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U.S. Investigating Online Music Pricing
An anonymous reader writes "Times Online has a story about the U.S. Federal Government investigating whether the music labels are fixing prices for online music sales. 'The antitrust division is looking at the possibility of anti-competitive practices in the music download industry ... Mr Jobs suggested such a move would drive owners of Apple's iPod, the hugely popular digital music player, to piracy, a problem that has cost the music industry billions in revenues in recent years.'"
From the fine article:
I wonder, does Mr. Jobs actually believe this, or is this casual conjecture/repetition by the author?
Regardless, I'm still curious about and waiting for the definitve and objective study that shows real correlation, because I still don't believe it.
The biggest "cost" to the music industry over the last five years has been and continues to be their disdain for the consumer (e.g., the SONY debacle, protected "CDs") and their insistance on charging similar fees for songs even while the business model dramatically evolves (e.g., hugely cheaper distrubution channels).
Heck, if the music companies were found to be colluding by charging $15+ per CD years back (they were), what are the chances they are doing the same now when the per-tune cost remains the same as distribution costs drop?
My biggest fear though is the music industry gets "caught" and settles in similar fashion to their previous settlement, à la "giving away" free downloads (by the truckload) to local libraries, but restricting the downloads to non-selling tracks. Sigh.
Is I've worked on productions where the label buys up copies of their cd to go platinum.....
how did everyone get so damn crooked????
fucking bother, the last thing we need is the government making a production out of an antitrust or price fixing case only to issue some limp dick fine, which proporitionally is less than what I pay for a speeding ticket.
I don't even have to RTFA to see that one.
At what point does what the RIAA is doing constitute breaking some kind of law? Anti-trust maybe? Anyone have some insight into this?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Yes, of course, because simply by being an Apple product owner, we can truly be assured the person is not normally anti-corporate and/or given to illegal substances!
I say, good chap, surely the girl in tie-dye and cargo pants at the Genius Bar is an optical illusion.
I think the reality is that anti-trust problems and pricefixing problems are pretty much pre-destined anytime you have a monopoly, and when you have a government granted monopoly on copying and distribution (copyrights) it is a money back guarantee.
It always amazes me to see all these people who are in-dignified about this when it's their own belief system in copyrights that pre-destined this to begin with.
fining them (and by proxy the customer) doesnt work
you need to hurt them in order to provide an incentive not to do it again
in the old days it was fear of death, but thesedays punishhment for a C*O is a million dollar parachute and a life in consulting and greater luxury that you will ever see,
strip anyone caught of their assets (including their families assets) and they will soon think twice before treating their customers with such contempt
might work for politicians too, though a long range rifle and a steady hand would probably be more effective
Obviously, all of you just DON'T understand. In order to properly make a recording, not only to you need musicians and a producer; you need lawyers, agents, marketing reps, and dozens of other various hangers on. Without this huge support staff, then how else could you justify charging so much for a recording?
In fact Jobs is complaining about the behavior being investigated, I.E., Jobs is objecting to price fixing.
Jobs has been vocal for a long time against attempts by the labels to try to forcibly raise online music sales.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Indeed. The message seems clear enough to me: "Don't f**k with Steve Jobs."
The music industry tried to get greedy by forcing Jobs' to raise prices on music. He pushed back and told them it would kill iTunes. The music companies banded together and tried to force his hand. Now, suddenly, the justice department is interested in allegations of price fixing. Coincidence? I think not.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
So for what your government is spending your money on in running this inquiry, customers could sure have alot of free downloads. How much will this investigation cost? $10mil, $20mil? At the end of the day, you're getting screwed both ways -- paying for your music, and paying a government that keeps changing the copyright policies in the US to favor large corporations.
If you want to stop anti-competitive practices, digital distribution needs to adopt the rules of radio:
Download services should have the right to sell any digital recording now, and compensate artists afterwards. There should be nothing "exlusively on iTunes" (or eMusic for that matter).
Opening competition prevents unfair business practices (to some extent, anyway, worth a shot!).
The most benefit investigating online music pricing would go for large labels, who have been trying to set different prices for different tracks, against Apple's 1 song 1 price model. It is in the interest of the big labels to be able to force Apple to sell certain song more expensively. If not with distribution negotiations, then with government initiated investigation.
This administration has already proven it's unwilling to pursue anti-trust litigation. They managed to bury the single most important anti-trust suit of our time to date, and microsoft is still doing what they do in the US, while the rest of the world cracks down on them.
Personally I think this is just that, an investigation, with little backbone or political will to see it come to court. It would detract from their "war on terrorism" and listening in on all their warrentless wiretaps.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
... execs drive big cars (read: hummers) and man, it takes a lot of $ to fill those tanks...
"piracy, a problem that has cost the music industry billions in revenues in recent years"
Please, lets not jump to conclusions like this, ok?
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
$1/song as iTunes charges (I think) is hardly a good price. $12 for 12 songs is the price of an average CD. The best deal I ever got was "The Essential Clash" with some 40 (good) songs for $13. iTunes can't deliver that.
You mean to tell me that $0.00 isn't enough?
