Slashdot Mirror
Music Industry Set To Introduce the "Ringle"
mrneutron2003 writes "The RIAA has officially backed a move by the recording industry to reintroduce the CD single. Populated with three songs and a ringtone, this brilliantly clueless idea is to be marketed as a 'ringle,' complete with an even more clueless retail price of $6-7 per CD. Apart from the fact the industry hasn't agreed on how the ringtone is to be redeemed (Sony BMG, the initial proponent of the idea, is the exception here), the pricing puts it way out of line with legitimate digital music downloads." At $7, retailers would enjoy a profit margin they haven't seen since the days of cassette tapes and vinyl.
THREE uncompressed (CD-quality) DRM-free songs for $6? That's about $2.00 per song, not much higher than Apple's DRM-free pricing.
In fact, since you're getting it uncompressed, I'm not seeing the problem here... Their pricing is in line with digital downloads.
Here's a question I'd love to ask the music industry:
How many times must I buy the same music in order to "legally" hear it on any music-playing device I own? (No, I will not tell you what devices they are, nor what formats they can play.)
Do you like Japanese imports?
Midi ringtones are outrageously priced..real tones even more so. The price isn't THAT inflated compared to what we already spend.
cb_is_cool knows where his towel is.
With all the problems the music industry is having right now, a SEVEN DOLLAR 3-SINGLE/ RINGTONE COMBO (which incidently costs FOUR DOLLARS on iTunes), this is bound to be the cure that brings things around for them... Actually with the new iPhone ringtone easy hack on engadget, it only costs 3. This is a seriously sad attempt to drive sales. Do they not see the trend? People don't want to carry around physical media anymore! I don't want to carry 50 CD's with me, because I can use my ipod. Notice how ipod's keep going UP in capacity? It's because people want to be able to carry more music without carry around idiotic discs that can scratch. Maybe they should offer something like 3 singles and ringtones for 3 dollars and undercut itunes. They need a lesson in Econ 101 about how supply and demand only works with things that are in DEMAND.
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
Wow, and you are getting a ringtone as well. That's a $3 value absolutely free!
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
... They are the 3 songs you like. Isn't that the whole point of downloading songs? Getting only the ones you want? This combines the worst of both worlds - high price and no consumer choice. Well, no choice other than not buying them. Which seems in line with the rest of the music industry in general.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
One thing hanging over the 'maybe new, maybe not' idea that didn't factor in twenty years ago, is the 'green' factor.
What is the carbon footprint of three songs on a packaged CD versus three songs purchased over the internet? And to bring it into even sharper focus, the CD packaged songs will end up on a player just like the downloads.
Game over, man...
... and I am right again for not owning any product which its name starts with a letter "i".....
Free ring-ding?
Brilliant! Finaly, the solution to piracy! Increase the profit margin, how didn't they think of it earlier? ...wait...what???
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Uh, right . . .
Thanks for that little gem, which helps prove there's not much danger of that ever happening.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
And in Cupertino and Austin, the iTunes business teams are high-fiving. As the industry insists on implementing 20-year old business models, Apple Inc. no longer really needs to update their iTunes services, as it will be another 25 years before the industry realizes that PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO BUY PLASTIC DISCS ANYMORE......
The summary says three songs and a ringtone, but the article reads, two songs and a ring tone. Which is it?
Redeeming the ringtone should be simple. Either place the ringtone as a final track on the single, or as a compressed file on a data track. Then convince the phone manufacturers to let all phones use a user-provided sound file as the ringtone. Simple. Of course, convincing the carriers to give up their business of overcharging for small sound files will be the difficult part.
Why not just sell me a sandwich and 3 single download credits for $6? At least then I get something I can use, instead of a piece of plastic containing an exact, permanent copy of data that curiously, I'm permanently not allowed to copy.
stuff |
At $7, retailers would enjoy a profit margin they haven't seen since the days of cassette tapes and vinyl.
Uh, I may be just talking out of my ass here, but I'm pretty sure that CDs with their way lower cost of manufacture and significantly higher retail price than cassettes, for years and years, were the peak years for gross margin for the music industry.
But I'd only pay $4 for a song I really liked.
"Ringle, ringle, coins how they jingle," Scrooge's lustful song of money and greed.
Quite appropriate name considering...
...speaking as someone named Ray Ingles.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Why do you think retailers will get the lions share of the margins?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
A Ringle? Sounds sexual.
Do people really only tend to like a handful of songs from an album? This ball gets kicked around quite a bit here, but I have to say I honestly have no idea what people are referring to. I can only think of cases where I've liked most or all of an album, or disliked everything from beginning to end.
I'm going to invent the Pirated ringtone single
I'll call it a Pringle
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Was listening to one of the smaller record label owners the other day on the Punk channel on my satellite radio. He was very matter of fact about the paradigm shift that's happened in the music industry. "The world has changed. People will not spend what they used to spend on music that they can get for free."
I was impressed that he didn't try to preach or necessarily make anyone feel bad (he probably knows better than to preach to people who listen to punk rock). It's just a simple reality that record companies have to adapt to. Their business model is gone. Whether they deserve it or whether they are victims is beside the point.
To survive, they must adapt. I suppose that's easier for someone who runs a smaller independent label, but the time will come for the big labels too, and they will fall much harder judging by their current approach to the problem.
1. replace all songs on CDs with the ring tones.
2. ?????
3. Profit!
... when one of the soggy Cheerios in my bowl bounced out and landed on the table. Later, when I noticed it, I picked it up.
