunes gets big enough, artists could use them for distribution, cutting out the middlemen. If Steve Jobs ever does that, the music biz will unite to try and stomp him flat. As is, some are attacking in case he *might*.
The record companies HAD to put their feet down before itunes got so big it didn't need to worry about losing major labels. Itunes is in exactly the same position Personics was in...but they're FAR better financed and the fear of rampant piracy as an alternative means this time the entire music biz isn't united against them the way they were against Personics.
Gonna be a damned interesting fight indeed.
With almost every album I've bought, my favourite songs haven't been those which I bought it for. You're missing out if you only buy single songs.
I know from a competing store, that way over 80% is coming from the back catalogue. Those nice-price CDs.
Sales of new title are small compared to this, yet I believe it might be neccessary to charge more for new stuff. But this would also be bad. Paying $1.49 for a song makes it $14.90 for a CD, which is too expensive compared tot he physical product.
But is the physical CD worth $14.99 to me?... ...Is the "virtual" CD worth $11.99 or $12.99... ...compared to the original $9.99)? ...like $9.99 for physical CD's... ...and $6.99 or $7.99 for whole... ...$0.99 a song actually doesn't...
ARGH! Not the god-damn *.99 pricings again! How about this... $10 for physical CDs, $7 or $8 for whole albums (virtual) and $1 a song?
I wonder how hard it would be for Apple to stick a "Why does this cost more?" button beside any $1.49 song. A button that links to a brief explanation and a phone number for the relevant record company. I wonder how many customers would call to complain?
Read which copyright laws? 17 USC? I've read them a bit, but, it's not clear that US copyright law even applies.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
I really like Apple but they have a history of being really innovative and then shooting themselves in the foot. I know it is the labels but by not catering to them Apple will loose. Sad to say. This is the first time they have a market dominate position and I'd hate to see in a few years people saying "Appple F***ed up again" Message to Steve Jobs: don't be too high and mighty that you risk iTunes/iPod innovation.
But did you notice that is not happening? The current mega-corp system actually promotes creation of new hits from the guts of old ones. The only person who would possibly argue against unjust sampling (there are uses of song samples where the new stuff isn't clearly piggybacking on the old, mind you) is the artist h(im|er)self.
Unfortunately, because of copyright transfer practices the only body in charge of saying "stop!" is the megacorp record co. Doing that they would reduce their profits since copyright law gives them $$ from the sampling track. So they tend not to.
There's no 'on' position on the Slacker switch!
You know, technically you're correct. Such are indeed the wasteful, fascistic absurdities of usage under copyright.
Philosophically, however, in your embrace of the same, you've decided to become a fire hydrant outside the dog park. It's no wonder our overlords can get away with such stupid laws when they have subjects so willing to be hosed down.
Thank you. :)
If supply is infinite and demand is finite, then mathematics shows that the ratio of supply to demand must be
infinity : finite
As we know that any number divided by infinity is as near to zero as makes no odds, it follows that there is in fact no demand.
From this we can conclude that the online music industry does not, in fact, exist, and that any online music stores are actually the products of a deranged mind.
A corollary of this is that Slashdot posts about the subject are also products of a deranged mind.
If a song that is more popular and/or new is going to cost more what's to stop people from waiting until its unpopular and then getting it for 99 or less?
I buy a ton of music from iTunes, but I have no problem waiting a week or two until the price goes back down to 99.
Plus, 95% of the music in iTunes top 10, I have no interest in - but fortunately they also sell lots of music I do like.
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. - Initial
As a member of an unsigned band who just put out their own CD, I would like to comment on the music industry in general.
With the birth of the CD, we were promised a cheaper medium to convey music. Quite honestly, it IS cheaper to produce. Including artwork, pressing and shrink wrapping, a CD costs about $1.35 in small quantity. In higher volumes, it costs much less. What it looks like the record companies are trying to do is cover the cost of the entire CD with 1 download. BAD IDEA!
If the entire CD was good, people would buy the whole thing and cover the cost of pressing/promotion and allow for a profit.
Honestly, I can see a future of people stealing songs and entire albums because the record companies what to make too much money.
My advise, embrace the iTunes movement and change your antiquated ideas of music delivery- everyone can benefit if you stop being sooooo greedy.
I know some copyright law, but am not a lawyer nor am I an armchair lawyer who is going to pretend to know that something like this is absolutely or absolutely not legal. I'm also familiar with some international law (something you perhaps haven't taken in to account and where my explanation to your question would lie) and am armed with the common sense knowledge that it should be an extremely simple thing to look up a hot topic such as AllOfMP3's legality and get a firm answer from a reputable source that the service is illegal if it indeed is illegal, yet noone can find anything. I'd love to hear how you account for that?
Which copyright laws? The US ones?