"piracy, a problem that has cost the music industry billions in revenues in recent years.'"
I don't buy it one bit. I always find comments/stats like this to be funny. How does that go again, 76.34% of stats are made up?
Whos to say that Redneck Billy Bob would really have paid for that Britney Spears album that had the song that he pirated? Or that your great aunt Ethal, really would had bought that Iron Maiden album from that song she pirated?
I think these numbers are grossly exaggerated and most likely, just made up. How are you to statically calculate a loss of a non-material product that you are "assuming" someone "would have" purchased legally?
The RIAA and MPAA need to get knocked off their little soap box and stop preaching their bullshit. It isn't like they aren't making enough money as it is, those fat cats pockets just keep getting bigger. Not to mention, established artists are not hurting either. The people that are getting hurt buy this are the struggling artists, that the music industry is already raping as it is. But do you hear these stuggling artists bitching, no, most of them are not. Most of them realize the more people that can hear the music, the more fans they are going to get. True fans that will buy their albums and support them.
Do you think online music is priced fairly?
No, and here is my suggestion:
0.20 cents for each 128 kbps song
0.40 cents for each 256 kbps song
0.60 cents for each 320 kbps song
0.80 cents for each lossless song
The better the audio quality, the higher the price.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Record Industry Buiness plan
1. Fix your price at a point higher than what the market wants.
2. Find comsumers who priate your music because they dont want to pay set price.
3. Extort said persons for more than they would ever spend in a year for music.
4. ???
5. Profit
They got it pretty good, they make money of those who acutally buy thier songs and make money of those who dont.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
Chris Anderson the Editor in Chief and the Author of the soon to be released Long Tail Book posted this on his blog last year why the labels need variable pricing and the fixed priced model is flawed and the reason that Steve Jobs opposes it is because hes in the business of selling iPods and the sale of iTunes music is only a secondary part of his business .
Could the labels actually be right?
Ipod_although it's tempting to assume that the evil record labels are once again trying to gouge us, there's some sense in their latest efforts to get Apple to abandon it's one-size-fits-all pricing model. A New York Times article over the weekend reported on the ongoing struggle between the labels and Apple over its fixed $0.99 price point. The labels would like to sell most new music for more--$1.49/track?-- while older or more obscure tracks could go for less.
There's plenty to like about variable pricing. For starters, it's almost always the most efficient way to maximize markets of disparate goods and customers. As Barry Ritholtz puts it:
It's a basic rule of economics: goods that have elastic demand (i..e, non essential) are highly price sensitive. Further, any item easily available for free (albeit illegally) will have an even bigger response to price increases.
Apple has argued that single-price simplicity was necessary in the early days of the service, when people were just getting used to paying to download music. But now, after 500m tracks have been sold, we're clearly past the early adopter phase. So what's the right pricing model going forward?
Most accounts of the dispute between Apple and the labels have focused on the industry's efforts to raise prices, which are undeniably a big part of their plan. No surprise there. The research we've been doing for the book shows that within the bulk of the online music business--the top 100,000 downloads--only 3.5 tracks on the average CD sell. So the record labels are getting less than $3 in revenue (wholesale) from albums when the music is sold by the track. That's less than half the wholesale price of a CD (although with none of the physical costs of making and distributing a CD). The shift from an album model to a track model is indeed an alarming thing for the labels, and it's easy to see why they'd want to raise retail prices online as a result.
But there's more to the story that that. The labels may be evil, but they're not (all) stupid. They--to say nothing of many of their artists--also see the virtues of dropping the price for lots of their music, too. For decades they've been playing with CD pricing models that range from cut-price classics to top-dollar boxed sets, and when freed of the overheads of traditional retail, they're likely to experiment more, not less. Although some of the more vocal commentators have encouraged Apple to hold the line at $0.99, there's a strong argument that introducing variable pricing might ultimately lead to a more consumer-friendly outcome.
The reason is simple Long Tail math: there's a lot more music in the Tail than there is in the Head, and labels are generally more willing to experiment with discount pricing outside of the top 1,000 than they are with their hits. Those niches represents most of the music available today, measured by number of titles, and because they're only modest sellers individually they're less likely to create channel conflict with CD retailers, who tend to only stock the hits.
Imagine, for starters, that Apple introduces a three-tiered band of pricing: $1.49, $.99 and $.79 (that would no doubt soon expand to include $.49, but below that the transaction costs of credit card processing and the like start to loom large). Tiered pricing--gold, silver, bronze--is still pretty simple for consumers to understand, yet it introduces a valuable new dimension of demand creation.
Rhapsody, for instance, saw demand triple last year when it cut prices in half, to $0.49. And the average usage per customer in the all-you-ca
and it creates a monopoly-style pricing situation.
Imagine if Intel and AMD got together and agreed to not sell CPUs for less than $500. Suddenly you would have to pay much more for a computer, and Intel and AMD would get much higher profit margins. As long as they keep to this agreement, people who want to run an x86 computer, don't have a choice but pay the extra.
The reason the prices are so low for most CPUs at the moment is because of the competition between those two manufacturers.
