Slashdot Mirror
Digital Music Downloads Too Expensive?
threeofnine writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article written by a copyright and technology lawyer asking if we are paying too much for digital downloads. From the article: 'Parallel imports are unavailable in the Australian digital market, however. Australian consumers cannot purchase downloads from iTunes or Wal-Mart in the US, which are often cheaper than downloads available here, without a US-issued credit card. And restrictive licensing conditions imposed by copyright owners also limit the sale of digital downloads across international borders. For both reasons Australian consumers miss out. And retailers cannot buy downloads from overseas and resell them here, even if it is worthwhile for them to do so. In a recent analysis, the prices of Australian-made CDs of artists such as Bon Jovi, REM and Robbie Williams were compared to those of legal parallel imports. It was found that the local product was as much as 300 per cent more expensive.'"
Interesting key (and somewhat conflicting) points from the article:
and:So, in addition to lobbying in the United States to encumber music and entertainment beyond any previous restrictions (to the point of unusability if they get their way), the music industry tries to layer artificial geographical artifacts over the internet to further increase their (already obscene) profits. I find it interesting the entertainment wonks get away with this under the "protection of artists and intellectual property" canards juxtaposed next to the argument that many people lose their jobs to outsourcing as a result of the "global economy" and the breaking down of these alleged geographic boundaries.
Seems like those in power define by expedience.
(As an aside, another tasty tidbit in the article:
I find this an interesting question -- maybe when Americans are also charged a fair price for music (they aren't today). Sigh.... AllOfMp3.com?
I find Allofmp3 to be quite reasonable! About 10 cents per song with no DRM. You can't beat that.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
There are websites like allofmp3.com that sell mp3's in bulk with a set amount per meg.. seems pretty cheap to me, set the bitrate, if you want higher quality music than you can get on limewire or soulseek..
.. but, there are alternatives.
iTunes is too expensive
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
And restrictive licensing conditions imposed by copyright owners also limit the sale of digital downloads across international borders.
Is it any surprise that the Australians are abandoning the commercial ship and are now sailing from the Pirate Bay?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Did anyone notice the article summary has no connection with the title whatsoever...?
To The United States Congress: We are the customers and former customers of the member labels of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). We love music and will gladly pay a fair price for it, but we are outraged by the RIAA's tactics in suing ordinary Americans for filesharing....
Let's slashdot the Senate and House Commerce!
Why do CDs cost as much as vinyl LP albums did? The production costs for (digital) CDs are several of orders of magnitude less than they were for (analog) LPs, yet the price-point never moved.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
AllOfMP3? Good call. So, instead of illegally downloading a song, you can illegally download it AND pay a fee that never gets anywhere near artists' hands.
While that is normally true, music is not a free market. The music industry has both a macro and micro monopolies over music. By that I mean only a few music companies control the vast majority of music and set prices accordingly. And then each individual music company has exclusive monopolies over particular artists. So if you want to buy Rage Against the Machine, you have to buy it from Sony.
If you want evidence that the music industry ignores supply and demand, look no further than CD prices. Despite the enormous drop in CD sales the prices have not dropped. In fact, the music industry has raised prices over the same time period.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The difference between digital media and other goods is that, for the latter, the price is determined by the cost of production and distribution plus extra which is kept as a profit. Digital media however, has zero production and distribution cost (for each individual download i mean), hence the price is entirely determined by what the record companies think is the optimum price, cheap enough for people to buy, expensive as possible to earn as much money. This means that in a third world country, the optimum price might be 10 times lower than the optimum price in a first world country. In order to make as much money as possible they have to price their downloads differently in different countries - selling it at first world prices everywhere would mean they lose out on profits in less well-off countries, selling it as third world prices mean they don't earn enough in first world countries. That's why they are so intent on limiting downloads accross digital borders. And hence, measures such as region encoding.
Actually, in the US it is not illegal. Actually, there is a little known loophole in US law that allows you to import music from outside the US without any copyright violation.