But not before it left a ringle on the table. :-|
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
THIS IS SLASHDOT!!!!
*kicks spammer into the abyss*
Or 1 song with 2 remixes and an instrumental? $7 is way to much. You can get a solid EP (4-7 tracks) for that price or just a little more. The EP also has new songs that would be otherwise unavailable on the bands LP(most of the time).
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
Why No Mention of Apple's Profit Margin?
My bet is that people will avoid buying these in droves simply because they can't find a CD slot on their cellphones. Imagine the customer support calls?
New Music!
Ok, I clicked through to the Reuters article linked to from the article linked to by the summary, and the Reuters article talks about three songs and a ring tone.
Isn't that something you buy at bank and get interest?
A lot of my non-computer savvy friends got sick of paying for ringtones about a year ago and figured out how to use free music editing software to create little clips of their favorite songs. In fact, I don't know anyone anymore who doesn't know how to do this. How do these music companies think they're going to get away with charging $6-7 just because they threw in a ringtone?
I don't think that Slashdot, or computer literate mp3 player owners in general, are really the target audience of this, or many other physical media marketing and deployment strategies.
The extent of technology that many non-tech people are familiar with is their cell phone; and for their music, their cd player. This combines those things. So while we, the tech friendly crowd, may have been finding value in purchasing singles from online music stores for a few years, others have not, and still buy full albums for $12 to $16 from retail outlets even though they know they only want one track. While this may not provide an alternative as cheap as the luxury that we have with online content distribution, it does provide and alternative that certain consumers will find valuable.
I'm also sure that these will fill many stockings and snail mail gifts this holiday season as well. Sure you can buy someone a gift card for their favorite online store... but the consumer often feels that they can provide greater sentimentality by showing that they know what the giftee wants and getting them an actual gift.
Too little, too late. If the record companies did this in the mid-1990s, they may (or may not) be in better shape than they are now. The recording industry has always tried to place draconian control over their music. Who else remembers their threats to sue anyone who made a DAT machine available to consumers at a reasonable price in the 1990s, and the passing of the HRRA which made DRM the law of the land for non-computer digital audio products.
The RIAA won in the 1990s, and independent musicians such as myself had to pay a fortune for digital recording technology (over $1200 for a digital stereo tape deck in 1992 that would have cost about $300 if it was not for the RIAA).
Around the same time, with vinyl dying and CDs taking over, instead of making inexpensive 3" CD singles available, just as there were inexpensive 7" vinyl singles, the RIAA decided that singles should not be sold any more, since they cut in to CD sales.
With DRM in place and music costing at least $10, the RIAA sucessfully sowed the seeds of discontent that eventually resulted in the Napsterization of the internet. In other words, an internet where people do not respect copyright. Now, I do not feel that it is morally right to copy music without authorization. Of course, I've done it; I used my DAT machine in the 1990s to copy CDs, and have a MP3 collection today which is mainly my friends CD collections. But I don't feel good about it.
But I feel that the RIAA brought the Napsterization of the internet upon themselves. Their need to completely control how people listen to music caused their demographic, mainly rebellous young people, to revolt against the RIAA and illegally download music instead of buying CDs.
If the RIAA made this available in the mid-1990s instead of forcing people to buy CDs when they only wanted one song, maybe the Napsterization of the internet would have been delayed, and maybe the RIAA would still be selling a decent number of singles.
And, no, I don't think singles cut in to CDs sales that much. A lot of popular music was music where you bought the entire album. Rush comes to mind; they only ever had one top-40 single, but sold boatloads of albums in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
I am single,
If I buy a ringle,
With me will women mingle ?
or will it be an iPod haiku - ( scene: chic sees guy with iPod )
My Gawd,
An iPod,
Must have a big rod.
WTF ARE THESE IDIOTS THINKING??? That I'm going to spend over NINETY THOUSAND DOLLARS to load up my 160gig iPod?
They must be doing some mighty fine crack, because THAT is pure unadulterated BULLSHIT if they think I'm going to spend even 1/2 of one percent of $80,000 loading up my 160gig iPod, and it certainly isn't going to be spend on ringles...
Good god. What a bunch of losers. Left curve of the IQ bell chart. Morons. Mafiosi. Dead enders. Feh.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Falken: I never could get Joshua to learn the most important lesson.
Lightman: What's that?
Falken: Futility. That there's a time when you should just give up.
Circumcision is child abuse.
They aren't clear as to what they mean by "ringtone," especially since most new phones can play songs as ringtones, but I'm assuming it isn't a song. So that's only two songs...for $6-7...I'm guessing the ringtone will be a midi version of the single but that is just speculation. Maybe if you're looking for a midi it might be worth it, but modern phones can play non-midi files as ringtones. They should have done it 4 years ago when we would actually buy ringtones.
When I was in 9th grade I had a pretty bad case of the ringles; oh did I itch and squirm and cry out in pain! I fear that with our healthcare system in the shape it is; people like me who have no health insurance should stay the hell away from promotions like this lest the need for unattainable medical care to treat this awful malady shall arise!
I'm into downloading music but I don't think the idea is bad at all.
...so it comes down to having a hot single and two secondary tracks. There have been a number of wonderful B sides over the years and some interesting remixes ... so it comes down putting some thought into which three tracks are included to back up the "hit" ... which undoubtedly where this where this product will be mismanaged and ultimately it's failure point.
The younger consumers, the ones who parents are buying them most of the pop music these days, are more into ring tones than the gang of tech clowns that lurk here at slashdot.
