Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Invests In Dynamic Pricing Model For MP3s
NittanyTuring writes "Amazon recently closed a Series A financing deal with Amiestreet.com, a startup selling DRM-free MP3s with a demand-based pricing model. All music starts out free, and prices increase for popular tracks. Jeff Blackburn, Senior Vice President for Business Development, Amazon.com: 'The idea of having customers directly influence the price of songs is an interesting and novel approach to selling digital music.' What does this mean for Amazon's own intentions to sell music?"
A novel new business idea - the recording industry HATES that.
[Insert pithy quote here]
You know there will be much whining about people that bought $Song for $PriceA only to find that it fell to $PriceB.
And those that complain that $Friend bought $Song for $PriceA but now its up to $PriceC and its not fair that they have to pay more than $Friend for the exact same item
Won't higher prices mean more piracy? Or is that exactly what this system is avoiding?
By nobody buying a track (which *could* mean piracy) the track's price would come down and then people would buy it?
Wow, I think I answered my own question! This sounds pretty cool - less known music gets more exposure and more popular music gets set at a price people are willing to pay. Now, will they actually have a supply of music?
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
I for one plan on using my first post skill by downloading as many songs for free legaly as possible. But seriously after they reach over 0.99$ who is going to ever buy that song from them again?
Have you ever found yourself telling someone, "yeah, I liked that song before everyone else thought it was cool." I can see this model encouraging people to explore and download and try new stuff so that later on, when the price goes up, they can brag about how they downloaded it first, for free, before it was selling for $5 a pop.
It also might open the door for more quality indies to actually make money. People might be turned off by high prices of what the RIAA cartel marketing is pushing, and go for the cheaper indie stuff. Then again, I am probably being too optimistic, as most teenagers will pay any price for "cool"
T-Pain will sell for tens of dollars while I can get Manu Katche for cheap!
Finally! All that non-conformance pays off!!
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
For those who didn't, prices start a $0.00 and cap out at $0.98.
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
The stuff I like will cost 0.01 while the popular spooge hits the cap. I love you, free market. :)
Those who prefer to listen to non-mainstream artists would get cheaper music, while those who prefer to listen to mainstream artists would pay more for it. It almost sounds like a tax on lack of musical taste to subsidize music geeks!
As more people download a song the price rises, capping at $0.98
I'd like to see a model like this. Ever since I installed a satellite radio receiver in my car, my musical horizons have broadened significantly. A lot of the artists I hear on some of the more obscure channels aren't indexed on iTunes or even available on illegal services like Limewire. This mostly applies to older music that is out of print, or never made it to CD.
It would be nice if there was a service like this that had just about anything ever recorded digitized and made available for download. Let the market sort out what's popular and what isn't, but give us access to EVERYTHING.
In this day and age, there is no reason why virtually every album ever recorded isn't available to buy a digital copy of.
The screw-you pricing of the airline industry and the crappy product of the corporate music industry.
Can't fail.
Who wants to start this? I'm selling options for indie band A at 35 cents a song.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
As the volumes increase, the price increases and the piracy might increase.
What is interesting is that this model possibly finds the "perfect price". So much for economic theory.
In reality, a pirate will not buy some low-cost stuff and pirate high-cost stuff according to some built-in threshold. Once they have free piracy access to music they will use that for everything they can.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
There just isn't. Because this can't possibly mean more money for them, if prices cap at 0.98. And if they didn't cap there, no one would buy the more expensive tracks from them anyway. But unless these "trail-blazing" people either forfeit all profit for themselves in order to transfer it to the recording companies, or come up with some other, novel way of incentivizing this process (theoretically, at least using a simple model, averaging 50 cents a download) which will halve their profits compared to what they get from iTunes, there is NO WAY the Big Four will go for this.
On the other hand, maybe the simple model isn't true, and maybe popular = most everything that the average buyer buys, in which case it won't look any different to the average buyer, so except for the DRM-free part (another deal-breaker for the Big Four), why should the average buyer care?
