And the second rule of the PATRIOT Act is that if you get to the point where you have to know the second rule of the PATRIOT Act it is too late as you are already fucked.
cdbaby is owned by tower records now and has kinda started to be less supportive of the artists
And from what region, exactly, of your bowels did you pull this statement? The Baby has been by far the easiest of the partners we have and their artists seem to adore them.
I don't even want to know what part of your anatomy the Tower Records statement came from...
Where do you think this extra money is going to? Certainly not to pay the artists more! It's going to fund more lawsuits, politician pocket packing, and advertisements aimed at making everyone look like a thief except themselves.
That all depends. On one side you have labels that are actually increasing the royalty for digital sales. On the other you have some *major* artists that are making exactly 0% on digital sales due to hiring legal counsel that should be immediately fired.
No "dork-in-the-basement-with-a-keyboard" like some other free music sites have.
Actually, Brad Sucks is a dork-in-the-basement-with-a-keyboard (And I mean that in the nicest possible way, Brad!;-)... he just happens to be a very talented dork-in-the-basement-with-a-keyboard.
Until a method of downloading music that is fair to consumers and most importantly artists comes along, I will never ever buy anything from iTunes or Napster or any of the other ones.
What would you, Mr. Coward, consider "fair"? Seriously, I am very curious. Cheaper prices? Better interactivity? Better selection? Exposure to artists outside of Britney, et al?
This is not meant to be flippant... what would your ideal music download site look like?
I do think the entire OS should be called GNU/Linux, instead of just Linux, as most of the packages are GNU stuff.
You know, all it would take to make that a reality would be an advertising clause in the GPL saying something like "If you use this software in your program you must acknowlege the GNU project by either prepending 'GNU/' to the program's name, or...'
Trying to retroactively rename things GNU/ is just plain silly.
Either stop listening to major label music or pay the $0.99 per track.
Or do a combination of the above and visit a site like my company. We carry the CDBaby and Magnatune catalog, as well as several other independents. We are also negotiating with the majors, but our multiple formats (currently just VBR MP3s but soon to include OGG, AAC and even WMA) as well as a definitive lack of DRM scare them... lots.
I'ld really like to be able to donate money directly to artists.
My firm, NetMusic, has been investigating many ways of distributing additional funds to artists. As it stands now, we pay a flat wholesale cost to the label and have no real say over how much of that goes back to the artist. The labels are somewhat unenthusiastic about our plans since the vast majority of artists are encumbered by the labels (read: owe them money for advances) and the labels are none too happy about monies going to the artist when the label has not recouped their expenses.
That being said, we are now investigating a means of allowing our customers to add a "donation" that will go directly to the artist/publisher. Since our price point is.10 below our competitors, a user could, theoretically, donate.10 to the artist/publisher, pay our retail and still pay the same as anywhere else.
It has the potential to be an accounting headache since there is no existing organization to handle the distribution of these funds, among other things. However, we think we may have a solution for that as well.
I am curious as to what other slashdotters may have to think about a plan such as this.
Imagine subscribing to a newspaper, which happened to repeat an article or editorial every now and then. I would be annoyed at least - maybe insulted.
Sir, I can assume by this comment that you do not live in the Seattle metro area. *If* the PI or Times happen to get an original story, they will print it, in a perhaps slightly modified fashion, over and over and over again. If it is a "human interest" story, or god forbid a national story where Seattle is somehow mentioned, the same article may appear 3 or 4 times.
While I do certainly agree that 50GB is a bit excessive, I do have to ask if your linux *kernel* tree has:
Apache (IIS), mod_perl and perl (closest equiv. of IIS/ASP I could think of), XFree96, KDE, Evolution, Pan, Mozilla, etc, etc, etc...? What about a message queue system, clustering support (well, at least on Advanced Server), and maybe even a media server?
