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The Real Reason Behind iTMS Tiered Pricing
Raindance writes "Joel on Software has an interesting piece on why Big Content is making loud noises about moving from 'flat fee' to 'tiered' pricing models on the iTMS. According to Joel, it's not about pricing songs commensurate with their economic value; rather, it's about allowing the labels to manipulate public perception of value through pricing." From the article: "And now when a musician gets uppity, all the recording industry has to do is threaten to release their next single straight into the $0.99 category, which will kill it dead no matter how good it is. And suddenly the music industry has a lot more leverage over their artists in negotiations: the kind of leverage they are used to having. Their favorite kind of leverage. The "we won't promote your music if you don't let us put rootkits on your CDs" kind of leverage."
The snakes have found a way to keep the rats in a coral, or so they think.
They still don't understand that the new age of music and songs and publishing is upon us. You don't need fancy million dollar studios to make music. You don't need radio airplay if you're good enough. You don't even need a marketing blitz if you're good enough.
This article is further proof that the music industry is at heart greedy and evil. They treat their artists like slaves and keep them bound to them with the "company store" tactics. Artists, break away. You don't need them.
What we need now is a MAJOR artist to break away and go it his or her or their own. Someone like Neil Young, or Dylan or the Stones or U2. A major musical act. They have the money to break away, and they can show that it CAN be done. Cut out the middle man, that's all these record companies are. They're unneeded in today's world.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
...they just might eventually.
At this point they are not allowed to become a record label themselves because of the deal that they had to cut with "Apple" records (aka the publishing company front of that wildly popular band from to UK)...at some point I see Apple Computer cutting some reasonable deal with "Apple" records...apple going to the artist directly to get the music out there.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Yeah, that's what I gathered too. Their point of view doesn't make any sense to me, though. If I hear music I like, i get more excited and more likely to buy it if it's cheaper. like a $8.99 CD is way more appealing to me than a $13 CD for instance.
With services like Pandora becoming available, it becomes way easier to be inroduced to acts and artists you don't know, but still really would like. The control of delivery and marketing is slowly eroding, and this should bring the peaks and valleys closer together. i.e. acts considered "less" popular will get more exposure, and acts considered "more" popular will get less, if only because people learn about music different now that radio is being eroded.
atleast, that is the future i would like to see. who knows what's going to happen. Pandora is a great start. I hope it does not lose momentum or run into RIAA roadblocks.
All that theory seems to be based on buying things solely because they're expensive. I mean, he would have us believe that the cool kids would immediately go down the 2.50 new releases, buying each one and scorning the cheap songs. I don't see it working like that.
If I like a song and I see the album, and the album is cheap, I'll take a chance on buying it because I may like more stuff on the album. But if I like a song, and the album costs a fortune, no way will I buy it for just the one song.
And online, I never buy songs that I haven't heard before. Why would anyone do that? It's the proverbial pig in a poke...Don't buy something when you're ignorant of what you're buying, for the proverb impared. So if you already know, then the only reason they can be pushing the higher price is because they think they'll be able to sell enough units to make more profit than they would have made at a lower price.
That's just common sense.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It's just the concept that higher priced 'stuff' tends to get more press and/or public envy. A song that is generating ALOT of money (higher pricepoint) will be promoted more (on the likes of MTV) than a .99 song that isn't bringing in as much. Simple economics.
A while back a friend of mine was telling me about a particular purse that she was trying to sell in her store... $10.00 for a rather plain purse... they stayed on the shelves for months. Finally she instructed one of her employees to mark them down to $7.00. Apparently there was a misscommunication and the purses were marked UP to $70.00. They flew off the shelves. She sold em all within 2 weeks. Price playes a HUGE part in public perception of value.
There's a Joni Mitchel quote that I'll have to paraphrase. "Back in the sixties, record execs were just as conniving and greedy as they are today. The difference is that they actually liked music back then."
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.