They want their marketing and manufacturing excuse back. 6-7 dollars? Don't you think that's a little steep?
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
This pretty much is the usual from the music industry. Badly thought out plan that has no chance at all of succeeding spearheaded by some management guy that lives in a fantasy world of catch phases. I will bet that this will be dead before first quarter 2008.
No thank you, RIAA. I'll just take songs I currently own (either ripped from my purchases CDs or bought from AmieStreet.com) and use Audacity to cut/re-encode them. Then I'll use BitPIM to transfer the files to my phone for use as ringtones.
;-) Well, it's the end of a long day and I'm not feeling witty, so I'll leave that to anyone replying to my post.)
Cost for the music: Free (raiding old CD collection) or Free to 98 cents (AmieStreet.com)
Cost for the ringtone: Free.
(Expected a "priceless" joke here, didn't you?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I'm certainly not a music industry fan or a member of the Mafiaa fan club, but come on, this is a very biased article (and summary). It isn't that bad of a deal, actually. You get three songs and a ringtone for $6. Works out to about $1.50 a piece. Take into account that you are actually getting physical media (the CD) and some printed album art/lyrics, and it's really not that terrible of an idea. The RIAA et al is full of big, easy targets that can (and should) be gone after. This isn't one of them.
On the 0th day, God created C
If you don't want it, don't buy it. Same with full-length CDs. No, only wanting one song from a CD does not justify illicit downloads anymore than it justifies stealing a physical CD.
With all the options available--CD singles, CD albums, greatest hits collections, "That's What I Call Crap for Your Ears" mixes, online shops with single song downloads, etc.--it is not reasonable to complain that there is no way for you to purchase the music you want.
(FWIW, I have little empathy on the issue perhaps due to out of the many 100s of CDs, cassette tapes, LPs, and 78s I've purchased over the years, in only 1 case did it turn out that the 1 song that prompted the purchase was the only song on the album I liked. Maybe it means I like a better class of musician who is able to come up with more than 1 catchy tune at a time. Maybe it means I have lower standards. Whatever.)
People who balk at paying 99 cents for a song someone how end up paying many times that for just a piece of that same song as a ring tone, so using ring tones to move songs makes sense. The only issue I have is with the name. The thought of someone talking about 'ringles' on their 'blog' makes me want to hit someone in the 'face' with a 'shovel'.
We don't want to play with your ringaling...
With apologies to Chuck Berry.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Is the first release a re-issue of him singing "Photograph?" Or are they going back to his days with The Bingles?
Oh, well. Barbara Bach is still moderately attractive, anyways.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Sure, this seems stupid, but consider some consumer behavior I've seen recently:
- A household where every family member has a Mac and an iPod. Family members often buy the same song instead of using sharing because it is "too difficult".
- A household where working computers are thrown out on a yearly basis and replaced with new ones because that's "easier".
- A household where computers with sensitive records are just left out on the curb.
Different households, all fairly affluent, all in the NYC area. So while ringles may be stupid to the Slashdot crowd, they'll sell to the people that are even dumber than the record execs.
While advertised based on the songs they hold... basically 4mb = 1 song. You will notice that the iPod database becomes bloated and the iPod becomes more and more unresponsive and slow when you get past 12,000 to 15,000 songs. It haven't tried it, but I believe the iPod would cease to function usefully if loaded with a full 40,000 songs (it would probably still function to the extent that you can't sue Apple, as they make no guarantee of usability when loaded to the advertised maximum).
I imagine the only reason Apple is adding more space is almost exclusively for TV, movie, and music video content.
I'm pretty sure I know someone who has Ringles. I think produces a rash on the taint.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
For the Record Companies.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
"At $7, retailers would enjoy a profit margin they haven't seen since the days of cassette tapes and vinyl."
The profit margin on $0 in sales is 0%.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Are consumers really gullible enough to fall for this kind of novelty CD? I guess so...
The whole music industry seems to be going round in circles, with DRM free music being hailed as the 'next big thing' -- hell, it won't be too long before they start trying to sell us 'normal' old fashioned audio CDs again!
As a person, I like to have the physical item in my hand, that is proof I legally own the song, which I can just put into device, and it will just work. PERIOD.
People (teenagers) are still going to watch TV and listen to the radio and be susceptible to the paid for hype which turns a garage band into a rock and roll sensation.
For a while now I've been wondering what type of brain cancer the RIAA and their members suffer from. Finally I figured out the logic in their actions.
Big Music is no longer in the business of making music. That's not news, they've long been in the business of selling music, which just happens to require burning some trash onto CDs. But they're not in that business any more, either. They now intend to make suing people their primary business. At 5000 dollars a song, the profit margins are pretty damn high. This explains the pricing, their attitude towards their customers, in general the way they seem to be doing everything they can to discourage people from actually paying for music. They WANT people to download without permission as much as possible, since it increases the number of people they can sue.
Why I didn't see it sooner, I don't know. It's obvious.
Happened to me with a couple of CDs that I picked up a few weeks ago. (Was at GenCon, fell in love with The Muses, bought 6 CDs...) Anyways, one of those CDs I wind up skipping over half the songs on when it's turn comes up in my cars changer. I keep it in because there's 2-3 songs on it that I really like.
It does happen... but yeah, it's not something that I hit often.
What? He's spot on. Mod up!
THREE uncompressed (CD-quality) DRM-free songs for $6? That's about $2.00 per song, not much higher than Apple's DRM-free pricing.
/Why would I buy this?
//Hates ringtones.