The suggestion is that the large music companies, rather than trying to compete against eachother on price, have an (informal?) agreement on what they will sell their music at, somewhat above their actual cost.
One important difference is that music companies don't compete on price as much as they compete with their "artists". No matter how low a britany spears album is priced, I won't buy it.
you mean "billions in potential revenues"
No more cd media costs.
No more cd container costs.
No more printed liner costs.
No shipping costs.
Drastically reduced distribution costs.
And it ends up costing me more than ever to download a wrapped physical CD worth of music that has been shipped to a retail location.
Something is not right here.
Indeed. Their attitude towards Microsoft, Sony, and the recording industry highlights how truly un-free market the Republicans (and Democrats) are.
While the free market is a truly remarkable beast, it at times does fail. Even the most diehard libertarian recognizes that fact, and accepts that sometimes extramarket forces are needed to correct such failures.
Corporations are often considered a free market aberration. They allow for monopolistic and oligopolistic situations to arise, and such situations are often not good for any market. We end up seeing situations where one company (or a small group of companies) can basically hold an entire industry hostage, not to mention wronging their customers repeatedly.
That is why those who truly support the free market do support government intervention. The market has failed, such failure is obvious, and thus it does require some help to get working again. Unfortunately, it is doubtful we will see the current administration, let alone any in the near future, taking the necessary actions.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
...Didn't I remember reading an industry publication about the fact that iPod/iTunes users are actually less likely to engage in piracy than non-iPod/iTunes user? That the rate of piracy amongst iPod/iTunes users is estimated at between ~5% to ~15%, while non-users are estimated around ~60%?
This sounds to me like the RIAA is throwing a tantrum and wielding its legislative power to force Apple to increase prices on iTunes like they've been bitching about for the past year or two. "What? 99 cents a song? That's not enough of a profit margin for us! We want to charge people $2.50 per song!" So they claim "price fixing" and "unfair pricing" so they can have an excuse to sue Apple into allowing them to dictate the sale prices.
Problem is that the RIAA is keeping to an obsolete sales scheme. Increasing prices for music downloads decreases the incentive to buy and increases the incentive for piracy. The whole effing point of iTunes is to provide a sales forum where prices are low enough that users consider the risk/benefit ratio to be in their favor (i.e., buying versus piracy).
Dog in the manger syndrome, anyone?
I will never pay to download a lossy file. Sadly some of the russian sites offer a large amount of lossless files. While the legal ones don't
Commit suicide. Then you don't have to choose, and two new losers will gain access to untapped ass resources.
Of course they are price fixing. The Copyright is the price fix!
The Copyright Act of 1790, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books to the Authors and Proprietors of Such Copies, was modeled on the Statute of Anne (1710). It granted American authors the right to print, re-print, or publish their work for a period of fourteen years and to renew for another fourteen.
Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended protection from life of the author plus fifty years to life of the author plus seventy years.
That means a work can be price fixed for 140 to 300 years, compared to the original 28 years.
Every time you walk into a Barnes and Noble or Borders, everything on all those shelves is just information that is artificially inflated to a length of time longer than the US has existed.
Bloody hell, there's price fixing of all music! When you buy a CD at any given store, how often can you get it cheaper than anywhere else?
I wouldn't be suprised if this was initiated by Microsoft because their WM stuff is having a hard time............ *Puts tin foil hat firmly on*
Why not look at CD pricing? They have been fixing this crap for decades. Why do we NEVER see market aberrations? We should see the occasional new CD come out for $5.00, right? Everyone involved would still make money, so you'd figure there would HAVE to be a label out there trying to undercut the others this way--at least an ATTEMPT.
Coincidence? I think not.
Given the fact that Apple lost its lawsuit against MS, the DoJ abruptly dropped its case against MS when Bush came in on his first term, and Al Gore is on Apple's board, I find it unlikely that Jobs has much pull with the federal government. That said, Apple is a major force in the tech economy right now, so the feds might be willing to give Jobs more of an ear than usual simply because he runs a high-impact, successful company.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This story IS NOT about Microsoft. Jesus, not everything at Slashdot revolves around Redmond, most, but not all. Sure, most of Slashdot's ad money comes from Microsoft, but this ISNT a Microsoft web site. Move the fuck on.
how about music companies offer downloads at the prices they would like to offer downloads. and if we do not like the price, we do not buy. seems simple enough. it's not like we are talking air or water here.
The problem with this variable pricing, based on the product's age, is that many (most?) people will simply wait until the price of the item drops to purchase it. Just like DVDs.
How many people now skip seeing a movie in the theater and buy the DVD? How many of those wait 6 months after the DVD release for the price to come down?
The movie industry still mainly counts only the opening box office receipts as the guage of a movie's success. Who's to say the music industry doesn't do something similar.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
www.allofmp3.com... 192kbps for $.012USD Life is good!
um... Moby Dick, live version. Bitchin' drum solo.
You mean to say that setting the price of a song at 99 cents, regardless of duration, regardless of who the artist is, regardless of how popular it might be as long as it comes from a major label is considered price fixing??