This is really good news. There are some good songs to be had on Amie Street for not much money. So far, I've bought 91 songs and have only spent $6.29. That's about 7 cents per song. With no DRM at all. Beat that, iTunes! ;-)
o .php
Oh, and if you happen to be interested in what I'm listening to, here's my playlist: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/what-im-listening-t
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Fallacy-ridden arguments and ridiculous drawn out appeals to emotion is a more accurate representation. Remember: you should be able to do whatever you want with information, except if its the GPL! Then you have to follow the GPL!
For the most part all of this bitching and moaning has nothing to do about a fair price. Lets face it, people want music, they want it for free and they want to do it legally. But like the old axiom of "fast, good, cheap. Choose 2", these three elements can never come together in a situation where it is win-win for both the listener and the musician.
Most of the time when I see people on Slashdot talk about how things are "working out" with new music distribution models they normally forget to include the musician in the equation.
I don't care what anyone thinks about this. An artist shouldn't be forced to tour to pay the rent. Is it hard to accept making a lifetime's wage for a few years of work? Sure. But on the other hand it shouldn't be asking too much for the artist to cover the cost of overhead for putting out music, keep food on his plate and make a bit extra without having to live in the back of an Econoline van.
So most of the DRM/Copyright arguments has nothing to do with creativity or a society bolstered by its art. It mostly has to deal with people being greedy and not wanting to shell out for what they've taken.
Blame the RIAA all you want, but people deserve to make a buck when they've produced something that you're willing to listen to more then once or twice.
/rant
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I think this is a great idea in the fact that it's a new idea. But, I'd prefer the business model be reversed.
If "Mr. Super-Cool" sells 1000 tracks a day at 0.98 then the artist makes some good money, but what about "Mr. Not-So-Cool"? His track sells for free, or very little, and the artist gets nothing, mostly because he's not popular. What if it was revered, AND you provided a library that was practically every song known to man? I'd gladly pay 98 cents for a song that I just can't find anywhere, legally or illegally. With a reversed model, maybe that poor Not-So-Cool guy could make a living even though he's not on one of the 'big' recording labels.
Or as an alternative, have it set up so the more tracks you buy, the cheaper they get? Buy x tracks a month and get y% off. Why not let the customers "buy in bulk" and save? Isn't that what our economy is all about? Buy a gallon of Mayo and save some $$$ instead of buying 10 smaller bottles?
This has interesting economics, clearly designed to help Amazon, but might also help smaller artists. I think I like it, but not sure.
... you'd think it'd be cheaper to d/l a popular song and make up pagehits with ads, but perhaps this makes smaller artists get more exposure.
There's no such thing as supply and demand in this model. There's only demand, and the supply is endless. So why does an infinite supply with a finite demand not equate to free? Bandwidth? They certainly can get some advertisement into the pages of popular sound downloads.
This seems almost backwards
TFA doesn't say whether these are in fact MP3 files, and the critical question is: will these songs play on an iPod? If not, this business is doomed before it starts.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Okay, first, the old artists taht sell few songs at any given time, but still do constantly sell, no longer get any money. Plus, the industry doesn't make any more money than they do now, cos its capped.
Song costs $0.00 - I buy it
Song costs $0.20 - I buy it
Song costs $0.40 - I buy it
Song costs $0.60 - I buy it
Song costs $0.80 - I buy it
Song costs $1.00 - I bugger off to the itunes store
Well, I wouldn't, but many people would and you get my point. And this effectively means, this service could never reach the same average sales cost.
I'm already working on my script to download all new music the minute it hits the service -- before it becomes popular.
I can't wait for the madness that will hit once my script becomes popular in usage.
(Note, I'm not actually writing such a script, but someone will.)