You can't compare apples and oranges. Linux is a *kernel* and Windows is a complete "OS". Also realize that the source code for Windows would have resource files for all of the languages that Windows supports, the "help" system and all of its associated files. Finally, from the little snippets I have seen leaked, it appears that the source tree still contains a good chunk of Alpha and PPC code.
Apple splits the 9950/50 right? and they pay their expenses out of that?
It's worse than that. Currently the majority of labels want.65 per track. Which means that at.99/track retail, there is a whopping.34 left over. Out of that.34 comes.30+ for the CC charge. Subract a bit less than.01 for the bandwidth charges and you pretty much have no profit. This is, of course, not taking into account the human cost associated with each track. Oh, and for those labels that require DRM there is a charge for a DRM provider (a couple of pennies per song), or the cost of maintaining a licensing server (if done in-house).
There are ways to lower some of the costs I mentioned above, but if I told you how, I would have to kill you.
[Shameless Plug]Check out www.netmusic.com on Feb 14th. We are offering tracks in MP3 (VBR and CBR), WMA, AAC, and OGG. Our price point is also lower than everyone else, with tracks going between.59-.85. [/Shameless Plug]
It's something I think about all of the time. My wife works at Premera/Blue Cross where they actually have the audacity to outsource $10/hr claim processing jobs to India (ImageNet). Word just came down last week that they are increasing their outsourcing 80% in the coming several weeks. Aside from the fact that a great portion of these claims processors are single mothers, or otherwise financially strained individuals, Premera is shipping data that should be HIPAA-compliant to India. Scary.
Great reference, but considering that probably 75% of the users on/. were born after the movie was released, I am not expecting a lot of people "getting" it.
I am currently doign it..in fact my LLC wil finally come to b ein feb 2004.........
If you have a cell phone you might run into our products in summer of 20004:)
Let me guess... your product is either a spellchecker or an easier to use keyboard?
Each company has to sign individual labels and artists. Each of these contracts can have different wholesale prices which are dictated, at least in part, by the label's projections on how much money you will make them over time. My company has wholesale prices from our labels from between a few cents to nearly 1 buck. This means that my prices range from.29-1.29, with a median at approximately.85.
MusicRebellion's contract with their labels/artists are different than ours. They apparently pay on a percentage basis, whereas our contracts are explicit on a per-unit wholesale cost.
Anyway, the point is that it is highly unlikely that each company will get the same prices, so you will continue to see much fluctuation.
Slashdot Mirror
And the second rule of the PATRIOT Act is that if you get to the point where you have to know the second rule of the PATRIOT Act it is too late as you are already fucked.
NetMusic-- No DRM, VBR MP3s, and available anywhere in the world. $.89/track and $7.99/album.
That would be really funny if it was spelled "hyman", but it's not.
And from what region, exactly, of your bowels did you pull this statement? The Baby has been by far the easiest of the partners we have and their artists seem to adore them.
I don't even want to know what part of your anatomy the Tower Records statement came from...
That all depends. On one side you have labels that are actually increasing the royalty for digital sales. On the other you have some *major* artists that are making exactly 0% on digital sales due to hiring legal counsel that should be immediately fired.
Actually, Brad Sucks is a dork-in-the-basement-with-a-keyboard (And I mean that in the nicest possible way, Brad! ;-)... he just happens to be a very talented dork-in-the-basement-with-a-keyboard.
Ahem... retail is $7.99 on most full albums and less if there are less than 10 tracks on the album.
What would you, Mr. Coward, consider "fair"? Seriously, I am very curious. Cheaper prices? Better interactivity? Better selection? Exposure to artists outside of Britney, et al?
This is not meant to be flippant... what would your ideal music download site look like?
Ahem... *cough cough*, or NetMusic. Seriously, though... we carry the Magnatune catalog as single track and full album downloads.
Hm... Google seems decidedly male to me.
1) Answers questions rapidly without offering any description of how the answer was derived? Check.
2) Works in short, fast bursts of energy and then tells you proudly it only took them .009 seconds? Check
3) Has an inability to accessorize his appearance? Check.
