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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.'"
yesterday? I didn't realize the WSJ was so desperate for clicks.
What's wrong with them?
Why would I (or anyone else, for that matter?) want to pay $2.49 for a song I can only listen to on my cellphone when I could buy the same song from iTMS for $0.99 and listen to it on my iPod and computers, and burn it to CD then listen to it anywhere?
I am an Army of 1 in 10
#1:
..... if these songs are priced properly then i think it will help in stopping piracy.
When you think about the ridiculous prices people pay for ringtones it's not that crazy. So maybe it'll work for the songs that you just HAVE to have right now, but otherwise why wouldn't you save a few dollars and just wait till you're home and get onto the iTunes store?
#2:
First: Mossberg is almost right.
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."
Should be The other is the U.S. cellphone carriers... since competition works and takes care of this in all other markets.
In Sweden downloadable music for cellphones is 9 cents (0.69 Swedish Crona) per song from ComvIQ [tele2.se].
Second: No-one outside the U.S. will ever buy music just for their cell phones. Everyone over here uses SonyEricssons excellent K750 [sonyericsson.com] or W800i [sonyericsson.com] , syncing them with iTunes and MacOSX using scripts like iTMW [fidisk.fi] or apps like Dreamsicle [kaisakura.com].
Third: I bet a case of beer that SonyEricsson [sonyericsson.com] will include iTunes [apple.com] in their cell phones during 2006. The demand is huge and they know they will have to do it, sooner or later. Nokia will also include iTunes as soon as they realize how Real sucks bigtime.
#3
This type of high pricing is increasing the copying of music and other illegal activities
There.. now the discussion can end.
I see a lot of people questioning the reasoning here, saying that it's ridiculous to pay $2.49 or whatever for a song. The premise, however, is that people are ALREADY PAYING JUST THAT for a small section of the song as a ringtone so they will probably take the whole song for the same price. Hell, if they offer the song and ringtone snippet combined for the same price, they're probably onto a winner. I know that neither you (informed Slashdot reader) nor I (cheapskate student) would pay this much, but if people are already laying out the cash for this stuff why not sell it this convenient way?
Is quantity. People only use a couple ringtones at most, and generally only one even if their phone supports more. A new one is generally only purchased when they grow weary of the old one, which lasts for awhile. Thus, it doesn't seem so bad since you don't pay that often.
Music isn't the same thing, people want a lot of music. Nobody listens to the saem song on loop, they listen to a variety, and with MP3 players a bigger variety than ever. Thus it's bought in larger bulk. Well, that means the price needs to be lower, so people will balk and not pay it.
It would be like noticing that I'll pay $40 for a bottle of Champagne and thus assuming I'll pay the same for a pack of soda. Nope, sorry, all other considerations aside, I consume too much soda. I can swing the $40 once a year or whatever, not once a week.
People are willing to pay the seemingly high price of $2.50 for a ring tone because they will buy them much less often than they buy songs. Most people will buy one ringtone and use it for a month, more or less, then move on to another one. When they go to buy songs, through iTunes or some other service, they're usually buying multiple songs at once, fairly often. At that point, $2.50 becomes far too high a price to the consumer to continue buying songs at that rate.
.99c per song, and what's more is that they actually want to do it. They don't hesitate and think, "is this worth it?" A few dimes over that price is all it really takes to make them decide "no, it's not."
It doesn't take a lot of common sense to figure this out. Why the music peddlers can't figure out is beyond me. They're always trying to push the boundaries of what the consumer will allow in the way of pricing. Right now, iTunes has it just about right. People are willing to pay
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Water too wet?
Microsoft intent on world domination?
Apple makes pretty hardware?
Leeroy Jenkins rules at WoW?
For over a year now, i've been using audacity and kandy to make my own ringtones and transfer them via a $11 USB cable to my Motorola V180. Voila, free ring tones from my massive collection of music.
Not only that, but i can generally make much better sounding snippets, and pick the part of the song that i like (or the whole thing).
This works great for wallpapers made with gimp/xv/imagemagick as well.
He's asking for negative moderation on a reposting of a highly-moderated post from an earlier thread as a means of Karma-whoring, probably using an alternate account to post the original reposting. Second oldest trick in the book.
Hey circuitous Karma whore, next time, at least take the time to flame a repost that ranks highly on some other Karma-based comment system.