In fact, since you're getting it uncompressed, I'm not seeing the problem here... Their pricing is in line with digital downloads.
According to the article it is TWO DRM-free songs and a ringtone of $6. That's $3.00 per song actual song and a crappy ringtone.
Let me explain this to you in simple terms:
... oh wait my bad... you can't. How do you plan to take on Google? There you go, start shitting your pants, you've been mortally wounded already. I bet you Google is just waiting to finish you off. See you in hell.
Wikipedia -> Massive success
Youtube -> Massive success
GoogleTunes -> a question of time.
Now unlike video, music doesn't need gigs and gigs of storage space. Several thousand tracks fit easily on a standard drive, and even the most shitty dsl connection can stream it these days. You have at most a year or two before it happens, and when it does you are fucked. Really, just picture yourself directly competing for attention against the worlds biggest advertising agency. Sounds fun doesn't it? You can sue grannys and students
Let's assume that most reasonably savvy people are already downloading off iTunes or ripping CDs or whatever. They're not buying CDs much anymore, unless perhaps they really love most of the songs on it, and want a physical copy.
So those people aren't going to buy this Ringle. They're going to continue to use iTunes, rip friends' CDs, make their own ringtones from MP3s, etc.
So the Ringle is targeted at people who are too clueless to do the above, and still buy physical CDs.
Some of them will buy Ringles of songs that they wouldn't have bought the entire CD for.
But some of them will buy Ringles instead of CDs that they would have bought anyway, just to get one or two songs. So instead of $16 for a CD, now the label gets $5-6 (or the relevant wholesale amounts)? Not sure how that is coming out ahead for the label. If a significant portion of existing CD purchases are people getting a CD for one or two songs, the Ringle may seriously cannibalize existing CD sales.
So the record industry, instead of offering consumers what they really want, introduces a product that may cannibalize one of their few existing streams of good revenue. Smart one guys.
There once was a music exec
Who thought to himself, "What the heck.
We'll remix these singles
And sell them as 'ringles'!"
And music fans muttered "Aw, feck."
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
But for it to work they will have to offer far more then just music. They would have to bundle some good artwork thereby making the CD a package that just can't be downloaded. In fact, why not include a little illustrated book. I'm sure there is plenty of possible content that big fans of a band would enjoy. They have to make their product special if it is going to sell.
Of course there is nothing wrong with adding ring-tunes to the CD, but this won't be enough. People need something that they can hold and feel - not just ones and zeros on a CD.
Willy
The industry is supposed to try raping our wallets every day, and the consumers are supposed to be trying to rape the industry by piracy every day.
And hopefully we meet somewhere in the middle. Jungle rules, people, don't be surprised.
Of course it could all be more civilized and honest, but then the industry will lose edge and stop innovating, and consumers will grow even more trusting and dumb in just few short generation.
No one forces people to buy "ringles" for $7 the piece. If they buy it, it's not industry's fault.
This sounds dumb, but what you don't realize is HOW BIG RINGTONES ARE! And, 3 songs for $6, plus a ringtone in the mix -- that's only twice what Apple charges for the same songs on iTunes PLUS you're getting a ringtone, plus it's CD quality. Throw enough reasons in, and a price that's a 5 spot plus a single... and you'll find music retailers easily wheedling the money out of the pockets of people who would otherwise pay for the songs on iTunes. By the way -- singles only used to have 2 tracks on 'em! This is not at all a ridiculous price for the product, and given the prices some ringtones go for, it's not surprising that a product like this would be viewed to be saleable by the industry.
Lose market share because customers don't perceive value.
Remove even more value from the product and raise the margin.
Profit !!!!
Who says this business thing is hard!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
the canned potato chips
so that after eating the potato chips, you can use the can to amplify your wifi signal, and download the balance of the value of the $7 you spent on their crap, with the added bonus that the base owner gets the riaa lawsuit instead of you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
FTA:
Each ringle is expected to contain three songs -- one hit and maybe one remix and an older track -- and one ringtone, on a CD with a slip-sleeve cover. The idea is that if consumers in the digital age can download any tracks they want individually, why not let them buy singles in the store as well? It also enables stores to get involved in the ringtone phenomenon.
Wow. Only the recording industry and the government can write contradictions like that and not see the logical fallacy.
Apparently, the industry understands that consumers want their tracks individually, and wants consumers to get their individual tracks from retail outlets. So to facilitate this, they package the individual track with 2 other unwanted songs and a ringtone. Then they double the price of downloading the songs individually and force you to drive to the store?!?!
Wow. That logic is shocking. I just have to repeat it to actually believe that some executive thought this up: Consumers want songs individually, so lets package 3 songs together with a ringtone and double the price!
The person who came up with that idea probably makes more money than everyone who reads this post put together. JSDFKGLHADFYGUHQO@W*%ORILU@#WERLJKC!@%$)*
burrocrisy
and that would be what? Ruling by jackasses? Never has a slashdot misspelling been more apropos
Exactly. I had several friends who worked for the largest vinyl/CD manufacturing plant (WEA manufacturing, as in Warner-Elektra-Asylum) in the U.S. back in the 1980s. They said that even back then a CD with booklet and jewel case with a run of 10,000 presses cost about $.25 each to manufacture. This was back before we could even create CDs at our own PCs and when CD prices were at their premium of $16-18 each. (Then again, aren't they still around that price?)
