Slashdot Mirror
Costly Music Store Coming to Cellphones
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The new Sprint Music Store is the first legal music downloading service you can access right from a cellphone, and Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg gives high marks to the interface, download speed and playback quality. But he criticizes the 'stratospheric new price for the legal download of a single song: $2.50.' Sprint justifies the price because of the convenience and usability of its store. Mossberg responds, 'I believe something else is at work here: a lethal combination of two industries many consumers believe typically charge too much. One is the bumbling record industry, which has been seeking to raise prices in the fledgling legal downloading market even as it continues to bleed from free, illegal downloading. The other is the cellphone carriers, or, as I like to call them, "the Soviet ministries," which too often treat their customers as captive and refuse to allow open competition for services they offer over their networks.'"
Does this line mean that Zonk went to the WSJ and cut-n-pasted this article into slashdot as though someone submitted it, or did someone from the WSJ actually submit this to slashdot?
Either way, I'm not sure I like the precedent. (Seeing as how WSJ is subscription-based.)
My other car is first.
Am I the only one who sees this statement as falsely implying that all free downloads are ilelgal as opposed to those not authorized by the copyright holder/on works in the public domain, or is it just me?
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
This type of high pricing is increasing the copying of music and other illegal activities ..... if these songs are priced properly then i think it will help in stopping piracy.
i work for money, if u want loyalty, Go get a Dog.
Consumers will determine if the 2.50 is a lot of money for a song. Many consumers decided that forking $2+ for a ringtone was well worth it.
People who use ringtones deserve to pay too much.
In the context of Doc Searls' interesting essay about communications carriers in general, this is called bundling and it's a classic example of vendor-lockin.
Sprint couldn't just give you decent Internet access and have you go out onto a competitive net and find your own music vendor. They have to try to tie you to their own over priced service. To many carriers, a free and openly competitive Internet puts puts them out of the game by reducing them to what they really are -- nothing more than carriers. Expect more of this in the future.
$2.50 per download. When a cd costs about $12 - $18. That means even for a cd with 10 tracks, the cost is $25. So, they lower their distribution cost to almost nothing and raise the price?!?!?! This is crazy. If they want people to not download the songs for free, why don't they make it affordable. If they charged a reasonable fee (like $0.25 per download, people would download songs like hotcakes around the world). Imagine the worldwide market of say 1 billion internet users and rising as opposed to the few people who will actually download this stuff.
No Sigs!
1) Cell phones have the same problem as broadband... somebody has to install all the last-mile equipment. It's a pretty big investment, so only a handful of companies do it. And ultimately those companies are able to throw their weight around, even when they resell their traffic to other carriers.
2) In the US, consumers buy their cell phones from the carriers, instead of directly from the manufacturer. They do this because carriers give them a big discount in exchange for a longer service contract. However, this means that the relationship between the carrier and the manufacturer is very strong, so the carriers have a lot of influence over what features the manufactuers build into phones. It's kind of like what would happen if the cable company were able to tell the TV manufacturers what to do, or if broadband ISP's were able to tell computer manufacturers what to do.
First the ringtone market seems to be booming, from over 2 billion now to maybe 5 billion in the next few years. Why do people buy these ringtones? Why not just download the song, crop it, and transfer to phone. Well, many people don't know how to do the later. And even if they did, imagine the value of showing your friends that you have a cool ringtone.You are out drinking your $5 beer or $5 coffe, perhaps $2 for a song is not so much.
Second, people pay a great deal of money to see a concert that is mostly lights and mirrors, when an equally talented musician could be seen for much less, sans the flash. Why do people pay so much for these concerts? For the music? To be seen? For the socilization? To have beer spilt on thier clothes? Clearly the value is there.
At the end of the day, people spend money on stupid stuff. Perhaps the market for this is kids who do not have money for an album, but can afford to buy single songs off thier phone, then figure out some way to pay for it at the end of the month. Perhaps the retailers are hoping that everyone with a cell phone will buy one song per month. Clearly the cash is there, and the impulsiveness is there. Now we have opportunity. People want phones to do cool stuff. At this markup no one has to sell a lot of songs, just a few.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
-Well ...only one in one thousand !
-Let's see : $2.50 x (# customers) / 1000 .....Hey! it's profitable !
-Let's go for it...
What stops you using a different device?
Unavailability of compatible "different devices" in the United States, perhaps? I've looked but failed to find any providers with decent coverage in the United States that advertise SIM-only plans or any place to buy a SIM-less GSM phone in the United States.