My friend just bought a new Samsung phone (or was it LG?) through Rogers here in Canada that supports wave or Mp3 downloadable ring tones. He didn't want a musical ring tone he wanted a real mechanical bell ring like that from his old rotary dial phone. We recorded the phone ring as a wave file and uploaded it to the phone, easy as pie. We could have chosen any song in his collection without purchasing a ring tone, although Rogers certainly offers that option.
I know at least a half dozen other friends whose phone will do the same thing given the proper cable. Why are people paying for ring tones? It must be convenience or perhaps its due to Rogers not crippling the features of their phones like other carriers in the U.S.
...to be able to delete these annoying tones on other people's phones.
from the I-got-ripped-off-at-Great-America-again! dept.
Brand Name Drugs Surprisingly More Expensive Than Generics
from the v1@gr@-isn't-a-generic? dept.
Study Finds Americans Spend Way Too Much Money On Pointless Gadgets
from the look-at-me-I-have-a-clapper dept.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Perhaps John Raulston Saul *is* the lone voice crying in the wilderness...
We are not just wallets to be picked clean in the most expedient way; perhaps it is time to remove the fictional person status from corporations, and make some other legal arrangement that would involve more of an explicit social contract.
As it now stands, the corporations have taken over much of the public dialog.
Having a moral finesse less then your average alley cat, they strive to offer the best "shareholder value" by an official policy that appears to be one of rapine and pillage.
Perhaps we should have "The Corporate Hun" award?
Or perhaps the Corporatist Pravda where the Official Truth can be promulgated unto the masses?
This is progress?
Is why people don't put the songs on their phones themselves? They're quite happy sending photos to each other via bluetooth and downloading songs to their iPods so why don't they download songs to their phones?
I've been doing it for a 4 or 5 years now (initially with IR and midi which I could understand was probably beyond most) but now that its just a case of dragging an iTunes song too your desktop then pressing cmd-shift-b (or right clicking it and choosing send file) to send it to your phone it amazes me that people don't do it more often.
I guess this is the point that the poster was trying to get across. People really don't associate iTunes music with ring tones. It's completely seperate in their heads. One's an impulse buy that they can do whilst watching TV, or waiting for a bus, the other is a considered purchase, even if it is half the price. The only thing that could change that is if Apple introduce a 'make ringtone button' to iTunes - that would REALLY piss off a lot of people (except of course the customers).
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
As someone who set up and managed a major legal music-download service accessible from cellphones over three years ago I really wish the Slashdot editors would actually verify "first" claims like these.
Oh yes, and in case you were wondering, the music tracks were overpriced back then too.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
My old Nokia 3210 had a feature called "composer" where you could type in a tune, note by note, up to 50 notes long. You got three octaves including accidentals, but only one timbre {"tinny little mobile phone speaker"}. Still, if you were canny, you could fit in just enough of the tune to recognise; and 50 notes is actually long enough to answer a telephone, so nobody is going to notice if it stops short.
.....
My new Sony Ericsson {bought before the rootkit debacle, honest!} k750i supports the ability to download ringtones from my phone company's overpriced music store, but it also has several wireless transfer modes. And although the phone refuses to allow you to send a paid-for tone by bluetooth or infrared, there is one thing it can't or won't stop me doing, one wireless transfer mode that is available unconditionally.
If I press Menu, Entertainment, Record Sound, Select, then it uses the phone's own mic to record a sound bite -- which I can later use as a ringtone, and even send to other people by BT or IR. And it works better than you might think. Modern phone mics are quite directional; it has automatic gain control; and the ultimate frequency response is limited at playback time by the ringer speaker. These are all factors that work in your favour. What can the phone manufacturers do about this? Not a lot. They can't very well make phones with no mic; though I admit, I would certainly buy one for my mother if they did
I can get all the ringtones I want, just from watching the TV adverts for them -- so I must be saving a fortune! Although admittedly, it is kind of like a "walk instead of taking the bus - save a pound; walk instead of taking a taxi - save a fiver" saving, cos it's not money IO would ever have spent -- if I couldn't get them for free, I would be more than happy to do without.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
If cellphone songs are overpriced, I'm confident the market will work it out. People just won't buy. I personally don't see much of a point in having a cellphone / mp3 player combination, especially if there is no way to get the overpriced songs you order from your cell provider off of your phone and into a format that you can play on your PC or other portible music player. I'll stick with iTunes and my iPod. Oh and before anyone jumps on my case about the DRM on the songs you purchase from the iTMS, it's about the easiest stuff to get around on the planet. There are tools to strip the DRM and get a plain old AAC file or you can just burn them to CD and re-rip to mp3. Is there bit of a quality loss? Yes. Is it noticeable to me? No.