Yes, I know there is more than just manufacturing, but consider that every $.25 profit to each disc was 100% profit. So, even if the labels made $1 profit for each disc sold, they made 400% profit. I'd be curious to see what they really get for digital downloads considering that there is no physical product to manufacture, no glass master to create, no shipping, and no middleman markup. I can't believe that they're making less than 400% profit.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
"There's only music so that there's new ring tones"
I'm in that camp, sort of.
... but if I was going to buy the music a la carte, I'd just pick out the handful of songs I want and discard the rest.
There are lots of CDs where I liked most or all of the songs on the disc, but I wouldn't have purchased them individually if I'd had a choice. That is, they're acceptable, but they're obviously filler. At $6-10 for the whole disc, I'll buy it, because the value of the songs I like makes up for the somewhat lower value of the filler songs, and I don't find them so offensive that I need to skip over them when I'm listening to a disc or anything
It's a question of alternatives. If I like three songs on a disc a lot, and the rest not quite so much, I'm only going to buy the three songs. It's not because I hate the other songs on the disc, but because I know I can save the money, and then turn around and spend it on the best few songs from three or four other albums. By doing that, the net quality of my music collection (in my own, totally subjective, estimation) is higher.
I know there's a virtually limitless quantity of music out there to discover; the limiting factor is going to be my money and time, not the available music. So therefore, it makes sense to only buy the best tracks from each disc, if that option is available.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
what you don't realize is HOW BIG RINGTONES ARE!
hahaha!
that's only twice what Apple charges
Hahahaha!!
plus it's CD quality
HAHAAHAHAHAH!!!11one
This sounds dumb
You said it.
About as dumb as people who think a "ringtone" is anything other than getting fucked up the peehole by the RIAA. $2 to get a crappy sounding midi or 30-second low-quality clip of a song? You deserve to get shafted if you think that's good value.
In addition to the "ringle" CD, the following must be included:
1. - A self-destructing DVD, which will auto-destruct after a week, or 3 viewings, whichever comes first.
2. - A Blue-Ray DVD player with a slef-destruct mechanism which activates in case the inserted disk is not deemed "genuine" by the SONY servers (broadband connection required).
3. - An additional CD containing only the mandatory rootkit, without which the 3-song + ringtone CD cannot be played.
4. - A Betamax tape, just for the heck of it.
I'm an old fart, so take this with a grain of salt. I do purchase entire "albums", usually older stuff to fill in my collection. But if I do hear something I like that is more recent, I tend to only buy a couple of songs off an album because I fidn the rest to be crap - IMHO.
Also, in filling out my collection, I tend to find a couple songs I like from an artist I normally wouldn't buy their albums. So in that case, I buy the couple of songs I like from them, and then that's it.
But then again, this rignle isn't for me. Why buy a ringtone when you can make you own?
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
The crappy value is there purely to distract you from the even more menacing facet of this:
So, for Joe Consumer to redeem his ringtone, he pops this CD in his windows computer, and it RUNS A PROGRAM THAT CONNECTS TO THE INTERNET to obtain the ringtone. It does nothing else, honestly. It doesn't scan your computer or talk to the RIAA or anything like that. They wouldn't use this technology to locate teenage music pirates so it can sue them for $5000 a track, would it? You can trust them.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Orange juice is good
Orange juice is very good
Orange juice is good
-- the man who would later become Lum the Mad, circa 1996
to drive the final stake thru the heart of 'organized crime, er music'.
CDs cost less than 25 cents to make, sell on the 'net for $3, pocket $2.75 profit. Worldwide audience.
Perhaps the key is getting the music directly from the net to the cellphone, 25 cents each, listen anywhere.
Just waiting on someone with talent and vision to do it. There used to be plenty of talented musicians on mp3.com.
They Live, We Sleep
Do people really only tend to like a handful of songs from an album?
Actually, most of the people I know that complain about this are buying CDs b/c they contain the MTV VJ pick of the week (or whatever). Then, when they hear other completely comparable songs that have not been heavily marketed at them, they recognize that the music sucks. But they still like that one song b/c of the marketing.
Of course, some bands really are just one hit wonders. They make one good song that is worthwhile, and the rest is garbage.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
Think about singles acts. There are absolutely loads of forgettable bands who give us one good hit but not much else. So you buy the album and it's all dross apart from that hit (normally track 1). Or you wouldn't even consider buying the album just for one song. In the 80s and 90s this used to apply 90% of the time.
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=RZCD-45716 is a random sampling of the Japanese maxi-single, which is very successful there. A common tactic there is to sell 2 or 3 "lead-in" singles months before the album comes out. Then they will try to sell you the actual album for $20-$25 which often contains all 3 singles and B-sides and perhaps only 4 or 5 new songs. Of course, I can't see the same formula working here, but they were bound to try.
I would never purchase this product even if it had 12 songs for $6.00. There are many reasons.
1) Most of the song put on a CD are not to my liking. I hated buying a full CD just to get one or two songs I liked.
2) The music industry pays on average 4% of what it takes in to the artist. The artists pay for everything including the copier paper, the white-out, the pencils, erasures, absolutely everything. The CD, to most artists, are simply advertising for their concerts.
3) The music industry sues people. They are pushing a business model that is far outdated and unliked by most. They think we care about their losses, their business, etc. I could care less whether they and all they know turns to dust. It just isn't my concern. They are hated for their tactics and hated for their theft of the music created by artists.
4) They dumped a decade of crap on the industry because they knew that they could sign every musician to a record deal because the contracts were written to force the musicians to pay all costs (advertising, copier paper, white-out, pencils, erasures, everything). If the artists sales don't cover the costs they outright steal the music and then sue the artsist for the outstanding costs.