17 USC 602(a)(2) says that "importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time" is NOT infringement.
Thus, if you "import" one song from say, allofmp3.com, or from some other foreign server, for personal use, and do not distribute it to anyone else, the RIAA could not legally come after you.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
It seems that everybody wants everything, and think it should be free.
Are record companies greedy and evil? You betcha.
Are they gouging customers and musicians both? Right-o.
Has everyone's perception of value been altered by p2p downloads, cracked software and other Internet-rendered amenities?
Without a doubt.
-1 Flamebait.
do() || do_not();
i recently did a study...
- I pay too much for gas
- I pay too much for cheeseburger
- I pay too much for clothes
What's the news here?
I both buy albums, and download music (illegally), and to tell you the truth, from a moral standpoint I feel worse about paying for it.
By paying for music I am propping up an anachronistic distributing chain whose business practices I take issue with. Which, for me, is more of an issue than violating a business friendly law, or depriving the artist of the miniscule cut of the sale he'd be receiving.
For me something that is mutually beneficial would support both the artists and the consumer; paying for music ain't. I'd rather see no one pay for music and watch the record labels go down in flames (artists can still make money touring), so that when I do want to buy an album I can know that the artist is getting a reasonable cut of the sale.
Well the only possible sympathy I have in the examples given are for fans buying REM. Nothing could make me care about what people pay for Bon Jovi or Robbie Williams.
Maybe the way to really fight back against the music industry is to stop buying crappy music, and patronize your local used CD store. The big profits, I would imagine, come from the big multiplatinum albums, of which - maybe - one out of every 20 or 30 represents quality music?
Completely subjective, I know. Smaller labels that have not slashed prices really should, and people should make the effort to seek out independent music from these labels. People should explore new genres. I have a smattering of CDs I bought right from the small labels' websites themselves, for $10.00 for a new album, which isn't bad considering what new big-name artists' CDs sell for.
As for the issue of international markets and price gouging, nothing new here, either. In any case, when it comes to music, you don't necessarily get what you pay for either in Australia or anywhere else.
When you buy a top 40 album, you buy an image created by advertisers for the most part. There are probably half a million unsigned artists the world over who make music as good as or better than what you hear on your local top 40 station. Maybe they're not good looking, or don't know how to stand like a bunch of idiots with their hair hanging down in their eyes, or don't have the bodies to slut it up real good for MTV.
There are alternatives. Someone mentioned emusic.com - that's a good place to start.
But if you're really angry because the last Madonna CD is out of your price range, well...I'm trying real hard to care, but...
Yes, I'm middle-aged & I tend to listen mainly to classic rock albums with a little blues & soul thrown in. Most of the stuff I listen to, I can get fairly cheaply either second-hand or on eBay/Amazon marketplace - generally, I'll pick up a brand new CD for around £6 ($10). For that money, I get a nice uncompressed shiny CD with some liner notes and a hard case that I can rip at whatever bit rates I want to (I do listen to a lot of MP3-based music when I'm travelling or in the gym).
I don't go near Virgin or HMV record stores in the UK because I simply cannot justify paying anything up to £17 ($28) for a new CD but the prices that I do get my CDs at seem to be as cheap as paying to download each track individually - plus I get something tangible in the process.
I know a lot of people don't want to buy "filler" tracks on CDs and prefer downloading the tracks they want but I still don't get it - I've a collection of about 800 CDs at home and I'd say at least half of those are recordings I consider as "classics" that I can happily listen to from start to finish as completely good albums.
I'm certainly not trying to provoke a "the music of today is rubbish compared to the music of yesterday" argument because I just don't listen to enough modern music to have a valid opinion of it - but I've more than enough great music in CD album format to last me a lifetime now & if the younger generation of today has difficulty finding modern albums that are themselves "classics" in their entirety, then doesn't the "pick and mix music tracks" attitude perhaps make more of a statement about the quality of modern music than music downloads as being "the modern way" of distributing music?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
It appears that as long as it is for personal use that importing music from allofmp3.com is not a customs violation. IANAL, etc.
