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Colleges Secretly Test Music-Industry Project

Posted by samzenpus on from the area-51-flavors-and-then-some dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The music industry is still pushing Choruss, a controversial blanket-licensing scheme, but it is far less innovative than first described. Six colleges are setting it up now, but they refuse to have their names released because the issue is a political landmine — and who wants to be associated with the recording industry?"

8 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Anonymous Cowards? by plastick · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sure they're scared of being sued! Just look at the track record.

    You know, this wouldn't even be so much of a problem if the music industry (these publishers) charged a reasonable price for a CD that costs them a few cents to make. You know... a CD with 7 songs on it where 5 of the songs suck, 1 song is ok, and you really only wanted that 1 song you paid the $30 bucks for.

    Instead, they want to sue Apple over royalties for the 30 second song previews on iTunes.

  2. Let's turn it around. by NoPantsJim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How's this for an idea. A band signs with a college instead of a record label. The college pays the band, everyone at the college gets their music for free.

    Yeah, probably not the greatest of plans, but much better than a college handing it's own students over to the RIAA.

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  3. Music's worth it; labels aren't. by weston · · Score: 3, Interesting

    wouldn't even be so much of a problem if the music industry (these publishers) charged a reasonable price for a CD

    I don't think that $12-$15 (or a buck or two per track) is really an unfair price for even a half-decent CD, really (and I don't think many people pay $30). It may be vanishingly cheap to transmit bits or print them into plastic and foil discs, but it's a lot of work to create music. Paying for it is one good way to make sure the people who make it can keep doing it. Not that it's not good for artists to sometimes sell lower or even give music away, and not that I don't agree there's a lot of crap out there that isn't worth paying for. Just that the most common prices don't seem unreasonable to me given the work involved in making music.

    The labels and publishers, on the other hand... increasingly irrelevant middlemen and control freaks who add a lot of overhead and a questionable amount of value.

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    1. Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Fair price is a misleading question. The real question is whether they are pricing their product in the best way to maximise profits and I strongly suspect that they are not. I pay about the cost of an album every month to a company that lets me rent DVDs (two at once, as fast as I can watch them and post them back) and stream an unlimited number of TV shows and films. In comparison with this, an album seems stupidly expensive. According to iTunes, I haven't listened to any of my albums more than 128 times and very few more than 30 times. There aren't any that I've been listening to with 100% of my attention, so in terms of money per time spent entertained, music is much more expensive than video.

      At the current prices, I'll buy 2-6 albums per year. If you priced an album at $1-2 then it would be an impulse purchase. If I heard a song I liked on Radio Paradise, then I'd buy the rest of the album to see if I liked it. Perhaps I'm unusual, but I suspect that I'm no. The cost of producing music has dropped a lot in the last few decades, but the cost of buying it has not. Meanwhile, the cost of other forms of entertainment has dropped a lot and music seems proportionally much more expensive. I've read a couple of studies indicating that around 5-15/track is the optimum price for maximising profit when selling music but the music industry seems to think that 99/track is the right price (which is fine) and that they should expect the same number of sales that they'd get with 5/track (which is completely unreasonable) and then blame piracy for their failure to adapt.

      Coincidentally, Ars published quite a nice round up on this subject today.

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    2. Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't. by koiransuklaa · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't think that $12-$15 (or a buck or two per track) is really an unfair price for even a half-decent CD, really (and I don't think many people pay $30).

      /me raises hand...

      Normal CD price here is 20€ which at current rates is $29.5. Add to the insult the fact that there are no web stores that would sell non-DRM music to a linux user in Finland (I'd love it if someone proves me wrong, btw).

  4. Re:Blanket licensing is never legal by timmarhy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    the cd tax is so flawed it's not funny. only artists who sell over a certain number of cd's ever see a cent, so if i'm a local band who produces an album, burns it to 3000 cd's to try get some kind of exposure, your album is actually taxed and some cocksucker affliated with *AA profits off it via the tax you paid....

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  5. I have a dream... by hatemonger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Imagine an ideal world where artists make their own music; they pay for their own recording and mixing. If they want to make a million dollar music video, they get a loan from a financial institution. Music distributors like MTV and radio stations go out and find music rather than contractually accepting whatever the large recording companies decide will be popular. Whenever I pay $10 for an album, it all goes to the band. And, since we're talking about hypothetical ideal worlds, I'd wave a magic wand so that modern music wouldn't suck.

  6. Re:Still feeds the beast by An+ominous+Cow+art · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Don T. Knowe and the Hoocares, I believe.