5) Their dumping for a decade of the crap meant that good quality artists could be lost. They were drowned out in the racket created by the musicians so the true artists never got to stand out.
6) The crap they've been pulling with DRM and how they manipulate the tech industry and how they manipulated the lawmakers to create a protected industry, and how they are lobbying to get our government to interfere in the laws of other countries.
What I liked about CD when I used to buy them.
1) I loved knowing I owned the CDs.
2) I loved the inserts with all the information about the artists.
3) I thought I was supporting the artists in their works in hope they would make more of the same music. Only I found out later that only 4% of the revenues coming from the sales of the CDs went to the artists.
4) There truly were an abundance of true artists instead of the musicians they were dumping onto us. So, they had quality music that has now been replaced by untalented copycat musicians instead of unique artists.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Of all the music I heard on the way to work today, the catchiest tune was someone's ringtone in the elevator. It's about time they started realizing it's the music version of viral marketing.
The ridiculous price is something else. But the concept is good.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
...and they can have my data cable when they pry it from my cold dead hands!
pfft... paying to upload a 30 sec audio clip to my phone? Give me a break! I have a computer, I'll do it myself!
I've got a short photodocumentary of the process that resulted in Sony's astonishingly forward-looking decision available here for anyone who's interested.
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
People who buy online already get to pick and choose. However, there are still some people who walk into shops and buy CDs. They often don't want all 11 (or however many) tracks specifically, but want a few and will take the rest as part of the package. Still, albums are priced in the same order of magnitude as movies on DVD. Amazing.
A proposed price of $7 means discount retailers may sell at $5. Now, if you buy CDs in shops, and your main interest is 1 or 2 songs, buy a ringle, and skip the album. (Not that they'd ever put two chart-toppers on the same ringle).
-- All your bass are below two Hz
This sounds pretty awesome, and I'm sure I'll be buying a lot of these.
I only have one question: what's a "CD"?
sic transit gloria mundi
207th Post!!!!
My phone (Nokia 5300) lets me use any MP3 I want as my ringtone. I don't have to buy it from their special store, or pay some special fees, or even use thier special software to transfer it to my phone (it uses a microSD card and even has a USB port right on the phone).
I can rip it from a CD, buy it from iTunes, or whatever...so long as I can get it converted to MP3 I can use it.
What I don't understand is, why don't more phones work this way? And why do people buy MP3-enabled phones which don't also do this?
Call me dense, but isn't this "The RIAA has officially backed a move by the recording industry" really saying "The recording industry has officially backed a move by the recording industry" ?
V for Vendetta: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
Yet another product of the RIAA that I won't ever buy, or download.....
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
wow, did the guy you're replying to even MENTION illegally downloading the track instead?? NO!
Dear Interviewee,
...Oh wait, this isn't a Slashdot interview! Carry on.
Have you ever at any age downloaded music illegally? If so, why?
Thank you
I liked the pricing of the late 90's era music download sites of $.01 per song better.
What about movies? It costs about 10$ to buy a movie. 10$ divided by 120 minutes (estimated figure) gives us $.08 per minute of content. Movie content has both video AND audio included. Divide that by half assuming that the video and audio are equal and we get $0.04 per somewhat equal media minute.
Say the average song is 4 minutes long. That would give us a figure of about $0.16 per song, which is assuming that the video and audio are equal in value to the consumer, that both take the same time to make (they don't), and that both the movies and song cost the same amount of money to produce (laugh).
Why do they think their media is worth $.99 per song?
I'm a total sucker for crunchy basslines, bleepy synths and vocodered-to-death vocals. This category gets contributed to equally by friends of mine on independent labels, various club, electro and psytrance acts (anyone from Sander K to Atari Teenage Riot to TV Rock to Infected Mushroom), and occasionally by whomever happens to be composing for Justin Timberlake this week.
I (and I hope many others) really don't give a toss where it comes from or how it's been marketed as long as it sounds awesome. If anything, I prefer it to be obscure so that I can score points for introducing my friends to it =)
will it ringle my bingle ?
or, chizzle my shizzle ?
or even better, pingle my dingle ?
if it doesnt do any of those, im not buyin
Read radical news here
Less value for more cost has always been the motto of the music industry.
Ringle?!? Rooby dooby doooooo!!!!
My phone is "multimedia capable." In order for it to play mp3s, all I had to do was literally flip one bit in the firmware. They don't want that when they sell same phone with "mp3 capability" for $75 more.
Perhaps the ringle comes from the same genius who came up with the notion that folks would actually pay $24 for an 88-minute music CD? Well, maybe somebody in Musicland should ask him for some identification, because nobody's buying those either.
"What is the carbon footprint of three songs on a packaged CD"
Probably about the same as someone who downloads songs from iTMS and then burns them to a CD because it can't be played on a non-iPod portable, or in the car. Yes I know a small portion of the catalog doesn't have DRM.
On the other hand, if you buy a CD, when the next music player comes out, I just re-rip the CD. When I get tired of it, I can sell it to someone else.
It looks to me like CD's are pretty green after all.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"I believe 1-2 USD for a song is fair."
Sony/BMG has a once-a-month sale on all CD's for about $7 shipped. That's fair. $1-2 a song? Not so much. Yes, I get the distinction between a single and a CD, but unless you listen to crappy boy bands, pretty much every CD is worth listening to. In fact, if you listen to any artist that's good, regardless of genre, the CD is worth getting.
Where went the albums? Back in seventies there were *albums*, rather than songs.
