My company www.streamzap.com does ship to as many countries as possible, but here are the many challenges we face which may explain why others just don't bother:
1. Unless you do a ton of shipping, the major carriers (UPS/Fedex/DHL/Airborne) charge about $50 USD to send a 1 lb package to most countries. What customer is willing to pay this much for S&H?
2. The only reasonably cost effective method is US Air Mail. US Air Mail does not have reasonable insurance rates (At some point I looked into tracking and/or insurance, but this brings the cost closer to the UPS/Fedex rates).
3. International packages require filling out customs forms... BY HAND (USPS claims to be beta testing a way to print these by computer, but they have been claiming this for over a year now). This costs another few $bucks$ in time for an employee (incrasing the already high S&H costs for the customer)
4. Credit card fraud
About 90% of my incidents of credit card fraud come from International orders. This is not to imply that people outside of the US are more scrupulous than Americans. I would guess most countries have a similar rate of fraud; However when you commit inter-country fraud, it's nearly impossible to find and prosecute the criminal due to the sheer costs involved.
5. Credit card companies don't give a shit about fraud because they just make the vendor of the goods ("merchant") not only refund the money charged, but they also pay an extra $20 fee just for the "trouble" we made the credit card company go through in processing the fraud claim. In other words--ALL RISK of fraud is passed on to the vendor. One indicent of fraud costs you:
a. Lost goods
b. Lost $ from S&H
c. Charges from credit card company
d. Wasted time
Even if you could tell the credit card company every detail about the criminal (where they live, IP address, real name, etc..), it means nothing to them. Why should they bother to investigate it when they can just charge the merchant all of the costs of fraud? As you can see this is a broken system. There is currently a class action suit in progress against the credit cards surrounding this. And I hope they get sued up the ass for it.
6. Customs & import taxes
Many customers will end up being charged an additional tax and/or their packages will be delayed for weeks OR MONTHS by customs. Invariably the customer thinks the vendor is at fault for this and should refund their money 100%.
(Tip: Don't even bother shipping to Belgium--you'll be lucky if 1% of your packages get through)
7. Accounting and shipping software is not usually set up to handle International addresses. Every country has a different way of writing addresses. And most (reasonably priced) programs don't handle them well.
Overall, it's still worth it for us to ship overseas (i.e we make more money than we lose).. but there are many challenges and frustrations, so I can see why many vendors don't bother.
Yes, it's true that artists will no longer be able to make lots of money from the distribution of their music, but the claim that there are no other sufficient revenue sources is excessive.
Live concerts, posters, t-shirts, TV & movie cameos... These are all substantial sources of revenue for an artist.
Of course we hear complaints from established artists, because they fear (and rightly so) that they won't be able to maintain their lavish, superstar, multi-millionaire status without those record sales revenues.
Maybe it's about damned time that musicians get paid down-to-earth salaries like the rest of us, and do their work because they love it, not because it has the potential to make them filthy-rich.
Furthermore, there is still a revenue model in distribution:
If you charge a MODEST fee, for example $0.25 per song download, a lot of people would rather get the artists-approved mp3 of their favorite song instead of the Napster-ripped-by-some-amateur-who-sampled-at-12kb ps-using-an-analog-input-source.
So the problem here is not that artist's can't make money--it's that their crying about not making a shitload of money.
Well, too bad for them! It's a shame that this world has become to a place where we think "stars" deserve more money than cancer researchers, or teachers, or... programmers?;)
Slashdot Mirror
My company www.streamzap.com does ship to as many countries as possible, but here are the many challenges we face which may explain why others just don't bother:
1. Unless you do a ton of shipping, the major carriers (UPS/Fedex/DHL/Airborne) charge about $50 USD to send a 1 lb package to most countries. What customer is willing to pay this much for S&H?
2. The only reasonably cost effective method is US Air Mail. US Air Mail does not have reasonable insurance rates (At some point I looked into tracking and/or insurance, but this brings the cost closer to the UPS/Fedex rates).
3. International packages require filling out customs forms... BY HAND (USPS claims to be beta testing a way to print these by computer, but they have been claiming this for over a year now). This costs another few $bucks$ in time for an employee (incrasing the already high S&H costs for the customer)
4. Credit card fraud
About 90% of my incidents of credit card fraud come from International orders. This is not to imply that people outside of the US are more scrupulous than Americans. I would guess most countries have a similar rate of fraud; However when you commit inter-country fraud, it's nearly impossible to find and prosecute the criminal due to the sheer costs involved.
5. Credit card companies don't give a shit about fraud because they just make the vendor of the goods ("merchant") not only refund the money charged, but they also pay an extra $20 fee just for the "trouble" we made the credit card company go through in processing the fraud claim. In other words--ALL RISK of fraud is passed on to the vendor. One indicent of fraud costs you:
a. Lost goods
b. Lost $ from S&H
c. Charges from credit card company
d. Wasted time
Even if you could tell the credit card company every detail about the criminal (where they live, IP address, real name, etc..), it means nothing to them. Why should they bother to investigate it when they can just charge the merchant all of the costs of fraud? As you can see this is a broken system. There is currently a class action suit in progress against the credit cards surrounding this. And I hope they get sued up the ass for it.
6. Customs & import taxes Many customers will end up being charged an additional tax and/or their packages will be delayed for weeks OR MONTHS by customs. Invariably the customer thinks the vendor is at fault for this and should refund their money 100%. (Tip: Don't even bother shipping to Belgium--you'll be lucky if 1% of your packages get through)
7. Accounting and shipping software is not usually set up to handle International addresses. Every country has a different way of writing addresses. And most (reasonably priced) programs don't handle them well.
Overall, it's still worth it for us to ship overseas (i.e we make more money than we lose).. but there are many challenges and frustrations, so I can see why many vendors don't bother.
Jonah
www.streamzap.com
Yes, it's true that artists will no longer be able to make lots of money from the distribution of their music, but the claim that there are no other sufficient revenue sources is excessive.
b ps-using-an-analog-input-source.
... programmers? ;)
Live concerts, posters, t-shirts, TV & movie cameos... These are all substantial sources of revenue for an artist.
Of course we hear complaints from established artists, because they fear (and rightly so) that they won't be able to maintain their lavish, superstar, multi-millionaire status without those record sales revenues.
Maybe it's about damned time that musicians get paid down-to-earth salaries like the rest of us, and do their work because they love it, not because it has the potential to make them filthy-rich.
Furthermore, there is still a revenue model in distribution:
If you charge a MODEST fee, for example $0.25 per song download, a lot of people would rather get the artists-approved mp3 of their favorite song instead of the Napster-ripped-by-some-amateur-who-sampled-at-12k
So the problem here is not that artist's can't make money--it's that their crying about not making a shitload of money.
Well, too bad for them!
It's a shame that this world has become to a place where we think "stars" deserve more money than cancer researchers, or teachers, or