I don't necessarily agree with the term "pirated" either. "obtained from an unauthorized source" is probably more accurate. Every industry loses some profit to "theft". If the "piracy" problem is as bad as the music industry is saying, it tells me that they are determining the price for the market instead of the other way around, which is how it is supposed to work.
now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
Very interesting. Thanks! I guess it's not "little known" anymore.
This point should be stressed: "There is no private right of action for violations of customs law." Thus, the RIAA still could not come after an Allofmp3 user directly.
The RIAA is going ballistic over allofmp3. But they are trying to handle it via the governments involved, not directly with the users. Considering that the RIAA has no problem suing customers, I find that very informative.
My guess is that the RIAA does not want to risk an unfavorable ruling regarding 17 U.S.C. 602(a)(2). Can you imagine if that occurred? Suddenly downloaded music from foreign servers, even on P2P, would not be infringement. The shit would really hit the fan.
Thus, the RIAA's first step is to get Russia to shut the site down but pressuring the US government. When and if that fails I'd guess that they'll have Congress amend 17 U.S.C. 602(a)(2) to specify that it does not apply to downloaded music. Heck, their probably already working on that! Once that is amended, then they'll start suing Allofmp3 users.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I lived in Australia for a while in 1989, 1990. At the time Aussie politicos were investigating price fixing of CD's. It looks like the more things change the more they stay the same, but what do inflated prices have to do with rights? Do people have a right to low prices? What a strange concept. Maybe if it is AIDS drugs, a case could be made, but music downloads?
San Francisco Photographers
You don't seem to mind taking advantage of offshoring (allofmp3.com) as long as it benefits you...
Go smack your economics teacher in the head and demand a refund. Tell them to make you listen next time. Demand is measured along a curve, in any market (diamonds, water, there is a maximum that Bill Gates would pay for a single produced item, then as the price declines more and more people are willing to purchase the item, continuing until the last person is so overly satisfied that even they would not pay a fraction penny for an additional unit. Supply and demand are matching in that market place as long as there is even a single transaction.
Now you bring up a second market that sells at a lower price but carries additional risk. Which some users percieve as having less cost than $1. This is the same as saying that because I can buy a DVD player from a crackhead for $20 there is not a market in legitimately traded DVD players. It's still the same market there's just a discount associated with the risk bundled in the grey (or black) market transactions. People can evaluate the risk and potential cost and choose to pay more with no risk or less with an element of risk bundled in. The risk isn't entirely being sued, its also the risk of poor data quality (think if the whole file was just goatse images), which is non-zero.
I think what you meant was that a large portion of music customers price those risks at well below a dollar, but no one really knows what the volume is on pirated sites (I'd be nothing more than guessing that P2P distributes far more songs than iTunes).
Even if the grey market were larger, it seems likely that a very large portion of sub $1 demand is less elastic than you appear to be projecting. The credit card companies probably take at least a dime, and if 90% of the grey market values their downloads at less than a dime (in percieved risk reduction), lowering prices to 11 cents would greatly reduce total revenues due to the price reductions more than offseting the increasing volume.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Aside from the fact that music in general is too costly, consider this:
( only speaknig averages here.. )
A uncompressed CD is 17 bucks..
To buy a CD full of downloads its costs that much or more, and you only get COMPRESSED versions..
Not too equitable sounding to me..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Again this crap is being modded up! AllOfMP3.com don't pay the appropriate royalties to their artists. I very much doubt whether music downloaded from their site is appropriately licenced if you are buying it from outside Russia.
Like Stew77 said, emusic is the way to go if you don't want to support the big 'evil' labels. Give your money to independant labels, not dubious "too good to be true" Russian imports!
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
What about the comparison of the price against the quality of the sound?
Is it comparable to CD (44.1 KHz, 16 bits samples for 2 channels)?
If a physical CD costs, say, USD 15.- USD with 15 songs, each downloadable song should cost USD 1.
Much less if you think about the money they save by not printing the medium and not shipping the boxes all around the world.