You would listen an album of related music (in a kinda "story") rather unrelated list hits from various artists.
I think this is one thing which is wrong with the modern music: they are filling CDs with songs that might include one hit No continuity, no nothing, just unrelated perhaps-a-hit stuff ending up as likely-a-shit.
>> Just when you thought stupid ideas had become an endangered species
...
> Thanks for that little gem, which helps prove there's not much danger of that ever happening.
Given how hard the Music Industry is working to *preserve* stupid ideas even when it's not such a good idea, I thought they were "endangered"
And why do people buy MP3-enabled phones which don't also do this?
Razor/Razor Balde sales model. It's been here for a long time. The cheapskate gets the crippled phone on the cheap phone plan with the high priced low included minutes plans with fees for extra services such as a way to send and recieve text messages, extra talk time, a way to download photos from the phone, and of course a fee to download ringtones.
The DIY users pays more up front for a better phone with features for unlimited texting, data transfer, and a local access port, USB cable and such to avoid the extra fees for ringtones.
The truth shall set you free!
Ringle? Wasn't he the drummer for The Beatles?
You ever notice all those ads of "Text HOT to 31561 to get hot, sexy ringtones and wallpapers!"
...Never mind. I'm IN the Myspace generation, and I still don't get the Myspace culture.
I don't care how cheap 2 AM airtime is, in order to pay for those ads, there must be somebody, somewhere, who actually does fall for it.
Not to mention that many people are, indeed, willing to pay $1 or more for a ringtone, which is essentially a very short version of a song to put on your phone... It's a phone! Why is it so fucking exciting to have it ring some other way, when you're still just going to pick up the phone?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Yes, and this has been the case for years, at least forty years. I remember feeling cheated somewhat when I purchased an LP in the early eighties, based upon the marketing/play frequency on radio, and finding only 2-3 tracks that I liked. The rest were near remakes, same beat and tones, just slightly different lyrics. Those groups did not last long then, and are mostly forgotten now. When I mentioned this to my father, he knew exactly what I was talking about, having experienced the same feelings twenty-five plus years earlier than I did.
There always will be bands/composers that excel, that make an album true art, and those that merely pose. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder though, and everyone has different preferences and reasons for those preferences, and all are valid.
Is the album several different poems about a common theme with each track put to music that matches the variances of the theme? Is the album continuous is presenting a mood with the music? Both are equally valid reasons for enjoyment. But when you purchase an album that gives only part of what you are interested in and a lot of filler, you might feel cheated.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
trogdor makes an excellent point. These CDs aren't for people that are familiar with buying music from iTunes--They're meant for people who may not even be familiar with downloading music at all.
It seems that the target audience for this is the people that (a) like CDs, and (b) like to pay less money, and (c) like less bloat in their music collections than a full album would cause.
Honestly, depending on how this pans out, I might even go out and buy the CDs. And that's saying a lot for me, since I haven't gone out and bought a random CD since god knows when. I also don't use ringtones. I think that the convenience of the music alone, non-DRMed, in CD format, just might make it worth my while.
Unbelievable. The whole problem with album sales any more is that the RIAA no longer has the ability to force consumers to buy eleven tracks of shit along with the only one they wanted to hear in the first place. Singles will sell online because the consumer selects EXACTLY what to buy, AND the price is apparently low enough. The online single sale smodel is mildly successful because it offers good performance in the following areas: Price Selection Convenience 1) Double the price per track. There went Price. 2) Force consumers to buy four tracks at once, and they can't pick which ones. There went Selection. 3) Make consumers come to the store, if there's one around, if the traffic and weather don't keep you away, when it's open. There went Convenience. 4) ??? 5) PROFIT! This misbegotten marketing malfunction has gotten it more wrong than I thought possible. Nobody--nobody--wants to spend $6-$7 per track just because it comes with some other crap that you don't want, too. I don't want a re-mix of Freebird, I don't want a ringtone, I don't want smilies or v1agr4 or a longer p3n1s or whatever other spam-inspired marketing crap these utter fools come up with. This stupidity is going to be on Snopes.com as evidence that the RIAA actually tried to pull off such a monumental boondoggle. Otherwise people won't believe it. This is epic. Songs will be written about this. And when they are, NOBODY WILL BUY THEM ON A RINGLE.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
The online single sale smodel is mildly successful because it offers good performance in the following areas:
Price
Selection
Convenience
1) Double the price per track. There went Price.
2) Force consumers to buy four tracks at once, and they can't pick which ones. There went Selection.
3) Make consumers come to the store, if there's one around, if the traffic and weather don't keep you away, when it's open. There went Convenience.
4) ???
5) PROFIT!
This misbegotten marketing malfunction has gotten it more wrong than I thought possible. Nobody--nobody--wants to spend $6-$7 per track just because it comes with some other crap that you don't want, too.
I don't want a re-mix of Freebird, I don't want a ringtone, I don't want smilies or v1agr4 or a longer p3n1s or whatever other spam-inspired marketing crap these utter fools come up with. This stupidity is going to be on Snopes.com as evidence that the RIAA actually tried to pull off such a monumental boondoggle. Otherwise people won't believe it. This is epic. Songs will be written about this.
And when they are, NOBODY WILL BUY THEM ON A RINGLE.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
Or, alternatively, you just don't buy anything at all by them due to them being horrible, their one hit included.
- Frans.
Lol,now thats knee slappin,pee down the leg funny.
The music industry is dead and they don't even know it yet.
I think it's good that they throw vast amounts of money on loser projects.