[shocked] No! Way!
Oliver / http://www.treasuretunes.com/
That is sort of odd, how some people complain about the negative effects of extreme copyrights (protectionist laws) but then think the solution is yet... more protectionist laws.
That would be like passing legislation to make OS requirements (like no bundling), because you hate MS, but then those very regulations in effect limit competition, thus turning MS into a real monopoly.
Record labels want to stop price fixing of online music. The want spearate pricing for each song, depending onit's popularity. Apple is the one that thinks every song should cost $0.99, and want to force all record labels to take their cut from this revenue.
Vote for Pedro
You know anyone who really looks at the situation, it is obvious that the RIAA is wanting these investigations to happen. If they get their way, they can force itunes to either use tiered pricing or not and lose lots of money.
Ever since i was young, CDs have been outrageously priced, and when all you wanted was 1 to 2 songs off an album, you are still paying what 3-4 dollars for a "single", 1 song remixed 4 times(and shitty remixes at that) or every once in a while they throw you a good track other then that single.
Personally I do not hear the difference between Lossless and 196 bit rate songs. I am no audiophile and yes i use my ipod with my white headphones. They are comfortable. Plain and simple. If they want to do tier pricing, all done by bit rate, I almost guarantee a lot of people will not be buying lossless, just in cost factor
If this goes through, I do not believe you will see any songs at less then $0.99 , you will just see popular songs go up in price. The one truly sad thing about 1 tier pricing like this is any Independant artists songs are going for the same price all the rest of the crap is there for..
If you go through every CD you own right, how many songs out of the total do you like, and will listen too. Even on my favorite bands soundtracks, there are 2-4 songs i don't like. This is why they want to make more money..Now you don't have to buy the whole caboodle, so they need to make all their xtra profit somewhere.
The other problem is Amounts of sales from Albums. The RIAA cant just buy up stocks up CDS to get their artist recognized anymore Like they used to. You know what happens to those CD's? Most of the time, they are either given away or resold at concert venues.
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
so blind people can hate them too!
Unfortunately, it was worth every penny.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Mr Jobs suggested such a move would drive owners of Apple's iPod, the hugely popular digital music player, to piracy, a problem that has cost the music industry billions in revenues in recent years.
:D (Don't thank me, it was my duty)
OK let me fix that for you.
Mr Jobs suggested such a move is a problem that has cost the music industry billions in revenues in recent years.
THERE!
Copyright isn't the problem. Copyright is what allows creative people to believe thier stuff won't get pirated as soon as it is exposed to the public. If you think DRM and licensing is a nightmare now, think what it would be like if there were no legal framework for ti to work within. Content owners could and would demand any kind of onerous restrictions to be sure they didn't get reamed by their own customers.
... $1M , DVD studio cost ... $30M). Music people have no one but themselves to blame for piracy. It is just payback for the gouging they do on a regular basis, even at WalMart.
The problem (among others) is high price. By demanding high prices in the face of easy alternatives, copyright owners are encouraging piracy. Most folks would be happy to get a legitimate copy of something, and therby help the creator, if the price was "fair". You never see anyone go to a library and copy a whole book, even though it would be marginally cheaper than buying the same book at some local store. And the reason is the margin is so low that the benefit of a properly bound book is worth the extra few dollars. DVD and CD manufacturers need to take a lesson.
By the way, ever notice that the retail price of a CD and of a DVD are about the same? We know the music CD has far less data on it, and costs less to produce at the studio to stamping plant stages. Even if unit sales of each are comparable, the CD should be cheaper, probably by a factor of 10 or more (CD studio cost
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
While I do respect this action, I find it disappointing that it was instigated by Apple as opposed to an independent consumer. It is now up to companies with lots of clout (e.g. Apple in this case, Google in expanding the public domain against ownerless copyrights, and Microsoft in decrying Sony's rootkits) to uphold the greater good! More and more, money==power.
Note the labels set wholesale pricing, not retail pricing. This means Steve Jobs is the one who determines tracks will be $.99. There are, in fact, different price points for the same music if you go to other legitimate download stores. For example, Walmart.com charges $0.88 for the same tracks iTunes has.
I dunno... If it gets cheaper than skeet, and fits in the launcher.
PULL!!
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The "$.99 a song" model favours punk records with less than 2 min a track over symphonic rock extravaganzas that would deliver eighty solid minutes of music at $2.97 How's that for market distortion?
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
iTunes should base it's pricing on demand. The first 1000 downloads of an unknown artist would be free, but the new U2 track before the album is release could sell for $10 or $20. Think how much scalpers get for tickets to a sold out Rolling Stones concert.
Since this is online, it prices could move in realtime, ala Max Headroom's TV ratings system.
This is similar to how airlines price their tickets. They have steep discounts on lesser routes on days when most people don't fly, but business traveler routinely pay $600 for the same flight someone might pay $49.
In fact, using the airline model, fans could pay for songs before they are performed and get a steep discount. (or a refund if it never is released) This way a few thousand fans can guarantee a niche artist a living in a way the current model never could.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"If they told Apple that they wanted to make some songs cheaper and leave popular songs the same there wouldn't have been so much of a problem. They'd still make all that money from the long tail."