Let's say USD 0.75 could be right. It's right if the song is CD quality, of course.
If it's a compressed format song, it should cost less because quality is worse. Let's say USD 0.50 is a fair price.
Almost all legal downloads are above this price. With no real reason!
So I'd say that prices are too high when compared to quality.
And Maybe they are too high in any case.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Music is one thing that you can definitely live without. You can definitely live with RIAA controlled music. It would be different if the cartel was on bread, or water, but it isn't. I really get annoyed by people who say something costs too much, and then go out and steal it (download illegally) because they "have to have it". If you have to have it, then it's probably worth the price they are charging.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Just yesterday, several prominant Canadian musicians formed a new alliance that opposes the RIAA lawsuits and promotes downloading of their music, although for a fee of course. It's becoming possible to buy music again from mainstream artists if you shop around.
i d=177 and also my blog for a writeup on the new group.
I bought The Arrogant Worms latest album Beige online for less than the CD online price, it was $1CAN a song.
Check out http://www.huntershack.org/nucleus/index.php?item
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I realize that supply and demand are based on a curve. Digital distribution changes the way the curves are set though. The music industry wants to set the supply curve as if the costs of distribution are the same digitally as they have been traditionally. The demand curve flattens drastically because of the same reason. This is what scares them because they make their money from the distribution system currently in use.
The rest of your argument is crap. Your DVD player analogy is backwards. The files you buy from allofmp3(crackhead) are of better quality than you get from legit retailers like iTunes. You set your bitrate and format (no DRM). If a site sells files that are all goatse images, then that site will not be able to continue to stay in business. People will notice the scam and another site will get their business. This is not the fault of iTMS either. Do you think they would still be selling at $1 each if they hadn't been strongarmed by the big labels?The credit card companies don't figure into this either. Any site that would allow a credit card transaction for a single download would be shooting itself in the foot. The solution would be a subscription/user account setup with defined amounts ($10,$20 purchases) in order to minimize the impact of the cost of using their services.
The music industry is pure and simply using monopolistic practices to fight off alternative distributions of the same product. There are very few valid reasons to ever fight against a free market on any good, digital or otherwise.IANAE but I'm not an idiot either
now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
Music cannot be compared with physical goods which are easy to produce and to create knock offs of. Music, on the other hand is a service. The musicians provide a service to you which is supposed to entertain. The fact that you can purchase a reproduction of that service for your own use within your home does not change this reality.
You all seem to forget that musicians in the middle ages performed to provide a service (entertainment) for their patrons. With advances in technology, we are now able to capture and reproduce this service for distribution but it does not change the fact that the initial performance itself is not a product but rather a service.
You speak of fundamental market forces but you insist on not having your wages affected by those same forces. Isn't that hypocritical?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Strange, all the ones I download are completely free... hang on I think I hear somebody knocking on my door...
nothing
How many years has it been since you last used Linux?
I've done several kernel updates, and there was no recompiling anything. Just a simple apt-get install linux-image-2.6.whatever does the job, and even updates GRUB by adding the appropriate entries for the new kernel.
Granted, a kernel update does indeed require a reboot to take effect. But that's a good idea anyway, just to make sure nothing went wrong. And if it does break something, then I can always select the previous kernel to boot when the GRUB screen comes up.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Okay, mod the parent down please. Its a shame too. Because you had such a good start: $0.99 is WAY to high of a price point for me. I'm not willing to pay $15 for the contents of a CD, sorry. Its just not worth that much to me, and I think a lot of other people probably feel the same way. If they started selling at $0.10 or $0.25 -- then they might have a customer.
Where you got yourself in trouble was mentioning Napster and Metalica. Metalica didn't bring about the downfall of easy P2P (and with the current protocols and clients: uTorrent, eMule, etc), its still not that hard to steal music, if you want too.
Metalica sued because there was unfinished studio recordings being swapped around, and to be honest, its not difficult to see where they're coming from in wanting that material yanked.
Think of it like a sex tape or something else similarly embarassing -- you sure as hell wouldn't want something like that viewable to the world.