Prices rise with demand because usually supply is limited. Last time I checked, we can create bits from thin air, so we have an infinite amount of copies we can sell. So there's really no reason for prices to rise with demand. If anything, they should drop because you need a price ten times lower for a song ten times as popular to earn what you used to.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
As an analogy, Ford has a monopoly on the Ford Mustang. Sure, you can buy a Ford Mustang, and then resell it used, but Ford has absolute control of the supply of new Ford Mustangs manufactured. The used market doesn't count, because you can only resell the supply that Ford originally produced.
The difference, of course, is that it would be cost prohibitive for someone to produce an exact copy of a Ford Mustang (an exact copy would cost far more than the original because you wouldn't have Ford's economies of scale) so that even in the absence of any legal protection on the Mustang, Ford would still likely have a monopoly. With music, just about every home computer can make an exact copy of a song, so the monopoly on music is an artificial one. The monopoly on music only exists because of copyright law.
In most other careers, one expects to work most days of each week, most weeks of each year. I realize that touring is hard (I've done it), but why should musicians get off easy? It would be one thing if all of the successful recording artists were actually publishing great music that made the world a better place to live. But the Britneys and the Metallicas of the world have gotten rich off of simplistic musical drivel which caters to the lowest common denominator, well promoted by greedy bastards.
Personally, I think that the people who do the hard work should get paid. Heck, I'd even say that I think that popular music copyrights should expire after five years. Then I'd be able to get a Rhino Records recording of every Metallica album ever made for the cost of the materials, packaging and shipping. Or download it for free. They've made their millions. If they're not going to write a new album or perform for me, why should I have to pay them for something that:
- Took them a couple of days to create.
- Was created 10 years ago.
- Has already made them a million dollars
I personally don't torrent music that's under copyright; I pay for what I listen to, even if it's old, because that's the law. But as far as promoting interest in one's music, I'd prefer to see bands touring and working for a living than just having big corporations hype them and push them endlessly via payola on the radio.
Dang it, now I'm starting to lose focus. Ah, well, I hope you get my point. Vote for Oog!
The CB App. What's your 20?
Let's expand that headline title a bit shall we?
"Patent troll firm Invests in Dynamic Pricing Model for obsolete patent-encumbered audio format."
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
By which you mean that your musical tastes are superior to that of the vast majority of other people.
I don't like any Brittney Spears music, I like a handful of Metallica tunes. Nonetheless I am willing to admit that if they have a million people who want to listen to their albums and Obscure Artist G has five--regardless of whether I like his music or I feel he is the modern equivalent of Mozart--they should be making more money for it. Demand isn't a perfect metric for everything, but it seems wholly appropriate here, particularly when it is each individual's decision whether or not to give a particular artist their money.
Because they have produced a good that you want. While I'm not going to go so far as the RIAA does and call it stealing, I don't see how people justify taking something without compensating the creator with specious arguments like "somebody else already paid them 10 years ago."
If it isn't worth the price according to whatever criteria you choose to apply, don't buy it. If it is, buy it. Not only does that compensate artists whose music you like, it will work to drive down music prices or eliminate poor artists if enough people agree with you.
For the record, as I stated before, I don't steal music. I do pay for what I listen to. However, as you may or may not know, most of that money does not go to the bands.
Many people do like what they buy. Others are being herded like sheep; those with the greatest resources for marketing can take the money that might go to better art. It may not be a zero sum game, but it is indeed a game.
I'm not telling anyone what to like or not like. I just think it's silly to say that people who write music shouldn't have to tour. Being an artist--of any type--does not exempt you from having to continually earn your keep. It's great that a few people do hit the jackpot, but I'm just saying that it could be a better world for more people if something were changed to reduce the concentration of wealth in the hands of major music corporations and a few of their marquee bands.
I've enjoyed our debate and admit that in some ways, I'm taking reactionary positions, but again, saying that someone shouldn't have to work for a living is just silly.
The CB App. What's your 20?