No. If they make songs cheaper, Apple still sells them for $0.99, and Apple makes more money. Do I need to dig up quotes for you where Steve Jobs says all music should cost $0.99.
Vote for Pedro
Copyright isn't the problem. Copyright is what allows creative people to believe thier stuff won't get pirated as soon as it is exposed to the public. If you think DRM and licensing is a nightmare now, think what it would be like if there were no legal framework for ti to work within.
I dunno... If copyrights disapeared tomorrow, people would still make movies, play music, and write books.
In fact it might improve the industry by getting people out who are doing nothing but writing and producing crap just to make money (Uwe Boll anyone?)
If no one made money off their works, then only true artists would continue doing so. Performances would continue and people would live off commisions by people who pay the artists directly.
As of right now, most artists don't receive enough royalties as it is from the labels to make a living even if they sell millions. The only real benefit of selling CDs means you end up selling out shows and selling t-shirts. But they aren't mutually exclusive...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Much like movies, there's not a lot of competition for music. Most people see all the good movies that come to the local movie theaters, and most people buy all the music that appeals to them. We live in an affluent society.
Unless you're poor (12%), or a starving student, when you go into a music store, you look for the one good album you want. You might browse, but rarely do people pit one good album against another for their dollars.
The record and movie companies has a goverment back monopoly on the specific items they sell. Other industries use branding to differentiate themselves, but with music Sony has a completely different catalog than say, Warner Music.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
The parent is offtopic, not a troll. If I was lying it may, possibly be a troll but I really am wondering as I'm goign to see the new chick tonight. Suicide is not an acceptable answer.
I already pursue your "substitute goods" for music. IMHO, that's not the greatest ill.
There are 2:
1: RIAA (and MPAA, for that matter) are busy buying legislation effectively giving them veto power over the electronics industry. The most likely consequence will be to further push the electonics industry off of US soil. Maybe I don't have to buy their stuff, but if they get this veto power, it endangers my job.
2: The Constitution identified patents and copyrights with an eye to the common good, with the intent that both were to enter the public domain after a "limited time," and become fodder for future arts and invention. My favorite quote, though perhaps not directly applicable, is Isaac Newton. (probably a botched paraphrase) "If I see further, it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants." Copyrights and patents granted "limited monopolies" to keep inventors inventing and artists artisting, and THEN to contribute basis for future works. NOT to guarantee contuing income for any person or corporation.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
What are you talking about. Just because people can use substitute goods and can't get any price they want, doesn't mean that there isn't price fixing and anti-trust behavior.
If the RIAA manage to extract $20 for a CD or $.99 a song from your neighbor despite the fact that you can put your own music for free or for $.10c on the net then MORE POWER TO THE RIAA. It's called MARKET POWER. It means that they have invested the time and effort to make their product worth what the market is willing to pay. You and I may not like sylvia browne's shite books or britney's shite music, but they have managed to convince the market that they are worth paying over the odds for them.
Well the problem is that the RIAA can't extract that much, so instead they try to kill alternate distribution chanels while screaming bloody murder about incentives and property rights. Well bullshit. Alot of people make it investing their time and effort without a little personalized government monopoly, in fact most artists do, because only 1% of 1% benefit from the way the copyright system is set up now.
The basic economic phenomenon here has NOTHING to do with copyrights ....
If I artifically restricted the natural supply of food to people arround the world because "I had no incentive", most people would see that as the pure economic evil that it is. But when they restrict the natural flow of information, then oh my God "It's a RIGHT !!! " ... Well bullshit, it's not a right and has everything to do with economics.
Courtney Love said:
She goes on to say that the internet removes those gates; but it doesn't quite do so, because of copyright...For the Intel/AMD collusion, and the entrance of IBM with a cheaper chip, we would need to arrive at a 5th major label who was not only willing to undercut the existing majors, but could attract sufficient talent to become a major label. Others have tried - I'm not holding out hope.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Are encoded in IT sweatshops by 10 years olds fededing disks into double spin CD-ROM drives attached to 386 computers.
mp3search.ru 10 cents a track.
Who do you think is paying for Bush to download his music? I'm sure it's on his work computer with a good white-house credit card number.
Just be happy that iTunes is easy to use- could you imagine how many hours (and how much less would get done around here) if Bush had to download torrents in order to get the latest bee-bop hit?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Right, and what statistician came up with this number? It doesn't take a mathematical genius to see that there's not only an x factor here, but a y and probably z and alpha beta gamma factor here.
How do they even know how much people are downloading? Some traffic is encrypted, some isn't, there's no way they are monitoring every traffic type. So there's one thing. If they even managed to grab that statistic, how do they know what percentage of this is piracy? A lot of it could be legitimate use, even bittorrent gets used on linux distributions. Let's say they grabbed that number too, how do they know what percentage of this piracy is music piracy versus games piracy, or application piracy, or ebooks, or movies, or whatever? Even if they came up with that, how do they know the person who pirated the music would've bought it.