4) Returns 82,200,000 results when asked about porn? Check and match!
You know, all it would take to make that a reality would be an advertising clause in the GPL saying something like "If you use this software in your program you must acknowlege the GNU project by either prepending 'GNU/' to the program's name, or...'
Trying to retroactively rename things GNU/ is just plain silly.
That is a *great* Freudian slip.
Sorry... if you replace default.aspx with genasx.aspx in the above they'll work. Long day.
My Playlist
NetMusic Recommends
Eclectic Mix
Electronica
Anyone want to help a port to mono? ;-)
Or do a combination of the above and visit a site like my company. We carry the CDBaby and Magnatune catalog, as well as several other independents. We are also negotiating with the majors, but our multiple formats (currently just VBR MP3s but soon to include OGG, AAC and even WMA) as well as a definitive lack of DRM scare them... lots.
My firm, NetMusic, has been investigating many ways of distributing additional funds to artists. As it stands now, we pay a flat wholesale cost to the label and have no real say over how much of that goes back to the artist. The labels are somewhat unenthusiastic about our plans since the vast majority of artists are encumbered by the labels (read: owe them money for advances) and the labels are none too happy about monies going to the artist when the label has not recouped their expenses.
That being said, we are now investigating a means of allowing our customers to add a "donation" that will go directly to the artist/publisher. Since our price point is .10 below our competitors, a user could, theoretically, donate .10 to the artist/publisher, pay our retail and still pay the same as anywhere else.
It has the potential to be an accounting headache since there is no existing organization to handle the distribution of these funds, among other things. However, we think we may have a solution for that as well.
I am curious as to what other slashdotters may have to think about a plan such as this.
Sir, I can assume by this comment that you do not live in the Seattle metro area. *If* the PI or Times happen to get an original story, they will print it, in a perhaps slightly modified fashion, over and over and over again. If it is a "human interest" story, or god forbid a national story where Seattle is somehow mentioned, the same article may appear 3 or 4 times.
Apache (IIS), mod_perl and perl (closest equiv. of IIS/ASP I could think of), XFree96, KDE, Evolution, Pan, Mozilla, etc, etc, etc...? What about a message queue system, clustering support (well, at least on Advanced Server), and maybe even a media server?
You can't compare apples and oranges. Linux is a *kernel* and Windows is a complete "OS". Also realize that the source code for Windows would have resource files for all of the languages that Windows supports, the "help" system and all of its associated files. Finally, from the little snippets I have seen leaked, it appears that the source tree still contains a good chunk of Alpha and PPC code.
It's worse than that. Currently the majority of labels want .65 per track. Which means that at .99/track retail, there is a whopping .34 left over. Out of that .34 comes .30+ for the CC charge. Subract a bit less than .01 for the bandwidth charges and you pretty much have no profit. This is, of course, not taking into account the human cost associated with each track. Oh, and for those labels that require DRM there is a charge for a DRM provider (a couple of pennies per song), or the cost of maintaining a licensing server (if done in-house).
There are ways to lower some of the costs I mentioned above, but if I told you how, I would have to kill you.
[Shameless Plug]Check out www.netmusic.com on Feb 14th. We are offering tracks in MP3 (VBR and CBR), WMA, AAC, and OGG. Our price point is also lower than everyone else, with tracks going between .59-.85. [/Shameless Plug]
Great reference, but considering that probably 75% of the users on /. were born after the movie was released, I am not expecting a lot of people "getting" it.
Let me guess... your product is either a spellchecker or an easier to use keyboard?
That's what *you* get for being a VB developer... the rest of us would have just used != which even Slashdot understands.
MusicRebellion's contract with their labels/artists are different than ours. They apparently pay on a percentage basis, whereas our contracts are explicit on a per-unit wholesale cost.
Anyway, the point is that it is highly unlikely that each company will get the same prices, so you will continue to see much fluctuation.