Slashdot Mirror
Cellphone Songs Overpriced?
Carl Bialik writes "Sprint's music store, the first major legal music-download service accessible from cellphones, is charging $2.49 per song because the recording industry and the wireless carriers are engaging in 'a dangerous fantasy,' according to the Wall Street Journal. From the article: 'Since people will pay $2.49 to download a snippet of a song, there's no reason they won't pay that much to download the whole thing. It's an enticing prospect, but one based on the idea that ringtones and downloads are similar. They're not; customers don't see them the same way and won't pay the same price for them, and no amount of wishful thinking will make them change their minds.' Last week, Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg also criticized the pricing: 'For that kind of money, you'd better really, really, really want to download that new Kenny Chesney song, RIGHT NOW, before you can get to a computer.'"
AND both submissions were by the same person. Q.E.D.
its the same damn article too!
He's re-posting a high-moderated post from an earlier thread as a means of Karma-whoring, probably so he can crapflood more effectively later. Oldest trick in the book.
Too bad a quick scan of my recent posting history will show you that he cut-and pasted the whole damned thing (from a thread where it was far more relevant), and I happened to log in and see it, so I could point it out. Kindy spend mod points to bitchslap him into oblivion.
Hey Karma whore, next time, at least take the trouble to plagiarize from some other site.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'm kind of surprised that the title of this thread actually has the word "overpriced" with a question mark next to it...
Well, the opinion of the author for the parent article and the various analysts quoted therein all boil down to the same basic conclusion: consumers aren't that stupid. Obviously, $2.50 per song just isn't going to fly in the real world.
The cellphone companies and the record companies seemed to have formed a much different evaluation of their customers as a key to it's success: they're as dense as lamp posts and will pay almost any amount for something - even if they can ordinarily and easily buy the exact same thing cheaper elsewhere - just because it comes from us, your beloved cellphone provider.
I don't own a cellphone and have no plans for one. Nevertheless, as a casual, outside observer, I'm rooting for one of humanity's famous freebies on this one - common sense.
First Zonk posted a submission from this guy, Carl Bialik, who apparently works for The Wall Street Journal, of a Walter Mossberg WSJ article.
Now ScuttleMonkey posts another submission from Bialik, of a Jason Fry article and this second submission also includes a mention of (and link to) the Mossberg article.
I guess it's a little faster than waiting for an actual Slashdot account holder to notice these articles on the WSJ site and submit them to the Slashdot editors (and I use the term very loosly), but it feels sorta "astroturfy" to me.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
>>>phone will do the same thing given the proper cable.
"IF" your phone can browse the internet and you have some free webspace from your ISP, you can create a web page for yourself and put the wallpapers and tones on it.
Browse to your mobile friendly [minimalist] web page to download.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.