In the end they will have less to retire on.Good.None of them deserve a dime when it finally reaches rigor mortis.
Music is an eternal force that resists outer control.It passes through the technically proficient to emerge as sound.If you want to make money from music,play it and charge for the performance,not the music.You could even build instruments or offer some peripheral service for musicians or audiences.Give up any hope that you will ever make any money charging for music itself.Those days are over forever.Toothpaste out of the tube and far down the road.No going back.Learn from your mistakes and just give up any ideas shared with the rotting corpse of the music industry.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I got no problem with Ringle's.
Just make sure to label it a "Ringle" on the package.
It does seem like a waste of disk space though.
In my opinion the better idea is a mixed audio cd that has a small video bonus.
Nothing beats stuffing as many tracks as possible on a disk.
(unless the band didn't record that many tracks)
Sadly as I post anonymous, nobody will probably ever see this information.
Why is Sony still allowed to exist? DAMNIT.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
From reading the headline, I thought maybe they'd finally done something right.
A "ringle"... sounded like the old commercial "jingle" to get people to buy things. That would be smart.
People like ring tones. People don't typically like editing them themselves. The music company could make a custom short ringtone edit, like a radio edit, of a song. That would be smart.
It would be freely downloadable or could be sent to a phone from a web site at no cost to promote the album. That would be smart.
But no. The record industry (which, according to the summary, is a separate entity from the RIAA now...?) is still chock full of idiots.
ok...does anyone else see that 99 cent for a song is over priced? when theres an unlimited supply of something, and a large demand, prices go DOWN. i think a buck a song is absurd. say, i want an Anal Cunt cd. theres 52 tracks of thier cd's. wtf would i pay 52 bucks? and whats this with ring tones? are they really that important to people? they seem excessively annoying to me. while standing in line at the movie theater i dont want to hear an 8 bit version of...well, anything released in the last 10-15 years.
as for the single with a ring tone, the catch phraze 'ringle', i think the exec's of the music industry (all 4 companies are doing it at he same time, so much for competition) should rethink what a cd costs. look at the extra money the populas has, maybe to thwart piracy, they should better police the internet, shut down all p2p, all irc, all usenet, all soulseek servers, and all sites that have music playing, like, myspace and other social netwerking sites. or, lower the price. i think the later would be more cost effective. but what do i know, im not a republican.
1 trillion to heavely police everyhting, or make less of a profit by lowering prices.
tuff choice
music is over priced. their not going to bend to the will of the people, they have more money than all the people. we jsut dunt have to spend a dime on em.
everyone should only buy used cd's (the industry gets notta for em) and indipentant labels. tho the music industry owns something along the lines of 1000 diff labels, hard to tell indi from the corporate indi recycled trash.
i cant believe they think raising the prices and offering a crappy ring tone would make people buy it. tho it will be on the shelf for years to come, and the 10 year old now that doesnt listen to music will see that on the shelf in 3 years, and think thats normal, and worth the value of 7 bucks.
lets bash the movie industry next!
In this one move, the Recording Industry illustrates for everyone why they're in so much trouble -- they don't understand ANYTHING, even when it's so obvious most children get it. Back when I was a kid, there were SINGLEs... one song you wanted, usually (not always, usually) a filler song on the back. I never bought these, but my sister Kathy bought hundreds (and she's got a PhD from Stanford now, so maybe she knew something). Anyway, such singles usually ran about 1/7th-1/8th the cost of an LP, street price.
Singles went away, certainly killed in part by a time in which concept albums or real efforts by real artists made "Album Oriented" Rock the big thing on the radio... why buy a single when every song is good. This was great for the record industry, but it actually kind of required real artists who did these things on their own, in their own tine. As the recording industry took a heavier hand in producing music, building Pop Stars, etc. they went back to the days when many albums were a couple of sure-fire pop hits and the rest filler. In sort, they re-created the demand for the single.
And lookie lookie, there's iTunes, ready to oblige. They reintroduced the single, again at 1/8th to 1/12th the cost of the album (modern albums, composed for CD lengths rather than LP lengths, tend to have more songs... so it does vary). This is really a step back to the days of the "45", and exactly what users demand.
So now the Recording Industry wants to revisit the single... only, they can't actually bring themselves around to doing that, can they? Given the cost of CDs, they certainly COULD deliver a disc for $0.99 in the stores... to save on shipping, sell an 8cm disc in a glassine or mylar or paper envelope... 45s used to come sleeved in paper, no other wrapping (the label told you what it was). But why do that when you can be greedy and charge what looks like about 1/2 the going rate of the whole CD. But hey, look, we can sell you all this other crap too... sure, but where did that single go in the process?
And then there's the ringtone... how, exactly, does that get sold on a CD? You pretty much have to go online for that, since most users don't have a way to download a ringtone... Verizon customers, for example, can't do that even with Phones like the RAZR that include USB ports... too much greed at that company, too. They may have a solution, but it's not the simple and obvious "include the ringtone on the CD" answer, meaning new infrastructure, additional costs, etc... but hey, we can support that with a high fee.
Seems like everything these guys do is done by a committee of greedy lawyers and other rich people NOT otherwise involved with music. I certainly can't imagine any other way a concept so simple as "music single" could be so throughly screwed up. And sure, when it fails, it will be piracy to blame, not the fact that it was a stupid idea brought forth by morons.
-Dave Haynie
Aside from the mis-count of available songs on a disk, the phrase "The RIAA has officially backed a move by the recording industry..." is fucking redundant.
Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. ...