I understand that they have calculated that they should've grown x% last year and instead they lost y%, but there could also be other factors that play a role in that. Growth could simply slow of its own accord. People could've already bought all the CDs they wanted and didn't buy as many this year. How about maybe a lot of people don't like the new music coming out? Or maybe a lot of people bought indie or underground releases and listened to them instead of the latest offerings from the crapaganda kings like Sony and Atlantic. There's no way they know even one of these factors because other than random polling you couldn't even estimate. The average person probably doesn't even know how much they would've spent if they didn't download a few bittorrents here or there, what they would've bought and wouldn't have, so who knows?
For years your corporate musical sponsors have gotten away with relaying garbage albums put together by elected pop princes and princesses with one popular song that people like and a bunch of gibberish in place of the rest of the album. Then they'd charge 15 dollars a CD even though it cost them 25 cents because your 11 year old daughter simply had to had the latest Shitney Spears album. Well, now all of that is coming back to haunt them. The consumer has another option that involves paying the amount that this kind of trash is worth: $0.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
You, uh, DO realize that cyber-sex parody was born, played, and panned out within the space of 16 minutes in 1994, right?
No, it isn't. The RIAA labels have no monopoly on music. My friends in Posamist are coming out with their first commercial CD next week (the first 4 were free; you can get MP3s at their web site). My other friends from The Station have 2 CDs out. Still more buds from Inspected By Twelve (don't know their URL, sorry) have a CD out as well.
In fact, the last two dozen CDs I've bought are from local bands; friends, acquaintences, and strangers. There are likely more non-RIAA CDs for sale than there are from the big four.
What they DO have a monopoly on is radio. THIS is what should be investigated.
-mcgrew
The 12 o'clock commodities report on 1280 a.m. Witchita...
Key Today in the futures market from the Chicago commodities exchange, porkbellies are up three on strong market demand, "Black Eyed Peas" are down 2 on general digust over soiled pants, Winter Wheat is steady and "Cold Play" is up 1/2 on a modest Pitchfork track review, corn is down one half and "Korn" is up 3/4 with annoucement of summer tour. Those are the big movers so far to day tune in at 1:30 for the current action in the futures market. Now back Mark Stephans for today's weather outlook and almanac.
Speaking of politics an Apple:
Apple really seems to be above the fray of politics. You mention Al Gore on the board of Apple, but Rush Limbaugh has talked about hi Powerbook on the air before and podcasts his show. Up thread from this message its noted that Bush has an Ipod.
So heres what I think. Jobs' reality distortion field doesn't care what your political persuasion is. And back on topic, for those of us under the influcence of the field, we know iTunes = good, Record Companies = bad.
Ok then - as someone who admits they are not an economist, I will defer to a couple of people who have Phd's in economics. If you dare, click on the link in my sig and feel free to read Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine. You might see things a little differently after reading it.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
I saw a music cd of the soundtrack for one of the shrek movies retailing for more money than the dvd (sitting two shelves over) of the movie, which HAD THE SOUNDTRACK, properly integrated in to the movie. Did it really cost them MORE to take the music, NOT ADD VIDEO OR VOICES, shove it in a SMALLER container with a CHEAPER disc, and sell it to the SAME distribution channel? Christ. Sorry, that rant has been building up for a while :P
If you're interested in what I mean and/or want to debate these points, read Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine first.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Gnutella (Limewire, Shareaza, BearShare, etc.) every track free
AND content creators get the same compensation as they do from mp3search.ru and allofmp3.com!
I've read so many posts about how Apple is totally screwing consumers with 128kbps songs that I had to check out the difference. For various reasons, I have a handful of songs in my library that I have both ripped from CD and bought from iTunes (CD was lost then found, or borrowed from friend after buying online, etc.). So I sat here this morning and listened to exact duplicates of the same song for a couple different songs - the only difference is that one was ripped @ 192 kbps and the other is 128 kbps AAC. Now, I have Computer speakers that are not that expensive ($150 or so JBL speakers) but that is pretty representative of most people that are "fools" for buying music online.
So here's the kicker - I sat here playing a bunch of songs with my girlfriend standing over my shoulder. NEITHER OF US COULD TELL THE DIFFERENCE. Not even a little bit.
So to get back on track - for most of the population, you would have to be a complete retard to pay twice as much for a 256 kbps song than you do for a 128 kbps track. Most of us don't own and will never own equipment that can differentiate the two. And you would have to have had a frontal lobotomy to consider paying 4x as much for a lossless track when I seriously doubt many audio devices can even take full advantage of the 256 kbps bitrate. So Apple will NEVER price the tracks this way, and people who think that is a good idea are about as intelligent as those aforementioned frontal lobotomized folks.