The reason I want a link or some source is so that I'm not reading armchair lawyer posts such as yours. I'm not interested in that useless crap.
You forgot to add that you also need to stand on one hand while balancing a forty watt bulb with one foot and a lion cub with the other while singing all of the lyrics to "American Pie" in any one of the variations of the Bantu language such as Swahili, Lingala, Luganda, Gikuyu, Bukusu, Lusoga, Kikongo, Chichewa, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Shona, Ndebele (Sindebele), Tswana (Setswana), Sesotho, Zulu (isiZulu), Xhosa, Sepedi, Swazi, Ngumba, Kako, Ibibio, or Efik (for your convenience) while inhaling diluted tetra acetyl ethylene diamine through a swirly straw in one nostril. Yes. It's just that simple.
close: from this we can conclude that the effective value of any track is zero. which is the prinicipal upon which the charing on p2p networks operates.
which is why the copyright holders hate them. they want to make something from nothing; whereas the 'pirates' want to make nothing from nothing.
which illustrates the key difference between music 'theft' and real theft. in brittish law, theft is defined as 'taking, with permanent intent to deprive the owner.' intelectual property 'theft' deprives nobody of anything.
it seems that copyright holders are the only people who expect to do a days work, and have people keep paying them for it. architects don't expect to be paid by everyone who walks past and admires a building of theirs.
copyright © 2005 Flamsmsmark the ravings of a melancholly i
This is where we do disagree, I think. I make a clear distinction between the rights of an individual and the rights of a corporation. Corporations don't create new content, individuals do, even if they're working for a corporation at the time.
I have no problem with offering generous legal protection to the rights of individuals or collaborating groups who actually produce new work, if that's the bargain necessary to get those works created in the first place and ultimately contributed to society. I do have a problem with providing similarly generous legal rights to a money-making body that does not itself create new work, simply because the rights were granted to the creators and they were effectively forced to hand them over in exchange for a relatively small pay cheque. The original creators could have created the same work without the help of the corporation middlemen, and exactly one of the two groups is expendable as far as promoting the creation of new works for the benefit of society.
Thus I believe that while it is necessary for corporations to be able to secure some rights in exchange for paying an individual, those rights should be heavily restricted. If copyright is to be given up to a megacorp in exchange for compensation, then the megacorp doesn't need more than a few years (depending on the nature of the work) to capitalise on that before giving up the material to society. Perhaps it should be impossible to transfer copyright at all -- thus preventing the intra-industry collaboration that discriminates against the valuable content creators so much today -- but a business should be able to make an exclusive distribution deal for a fixed time period with the work's creators.
In any case, the current balance surely can't be right. With copyright lasting effectively forever and transferrable, and creators of works effectively forced to hand it over to businesses for a pittance if they want to get serious advertising and distribution volume, the original goal -- to promote the creation and distribution of new works -- is being placed second to corporate profits. Something's got to give, and I think in the reasonably near future, the Internet will be the catalyst for exactly that.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"Dave, I stand still--the conclusions jump to me!" - Bill McNeal, NewsRadio
My own buying habits demonstrate how raising prices will result in lower total revenue.
I play music while gaming. Since we may game for four or five hours over a weekend, I like to get two new movie scores every month. Sometimes it was hard to find two that were good in any given month; finding good music was the limiting factor, not money.
As prices climbed to $18-$20 at Tower, I found I was only buying one a month, or one every two months. This is not a moral stand; I found that the albums cost more than I was willing to pay. The samples did not say "drop $18 on me".
Just after the ITMS opened, I went back to buying albums, mostly at the music store, but often on CD as stores were dropping their prices. I bought one or two a month steadily for over a year. Easy enough to see by looking at the creation date for the music.
I have not bought a new score on CD for the last three months, as the prices have climbed back to $18 at Tower. I have three I am considering at the ITMS, but I note with some dismay that many are not available on a per-song basis.
Again, this is not a moral objection, but a practical one. The Sahara DVD I just bought cost me under $20 with a pre-order. I am not willing to pay $18 of that for a CD, and ITMS is not an option. (The soundtrack is there as an album only, and the score is not to be found.) I find that the music I am hearing is not worth the price they want me to pay. I will live with my 600 albums, and nearly a thousand ITMS tracks until the prices drop again.
I must say, if you own stock in a record company, start selling. There is only one bright spot in the marketing reports from every major label, and that is the ITMS. Killing it by raising the prices for the tracks worth having will just cut revenue.
I am living proof that if they start raising the prices, the product will not sell. Period.
Scott
--- scott_ellsworth@alumni.hmc.edu Java, Databases, and Software Magic
In theory, ¢ or ¢ should also get you this result. If you type these in an html document they work. However, it appears that /. edits these out (although they allow &). :P
Additional character codes can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?