"iTunes can't deliver that"
that's completely bogus, have you even looked at the itunes music store?
from itunes:
James Brown: 20 All Time greatest Hits! = 20 songs for $5.99 = $.30 per song
from your best deal you ever got:
Essential Clash = 40 songs for $13 = $.32 per song
there are also other good deals to be found on itunes if you bothered to look:
Best of Pixies = 23 songs for $9.99
Neil Young Greatest Hits = 16 songs for $9.90
U2: Pop = 12 songs for $6.99
NIN: downward spiral deluxe edition = 27 songs for $11.99
/ http://suffocate.us
/ http://johngrayson.com
I think the whole music industry needs a wake-up call. Most music out today is awful and is not worth the money charged to buy the CD. If all illegal copying of music stopped tomorrow I think the music industry would not see an overly large increase in sales. People are willing to take something that they can get for free that they would never be willing to purchase if they had no other choice. I think the copying does allow music to be more widely distributed and allows more people to be exposed to it. I have purchased many CDs because I was able to listen to the music and decided I liked it.
Isn't pricing by country evidence enough of price fixing? Why are songs sold through itunes in Japan a different price than the US? Why is the UK different? Why is Soviet Russia different ... Uh, nevermind about Russia. I hope M$ and Apple both insert a huge anal probe into the RIAA -- neither one of them like there deals (I'm just guessing, maybe they do like the deal). I hope that DRM is found to be a monopoly making technology and is banned. I also hope that the beggers get to ride.
I will summarize boldrine and levine for you in the following statement (if i remember their nonsense correctly - I remember laughing my ass off reading their crap while I was completing my PhD):
"We have a great new idea that will make traditional Intellectual Property mechanisms obsolete! It's called 'doctrine of first sale.' The way that it works is >>> SOUND AND FURY SIGNIFYING NOTHING, HANDWAVING, HANDWAVING, IGNORING OBVIOUS PROBLEMS AND INCOMPLETENESS, A BIT OF JARGON, PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN READ their paper. Go on - do it! I mean seriously sit down and read their paper. To quote jay and silent bob, it's fucking clownshoes. I guarantee you that if you approach it with an open mind, you will see that there's really nothing there other than half of an idea that, unfortunately, without the other half is incomplete.
I mean, why else would I find a $22 cd at musicland/samgoody?
freakin rediculous. and they wonder why people pirate.
The price point is right around $10.
Make it that, and I will buy CDs again.
It's that simple.
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
I mean, why else would I find a $22 cd at musicland/samgoody?
freakin rediculous. and they wonder why people pirate.
The price point is right around $10.
Make it that, and I will buy CDs again.
It's that simple.
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
$0.99/song is a terrible business model for emerging artists. If I were actively trying to expend my fanbase, I would want to be able to distribute my music through iTunes to potential fans at a much lower unit cost than, say, Jay-Z or Tom Petty would. Because distribution and packaging costs are zero and supply is unlimited, I would want to make my iTunes tracks available at a cost just high enough to cover Apple's bandwidth and turn a small profit. Production costs are small because modern technology is cheap. Very excellent albums can be produced for just a few thousand dollars if the artist is creative and enterprising. These facts become less valuable to emerging artists, however, if they are forced to price their tracks equal to established ones. In some ways it operates contrary to the intent of the copyright system in the first place, which is to incentivise the creative process. The market would be healthier if Apple didn't force listeners to choose between proven and unproven commodities priced at the same level.
"By the way, ever notice that the retail price of a CD and of a DVD are about the same? We know the music CD has far less data on it, and costs less to produce at the studio to stamping plant stages. Even if unit sales of each are comparable, the CD should be cheaper, probably by a factor of 10 or more (CD studio cost ... $1M , DVD studio cost ... $30M). Music people have no one but themselves to blame for piracy. It is just payback for the gouging they do on a regular basis, even at WalMart."
What something is worth is due to supply and demand, not how much data is on the disk or how much the original costs, or whatever. So why is music more expensive per bit than a movie. Maybe because a person who buys a cd will play it many times while most people only want to see a movie once, so the demand for owning movies is lower than owning music.
"Music people have no one but themselves to blame for piracy. "
That's intelligent. Blame the victim. Msuic producers have the right to set whatever price they want. You don't have the right to just take something because you can't get it at a price you want.
Vote for Pedro
Hmm.. maybe that's not what you meant at all (though it certainly sounded like it). If not, then exactly what monopolistic or anti-competitive practices would you consider problematic?
Not anymore :-)
The Essential Clash huh? From Sony? Rootkit fiesta Sony? I think I'll pass. Regarding 12 songs for $12... albums are $9.99 at iTMS. 12 songs from 12 different albums... $12 bucks. RIAA style? $12 x 12 albums == $144.
Jobs should have iTunes give not just the price, but also a list of how much goes to iTunes, the recording company, and to the artist.
That would get the message across really fast.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Put in absolute terms (for simple argumentation): A monopoly/oligopoly only has "relevance" if it controls something that has no substitutes.
Put in more intelligent terms: The fewer legitimate substitutes there are for a given good, the (socially) "worse" a monopolistic/ologopolistic supplier of that good is.
Therefore: a monopolist who controls the worlds oxygen supply would be far worse than one that controls the world's pineapple supply.
I dont think any reasonable person would have trouble with the above.
My point is that the RIAA are a heck more like pineapple monopolists than oxygen monopolists (well, oligopolists). Here's why:
- what they provide is strictly entertainment. there is no critical need for their product.
- while they may attempt to, perhaps unfairly, limit access to certain distribution channels, the reality is that a) the internet provides a distribution channel for any competitor b) there are plenty of independent labels should an artist wish to sign with them c) CD printing and publishing is cheap for anybody to start their own label/distribution chain d) much megabytage has been spent here loudly proclaiming the channels that the RIAA does have sway over (say, the record store at the mall) to be on the verge of irrelevancy and extincion anyway.
- there are many alternate ways for a person to listen to music besides listening to an RIAA artist. if one feels that one MUST listen to an RIAA artist, it is ONLY because the RIAA has convinced you through marketing and other means that that artist is worth listening to. In other words, you the consumer have indicated a preference despite the fact that you had many alternatives available. Nobody said you have to listen to "XTina."
- music does not exist in a vaccuum. It competes against other forms of entertainment for your discretionary income. you have a CHOICE whether to accept their proposition of $20 CDs (or whatever) or to use that money some other way.
In other words, the RIAA, if it is a price fixing oligopoly, is a relatively socially harmless one. Unless your life is so empty, that is, that you feel that listening to RIAA artists is a NEED and that you really have no choice in your life but to pay what they ask. In which case the problem is less the RIAA, but more your lack of a life (I say this generically, not to you in particular).Like me, for example. I won't pay more than $12 for a CD. I wait for CDs to drop below that price on half.com or whatever.
Now, how is this a problem for the music industry? Are you suggesting it would be better if I just didn't buy the CD at all, or pirated a copy?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The bad editing of the post suggests that Jobs says the U.S. investigation is a bad move. In fact Jobs was saying that the attempts of record companies to pressure Apple to selectively raise prices on songs was bad.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I don't get it.
ITMS just passed 1 billion downloads after being in business a few years. That's barely $1B to Apple - as revenues. The major labels' cut can't be bigger than ~ $100M each. That's for online sales for a few years. Contrast that with Billion-dollar CD sales, merchandising, etc, per annum for any given major label.
Sounds like they're either fighting over peanuts or they're playing the long view & hoping this will ramp up to some real numbers years down the road.
"Limp Dick Fine", heh.
So, you're claiming some kind of Phd?
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Well ... it boggles mine that you've actually read their paper and don't agree with it: especially if this
article is the best critique of it you could find. If their theory is fucking clownshoes there should be
ample contrary evidence. And the reason doctrine of first sale works is because of scarcity. At the end of the
day, everyone is constrained by resources. The argument is that there is a cost in copying something, and if
the cost of simply buying it is greater than the (perceived) cost of copying then it will be sold. Couple
examples: there is a growing number of people who buy from iTunes, not because it's cheaper than downloading
fom p2p, and not because it's legal, but because it's easier. They would rather simply go to a web-site, pay
the buck and get the song. Second example: I just downloaded, printed and bound Against Intellectual
Monopoly and decided that when the final version became available I'd buy it rather than do that
again...what a pain in the ass...
But regardles, let's see what Romer says:
So even Romer thinks the current system is somestimes too much protection. Let's get to his arguments:
This is patently false and somewhat alarmist.
First of all, passing any given pill through a machine that tells you what is in it, doesn't tell you how it was made. The formula for Coca Cola is, what? like a hundered years old, and survives without exact copy despite not being protected by any law.
Secondly, this process does take time and money, during which time the original inventor is busy selling their drug.
Thirdly, the companies that want to simply imitate (as opposed to innovate) will never make siginificant impact. They also have limited resources, and are going to go after the successful drugs, correct? Well, that means that they have to wait to see which drugs are selling well before they can start to perform their analysis. This does two things: it further increases the time during which the original inventor has a monopoly, and it means that they already made money -- it was a high selling innovation (in this case drug). They quote estimates between 2-5 years as the lead time that a drug company will have by simply using trade secret.
So from the next paragraph where Romer says "this conclusion is unrealistic if everyone who buys a pill can copy it." is false, I can't copy the pill, no matter how many I buy: I lack the chemistry education and the machines necessary to do this. So we're talking about scarcity...
Next:
When I buy a CD, it don't assume the plastic is worth $10-$20... so what's his point? If the formula to a drug is worth millions, don't sell it on a piece of paper for the value of the paper...sell it as a pill. Going back to music, the 'cost' of downloading is essentially zero. Yet Apple has still sold a billion songs
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
The RIAA... a literal monopoly were it to be technically the one company that it realistically is, and who has treated its primary product, music, with the artistry of a ham sandwich and the elegance of a bowel movement, and who also treat its consumers as a puerile mosaic of criminals and witless dupes... is quibbling about a tiered payment scheme so that they can scratch yet more profit out of a normally substandard product?
You know I live in America, ringside seats to this horseshit. Pass the flippin' popcorn.
Actually, I was wondering how delayed sales affect the music industry with respect to deciding the success or failure of an album.
The movie industry seems to only count initial box-office receipts when deciding if a movie is a hit or flop. Which I believe is a mistake.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .